I decided to try and explore some other ways of controlling my character today because it can be quite difficult to control the character when using the touch pad that I made.

I decided to try and make it so people could use a tablet to move the character around the pages. I thought using a tablet would be a good idea because I wouldn’t have to recode the character to use a different control scheme because the tablet controls the mouse cursor in the same way that the touch pad does.

The nice thing about using a tablet is that it looks and feels just like a pen. This helps it to sit a lot more comfortably with the overall look of the project.

I placed the tablet under a piece of paper and then projected the character on top. Below is a video of the result:

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I really liked how it felt like the character was coming to where you placed the pen when controlling it in this way. However as you can see from the video, by placing your hand on the page you block the projection making it hard to see the page and the character its self.

I feel this shatters the illusion that I am trying to create with the project. The only way that I could avoid blocking the projection would be to project from behind the page, this would mean that the pages of my book would have to be transparent however. So unfortunately I don’t think I will be able to use this technique.

Today I have been experimenting with changing the size of the character. In the videos below you can see that the character is much larger then it has previously been. I really liked how clear the character was when projected at this size. The problem with the character being so large though is that there isn’t much room left on the page once the character has been projected. This makes designing games for the character when he is so large difficult.

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Here is an example of me using the touchpad I made to control the game. It is slow to respond becuase I recorded this on an old computer. I will test it again once I get my computer fixed.

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I’ve also included the flash file which can be controled with a mouse. Click here to see a larger version

[kml_flashembed movie="http://zikayn.com/fmp/wp-content/uploads/8.swf" height="550" width="600" /]

Previously the character was controlled using the keyboard. I had to change the way the character moves so it follows the mouse cursor because the touch pad simply moves the mouse cursor around the screen. I coded it so that the character would only follow the X position of the mouse, meaning the character would only follow the mouse moving left and right and not up and down.

I’ve been looking into different ways of interacting with my game again today and found a neat little tutorial that shows how to make a homemade multitouch pad.

To get this to work you just need a box, some sort of clear glass or plastic, which you cover with paper and a webcam. You place the webcam in the box and then cover the box with the plastic wrapped in paper. You then need to install the software from here, calibrate it and then you have a working multitouch pad.

I didn’t have any boxes at hand that were the right size or any plastic for the surface so I sort of winged it a bit and made do with what I could find laying around. Surprisingly it worked. It’s a little buggy due to the fact that I don’t have everything put together perfectly but this could work as a nice controller with a bit more tinkering.

What I like about this is that you interact by touching paper. This helps it all feel more consistent when playing in the book. The box at the moment is still quite large but if I were to either work out a way to make it smaller or figure out how I could build it into a desk so the size of the box was hidden, I think it could work really well.

My box also has a face… it does not look amused.

I’ve been looking around for fun and interesting games recently to help inspire me for my game and today I came across a little slice of awesome called You Have To Burn The Rope.

It’s incredibly simple but packed full of charm.

They have a bunch of interesting games on www.mazapan.se. Another that cought my eye was “Metro Rules of Conduct”

I recently came across this game called crayon physics. It’s a physics puzzle game in which you have to draw objects in order to solve its puzzles.

The art style in the game has been designed to look like you are drawing on paper and when you draw it looks like you are drawing with a crayon. When played with a tablet or used on a tablet pc it is really effective at giving the impression that you are drawing on to paper.

Crayon Physics Deluxe from Petri Purho on Vimeo.