For BVW's round five, the goal was to make a game that would be fun to show to a crowd. My group decided to create a game that a crowd could play. We wanted to create an asymmetrical competition, the audience versus a single player.

Our final game had cameras on the audience that could detect the difference between sitting and standing. If the audience stood up a little bit, the game on the screen would create a small wave. If everyone in the crowd stood up as much as they could, they would create a large wave on the screen.

For the BVW show, I stood on a mechanical surfboard in front of the screen. The waves rushed towards the foreground of the screen, towards me on the board. When they reached me, the computer would signal the board to move as though it was being moved by a wave. We challenged the audience to crate waves to knock me off of the board.

On the tech side of things, we made a board on a fulcrum and connected a motor to it. The board had about 90 degrees of movement, it could tilt 45 degrees forward or back so it could be difficult to stand on. Panda3D supports Phidget motor controls so we were able to control the motors movement. All of the waves were generated procedurally with the code based on how high the audience stood up. The world was heavy on shaders and particle effects to make the environment look as real as possible.