Roman Miletitch

Draw, play, erase, correct, scan & play anew!

In this talk, we will share our experience in designing games that revolve around interactive drawings (felt pen on paper, graff on walls, colored syrup on waffles...). How does such games work? First a camera captures the drawing, then we analyze it, use that information in our game, then we project back the rendered game on the drawing to close the loop.

First we will discuss the implications of such an analogical and free-form input in term of user experience and possible gameplays. Then we will present the tech we have been developing to ease the development process. This implied working both on software (a library, the PTX system) and hardware (a kit for easy setup).

In this talk we'll describe the DrawPlay technology, allowing anyone with the help of a camera and video projector to use drawings as an entry point for gameplay. We'll showcase how we based Flippaper on it and what we learn from our experience. We'll then finish by presenting the current dev state of our DIY kit which should allow an easier access to this technology to makers and designers.

At first there was the flippaper, a mix between a pinball machine and a drawing table. With the press of a magic SCAN button, whatever you would draw would be granted existence and light. Add to that a little ball projected on paper and you had all you need to draw mad graphic pinballs, play them, erase some part, add some new, play again, and repeat! The power of the underlying tech (paper and color based interaction) was too much for just two people, we felt the need to release it so others could play with it and express their own vision.