DuckRace
Mario Kart goes physical
Physical cart racing game with RFID's, ducks and betting
Two players race each other with two radio-controlled carts, both featuring a plastic bath duckling. The two players use a wii-mote to control the ducks, while the bystanders can influence the race and bet on the outcome by swiping their RFID-tags on the track.
During the Mediamatic Hackerscamp @Picnic08, together with Heerko van der Kooij (swummoq), and with help of Marc Boon and Vlad Trifa, we made a simple top view (3rd person) race game, like Mario Kart, including the gameplay of dropping disadvantages and benefits. But then in the physical world with remote-controlled carts. The track itself was not only physical, but also partly augmented reality, projected on top of the tracks using a beamer. Special effects and extra obstacles, like a dirt road or slippery oil track were augmented using this technique.
The players drove the toy AM-radio-controlled carts using a wii-mote (the digital bluetooth remote controller of the Nintendo Wii) and an intricate system of Arduino’s, radio-transmitters and the main computer which ran the software to calculate how the different virtual terrains and obstacles, dirt road, slippery tracks, or oil spillings influenced the behavior of the cars.
This elaborate setup allowed us to augment the physical playing world, with virtual speed-ups or steering difficulties. We found that playing was fun, but also a bit hard, even when no additional effects and obstacles were added.
