GMU:Lebendige Spiele:Organization:Landscape

Success Criteria

Decide on the scale of the arena for the ants

• how fast are ants moving - how long does it take for the ants to find something
• how fast does this compare to human movements -done
• how many turns/intersections do we want in the environment

Discussion

• Which areas do we want to reproduce for the ants? (Weimar, Düsseldorf Park,...)
• integrating human movement (projection, laser pointer, little robot avatar,...)
• before the laser cutting part we should present all ideas to the group!
  

Activities & Order

Think how the avatar of the human can be incorporated Feedback with human environment so the two are matching
1. Decide on the lay-out/design of the map.

• How fast do human move? How fast the ants? (Test)
• Which areas do we want to reproduce for the ants? (Weimar, Düsseldorf Park,...)

2. How does the board work. (Prototyping)

• technical drawings
  • general layout
  • cleaning the board
  • integrating tracking system
  • integrating human movement (projection, laser pointer, little robot avatar,...)
• details
  • how to insert the trigger-object
  • entrance; docking the nest
  • safety plans (air, what if they escape, ...)
  • electronics
• material list:
  • electronics
    • Laserpointers for human avatar
    • small robot for human avatar
    • projection
  • building materials
    • wood
    • plexiglas (most logic option because of visibility)
    • plastic tubes min. 6mm
    • screws
    • glue (Holzleim and Hot glue)

3. Actual Board

• find and prepare maps
  • www.schwarzplan.eu or www.mapbox.com, ask some architecture students, Katasteramt, googlemaps etc.
• prepare lasercut file
• building the actual environment

Risks

The scale is a risk factor because synchronizing can be hard.

• Solve by testing it.

The environment should be ant-friendly and make sure they cannot escape.

• Solve by testing and knowledge about ants.

The ants could die or be very inactive over a long period

• Buying or collecting another (second or third) colony

Integration both gaming ideas to one board could be problematic
Building a lot of board could cost a lot of time

• Focus on one way to play the game.

Time / Schedule

-Scale

• experiments for the scale: first two weeks

-Combine ideas with people that are dealing with the virtual environment: after 2 weeks
A lot of things are depending on decision of other groups!

-Prototyping

• 2 weeks
  • scale
  • opening/closing mechanics
  • human avatar
  • material test

-Preparing maps and creating laser cut file

• 2 weeks

-Building the board

• 2 weeks intense work
• can be divided into teams:
  • electronics
  • actual board

Things done so far

First testing with speed of the ants. A track of 60 cm (without the dead ends, this is just the distance to the goal) with 3 intersections was accomplished in an average time of: 90 sec

Compared to humans: Humans walk 1.5 m/s That would mean that in 90 seconds they can cover a distance of 135 meters. Meaning that every 45 meters you would have a route decision making point.

The frequency of the route-decision making points is something we can use in order to make decisions about how big the field should be in the end.

Reference Material

Building a good Labyrinth [1]

Exampleof a maze we can use [2]