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Kinect Based Whole Building Breakout
mikejuk writes with a light piece in I Programmer about a neat Kinect and gigantic projector hack. From the article: "If you remember Breakout — rows of blocks a the top of the screen and a paddle to bounce a ball into them to destroy a block — then you might not feel nostalgic about it. After all, it was a very limited sort of game. However, take one Kinect and one building and you have something quite different when you use it to create a Breakout game. The bricks, ball and paddle all projected onto an old building and the player moves from side-to-side to control the paddle. The player's position is being detected by a Kinect, is there no end to the fun you can have with this gadget. The really clever bit, and you might not notice it unless you look closely at the video, is that the ball bounces off real architectural features of the building — like the windows, for example."
Maybe we could clean up that headline with a couple of dashes?
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Thought it might have incorporated the building architecture or something sort of cool. Instead, this is just a 80s video game projected against a blank wall at night. Instead of pressing the button to go left, you lean to the left to go left, the same as every other Kinect game but much simpler. Totally unimpressive.
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"The player's position is being detected by a Kinect, is there no end to the fun you can have with this gadget." There is a definate limit when playing on an XBox.
If I remember it, I won't be nostalgic about it?
So if I don't remember it what? Journalist nonsense.
The only way they could have made this less fun is by using Solitaire instead of Breakout. Both rank very very low on the gameplay meters.
I really hope someone comes along in a few months and does this properly; using a decent game and at least a little imagination thrown in!
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I was really hoping that the "bricks" where the office lights turning on/off. Having control of the buildings lights would have made for a much cooler display.
Spot on. I DO remember Breakout, and I absolutely feel NO nostalgia for it.
If you've never heard of Breakout, you might have heard of its more well-known clone, Arkanoid.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Yep, to add bonus points, the player could be sensed as the paddle (perhaps the player could hold a surfboard or some other large object) and the ball could be projected using a spotlight. Now THAT would be cool.
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I was hoping the paddle would be more directly controlled. Say, with a glowing fluorescent tube. Bonus points if it showed the movements of the person as well, so you could end up with a pretty awesome shadowdancing display.
If you're going to play a whole-building game, I still prefer Blackout Fire Alarm Beancounter Pinball.
The classics are, well, classic!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
a bunch of people whining about how it's not cool enough and how they would have done it better while continuing to sit in the basement and do nothing.
Kinect SDK and XNA now prowide wide range of ideas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6mVkWBJDaQ
I couldn't make it through the video because of that awful music. Sounds like a warped audio cassette.
Did anyone else have that problem?
Why would Kinect construct a building just to base the whole thing off a game of "Breakout"? Won't the building just be demolished? Why did Microsoft create an entire venture out of Kinect, anyway, when it was doing just fine as a product? God, corporate suicide is all over the news, these days. What's wrong with people?!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Lol...that is cool. How do they do all that? Wow.
I was hoping the breakout game's ball would correspond to a Kinect-controlled wrecking ball...
Almost as cool as Sheep Pong. (About in the middle of the video)