Stacky

Full-body interaction experience

Interactive Systems

Jordi Romera Romero 147889

Jesus Eloy Snchez Fernndez 148583
Fabi Serra Arrizabalaga 146680

The idea
Stacky is a Kinect based interactive game. The game's concept is actually pretty simple: You
are a stacker who has tostackapileofobjectsinyourhands,onestackoneachhand.These
objects are falling from the top ofthe screen and the idea isto stack them in ordertomakethe
stacksashigheraspossible.
By moving your arms youcontroleach pile, havingtoplacethestackbelowthefallingobjectsin
order to stack them. You better move your arms carefully if you dont want to dropthe pile, as
they follow therules ofphysics.Iftheobjectsarenotwellpositionedinthecenterofbalance,the
stack will fall and the game will finish. As the stacks gets higher the harderit is to keep them
stable.
The Xbox Kinect tracks themovementof the upper part of the userbodyandallowshisactions
to be translated to your onscreen silhouette. The user has to move his hands and arms to
control theorientationandpositionoftwo attachedplateshehasinbothhands.These platesare
placed in the palms of the user hands andarethegrowingbasesforeachstack.Theplatesare
subjectedtotheusershands,sotheycantfalldown.
Here we have a visual example of the game. As we can see, the objects are represented by
rectanglesofdifferentsizesandcolors:


The user has an associatedscore on the bottom left side of thescreenand his value depends
on the number of objects the user has on his stacks. The more objects he stacks, the more
pointsheobtains.
There is also a life counter on the bottom right side represented by a number of heartshaped
objects that indicates theremaining livestheuser haswhilehesplaying.Whentheuserwastes
allofhislives,thegamefinishes.
Finally there are some extra objects fallingfromthetopofthescreenbetweenthecoloredones.
These extra objects, which are theheartshaped and the black circle objects,are explained as
follows.However,theirfunctionalitiesareprettymuchselfexplanatory.
Heartshapedobjects:Theyallowtheusertogetnewlives,incrementingthelife
counterbyone.
Black Circle: They can be understood as an obstacle that can destabilize the
stacks if it hits them. The reason forincluding this extra object is to increase the
level of difficulty of the gameaswellastokeeptheusermoving tryingtoavoidto
touchthemwiththestacks.

Rules
The user has to be positioned in an appropriate distance infrontof thecamerainordertoallow
the kinect to track hisbodyandmovementscorrectly.Theideaistoappearonthescreenwitha
similarsizeasintheimageabove.
The user has tokeepbotharmsopenedthroughoutthedurationofthegame,beingfreetomove
his arms up and down and his body all over the interactiveregionbearinginmindthathehasa
largepileofobjectsinhishands!
When the game starts, the user has three lives. If the user doesnt catch one of the colored
objects while it is falling and this disappears below the screen, he loses one life. We can get
more lives by capturing the heart shaped objects. Meanwhile, the life counter indicates the
remaininglivesaccordinglytohisprogress.
The game objects only interact with the attached plates of our hands and the pile of objects
stacked. That means that lives can only be captured with the stacks and notthe other parts of
our body. In this way, we forcethe user to move his arms, and so his stacks, in order to get a
new live. In the same way, colored objects and black circles will not impact for instanceto our
head,onlytothestacks,avoidingtheobjectstogettrappedbetweenourarms.

The user has to stack thecoloredobjectsbuthehasto becarefulwiththeblackcircles,asthey

easilydestabilizethestacks.
For each object we get piled, we sum some points to the score. At first, the objects add 50
points. Every four stacked objectsin the pile,thisnumberismultipliedbytwo.Foreverynewlife
we get, we also increaseour score with100 points. If one black circle hitsoneof the piles, we
lose 100 points. When oneofthecolored objectsdisappearsbelowthescreenwealsolose100
points.
Iftheuserdropsmoreobjectsthanremaininglives,thegamewillfinish.

Objective
The overall objective of the game is to get as many points as possible. The higher the stacks,
themorepointsweget.
When we reach a certain number of objects in the stacks, there wont be any more colored
objects falling from above and the game will start a one minute timer. We have to keep the
balance of the two stacks while some obstacles keep falling. If wecompletethisminutewithout
droppinganyofthestacks(ordroppingmoreobjectsthanremaininglives),wewinthegame.
The idea to puta limitin the colored objects is because at somepoint the stacks may not fit in
thescreenandwewilllimitthenumberofobjectsthatcanbestackedbasedonthat.

Interactive experience
The graphics will beverysimilartotheimageswehaveseeninthisdocumentandthegamewill
play some different sounds throughout all our interactive experience. There will be a peaceful
ambience music during the game and the impact between objects will have different special
sounds1 . The idea is to make the user feel more inside the game and make him believe the
objectsarereal.

The colored objectswill always fall parallel to the groundsincewedontwanttomakethegame

evenmoredifficult,butthiswillbeanotheroptiontoaddifwewanttocomplicateitmore.

How will we implement the game?

The game will be implemented using OpenFrameworks and all the physics simulations of the
objects will be done using the ofxBox2d library, which is a wrapper for Box2D. Box2D is a free
open source 2dimensional physics simulator engine written in C++. This will enable us to
simulatealltheinteractionsbetweenobjectsinarealisticway.
The base of the stacks will be theattached plates in both hands.Thepositionandorientationof
these plates willbedefinedbytrackingthehands oftheuser.Usingthepairofpointsat theends
of the arms we will be able to control the orientation of the plates, aswe can see in the figure
below::

We will have to specify which objects can collide with each other and the effects they will have
on the interaction. For instance, acoloredobjectwontbeabletohitthesilhouetteofus,only the
attached platesandthe other colored objects. The same forthe black circle objects, which will
destabilize the stacks and lower the total score if they hit the piles. The heartshaped objects
wont collide with any object but if they touch one of the stacks they will disappear and addone
lifetothetotalcounter.
When the objects arrive to the lower part of the screen they disappear, making the
correspondingchangestothepunctuationandlifecounter,dependingonthetypeofobject.
1

http://www.freesound.org/