Android RPG
Other than my tutorials which are now successfully paying for my domain name and webspace. I've been playing around with Unity wanting to make a game for a little while but not having the specific skills for such an undertaking on my own. I have a feeling this is still the case but I'm going to try anyway, since I'm making a few models for some people I know I figured I could reuse anything I made there in my own game and just followed a similar theme.

A render of the character we'll be using, just a work in progress for now, can be found on my folio page. Right now I've got the model in unity and have basic controls setup and a simple map for testing. I've made some advancements and there is actually a test which can be downloaded here.

Soccer Pong
This was an assignment one of the more interesting ones in terms of difficulty. For this subject "new media" the idea was to look at things in a different way, new media is basically interactive media that doesn't use the regular keyboard and/or mouse for input. So things like an Xbox controller is new media, even before you get into things like the Kinect, Guitar Hero controllers or the DDR mats.

So the aim was to create an interactive that didn't use regular keyboard and mouse inputs. This is the result, a simple soccer themed pong (soccer because the world cup was big at the time). In a group of 2 we split the tasks up so I made the pressure pads and Matt Smith (the rest of my group) made the flash game. The pressure pads were surprisingly simple to construct with the help of a little thing called a KeyWiz.

The KeyWiz
The KeyWiz is essentially the just the piece of circuit board in your keyboard. Rip open a regular keyboard and you'll see a small board probably around where the lights for caps-lock and num-lock are sitting. Originally the plan was to rewire our own, but the KeyWiz was designed to do exactly what we wanted. It simply output an electrical signal which when you completed the circuit it would mimic  whatever keystroke you wanted.

The Pressure Pads
The pressure pads needed to contain 2 pieces of metal for the electrical signal to run along and when you stepped on the pad, to have them touch and complete the circuit. The added problem was to build them to be solid enough to stand up to people stepping on them all day (for the exhibition). The solution was to use regular chopping boards which are tough to begin with, then using two pieces of an everyday wire coat hanger and a kitchen sponge cut up  to accommodate both pieces of the coat hanger, the pressure pads were then created.
The two pieces of coat hanger perpendicular one piece on each of the chopping boards, and then pieces of sponge on either end to keep them apart, so that you needed to step on them to make them work. Wire it all up there you have 4 working pressure pads for our soccer pong game.

Ingredients

• 8 chopping boards
• 3 coat hangers
• 4 kitchen sponges
• a bit of wood glue