aaron vanderbeek

McConomyTron Funkmaster 2k8 was created as part of the Building Virtual Worlds class at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. It is a combination of a virtual world created in Panda 3D and a live action performance centered around the idea of 'getting an entire audience to dance'.

Interaction: An entire audience must dance synchronously by following arrows displayed on screen to launch and navigate a dance-powered rocketship.

Story: The McConomyTron Funkmaster 2k8 is a dance-powered rocketship built by the ETC with the sole purpose of spreading funk throughout the galaxy. The people on the ship (played by the audience of the Building Virtual Worlds Show) are part of the maiden voyage and must use dance moves to launch the ship, navigate the galaxy, and spread the funk!

We designed the interaction first. We used an audience interaction system that uses a camcorder to record the audience and analyze the images in real time. By calibrating the audience in a normal position, a left position, a right position, and an up position, we can compare the real time images to the calibration images to determine which way the audience is leaning. We looked to common dancing rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution to help us design our interface, which used arrows passing through a box to indicate which way the audience should lean in order to successfully 'hit' the arrow. We were very much concerned with giving as much feedback to the players as possible, so that the audience knew exactly when to hit an arrow (when the arrow-box lights up) and could tell when they hit or missed an arrow (using sound and animation).

The live action performance was developed in tandem with the virtual assets, which ended up being mostly scripted dialogue with some improv lines to keep up excitement during gameplay and LOTS of improvised dancing on part of the captain of the ship. We found that the ridiculous dance moves of the captain increased enjoyment of the world by quite a bit in rehearsals so we kept it in. Having two additional actors on stage serve as helper androids that show the audience the correct dance moves also helped the audience figure out exactly what to do and ease them into getting comfortable dancing. We also took advantage of a DMX system to operate fog machines (when the ship is launching), bubble machines (when Carrie Underwood saves the ship), and various lights throughout during the live performance to increase the spectacle of the actions happening in the virtual space and to give the virtual world more presence in the real world.

The pacing and interest curve of the experience were carefully tweaked so as to keep hold of the audience's attention for the entirety of the experience. We scripted the dialogue and virtual transitions so that the captain could maintain attention of the audience when they weren't playing, and the game levels were designed such that they became increasingly physical and dramatic up until the climax of between levels two and three. The gameplay itself was somewhat scripted to make the experience more entertaining. In the first level we ensured that the audience could never miss three arrows in a row so that they always thought the audience interaction mechanism was working. In the second level we designed the level such that it became so difficult that it would be impossible (and to have the audience flailing like mad) so that we could enter the third level via the emergency button, where the audience would never miss any arrows. All of these levels were designed to compliment the story and music selections of those corresponding sections.

Designer: Storyboarded the sequence of events, oversaw and maintained the design vision of the project, wrote the script, and created the levels.

Producer: Scheduled meetings and reheasals, managed assets, props, and costumes, presented the world in class, catalogued minutes from meetings and discussions, and maintained a high level of communication amongst the team members.

Sound Designer: Chose and edited the music, found, created, and edited all of the sounds in the experience.

Actor: Acted as the captain of the McConomyTron and the primary facilitator of all of the interaction for the world in front of audiences ranging from ~70 to over 500.

This world was chosen to be shown at the end of the semester Building Virtual Worlds show, which is a showcase of some of the most entertaining worlds that were created during the semester.