How to escape from reality using a hackathon
Somehow, half a hundred people gathered in an open field. The costumes are so strange that only in the open field nothing could threaten them. Nearly everyone had a bowler hat on their belts and test tubes clinked in their bags, either with ink or grandmother’s compote. Divided into groups, everyone took out test tubes and began pouring their contents into pots, as if adhering to some recipes.
Gradually, five business guys dressed in heavy capes stood out from the general group. Not the most suitable clothes for + 30 ℃. Especially if you wind circles under the scorching sun and glue labels on 400 bowlers. You glue it many, many times, as each "potion" is ready. Three days in a row.
You read a short sketch from the life of field roleeviks. Those five who had a hard time are “alchemists”. Imagine how much nicer their life would have become if they had, say, an application for monitoring bowlers. And this is only one scenario - both field and cabinet role players have their sore points. Cosplayers and desktop fans alike. “Why not try to solve them using technology?” We thought at BrainZ by CROC and organized CraftHack.
For the outside observer, everyone we want to help is not very different from each other. Well, maybe someone has a cool suit, but someone does not have such a suit. In fact, everything is somewhat more complicated:
Reconstructors - recreate events, scrupulously observing historical authenticity. If the battle is recreated (which happens most often), its course and nuances, the winner is determined in advance. Most of all, reenactors value realism, make the most believable costumes. Moreover, they do not stop at the external resemblance, but restore the process of “crafting” itself: weave textiles on authentic looms, forge armor in real forges. Reconstructors are often distinguished by the physical strength necessary to handle swords, axes and all kinds of chain mail.
Roleplayers are a large group of people who, in full accordance with the name, get used to the roles of their characters and act out them. According to the most common feature, they are divided into two groups: field and cabinet role players.
We already wrote about the first in the beginning - these are guys who need space, who like to build something. The cabinet role players have more modest inquiries about the territory - they rent apartments, lofts or small hangars. In addition, role-players are divided by fandoms - someone lives in the Tolkien universe, someone closer to Star Wars or something more exotic. Costumes and accessories, respectively, are made according to the fandom - just like in a book or in a film. Many role-players carry their alter ego into real life and really dislike being called real names.
Separately consider the "desktop" role-playing, which reincarnate when playing board games such as Dungeons & Dragons, and usually even without costumes and accessories. All actions are played out in words and are simulated according to the agreed models using mathematics.
With regard to reliability, the role-playing rule of five meters applies: "if it looks good from five meters, it’s good . " Entourage is a bonus. The main thing here is how you get used to the role.
Cosplayers are people who choose an image and recreate it as much as possible with the fandom. Cosplay began with anime fandoms, but then people began to cosplay characters from Dota, Warhammer, Warcraft and other universes. Recently, they began to distinguish cosplay in Russian, when the characters of the characters are the heroes of Russian fairy tales and films - Tsarevna Nesmeyana, Vasilisa the Beautiful, etc. The main difference between cosplayers and role-players is in the complexity and thoroughness of the image. Cosplayers usually have terribly uncomfortable costumes that make it difficult to survive even a few hours at a cosplay festival.
All these people have problems that interfere with improvisation and disrupt the whole fan. Alchemists knock down, confirming the successful creation of each potion. Fans of board games are forced to manually perform complex calculations each turn to calculate the effects of the rolls of the dice. "Space" role-players need to win back the movement between neighboring galaxies and other huge locations. For these and other problems, we decided to look for technological solutions.
Hackathon CraftHack was held at the Copter Youth Innovation Creativity Center (CMIT) in Moscow. On Friday, August 9th, we gave assignments, and on Sunday August 11th we already awarded the winners. Now - about the most interesting quests and projects.
In space role-playing, it is necessary to win back the movement between huge locations - for example, virtual galaxies that overlap a piece of terrain, sometimes up to several kilometers. From the point of view of the game, these are different locations, but physically this is the same space.
This is usually solved in two ways. The first is the "spaceships in boxes." Here, reaching the border of a certain area, players are transplanted into "starships" - they can be anything, from jeeps to cardboard boxes - and beyond this border they already travel in space. When they get to some other fixed point, they crawl out of the boxes and continue playing in another zone. The second way of acting out is when “space” is a limited zone, a room. Players enter there, “fly” for some time in space, and then exit at another point (from the perspective of the game).
For the second method, people write unpretentious simulation applications, where sometimes even the cabin of a spaceship is recreated. Or they make mods based on well-known flight simulators. But all this usually turns out buggy or too artisanal. At the hackathon, we invited the participants to create a space simulator in which it would be possible to solve the main tasks of space role-playing games: maneuver in space, control ship engines, weapons, docking and landing systems. In addition, the simulator should represent hitpoints (health points) of various ship systems, and in the event of a failure, disable their management.
As a result, one team was so carried away that it made its own simulator in VR. Moreover, when they put forward this idea at a preliminary discussion, we replied that we did not have the necessary technical base at the hackathon. This did not stop the guys - they had everything with them: one of the top helmets and a powerful system unit. As a result, it turned out beautifully, but, unfortunately, too "arcade". The team lost sight of the fact that in space their laws of physics are not the same as in conventional flight simulators. It was very important, and therefore, unfortunately, we could not note their efforts. Other teams made more standard decisions - dashboards and other elements of spaceship interfaces.
We raised this problem at the very beginning. On mass role-playing, several hundred people regularly repeat important game actions (for example, brew potions or inflict damage on the enemy with these potions), which must be confirmed. And five unfortunate alchemists - masters, to put it more generally - is clearly not enough here.
There are automation systems for specific games, but these solutions, as they say, are “nailed” to specific games. We thought it would be great to create a universal system that can accept and confirm the actions of players, giving results instead of masters. And so that the wizard could monitor the operation of the system.
The conditions of this task gave greater freedom of action, so many took up it. They proposed solutions based on a stationary computer-terminal protected from all weather, which prints shortcuts and stickers for teams. Someone made a physics lab. Implemented a couple of ideas based on augmented reality. There were solutions based on QR codes: first you need to scan a number of QR codes on the territory (“collect the ingredients”), and then using the final QR code confirm that you combined all the ingredients in the potion.
Separately, it is worth noting a solution with RFID - the guys implemented a “boiler” on servos. He determined the components that were added to it by color and threw the result. Of course, due to the limitations of the hackathon, it turned out to be damp, but the originality was very pleased.
Masks are an important element of cosplay and various role-playing games. Therefore, we had several tasks associated with them.
In the first task, we were inspired by the hobby of one of our colleagues, who creates silicone masks for casting a person’s face. For some demonic images, she needs, for example, that the mask creates the effect as if the face is covered with lava, or that the mask shimmers as if it were melting. There are such solutions in the USA, but they are quite expensive. Using simple LEDs to create the desired effect does not work. One team took this task at the hackathon and was able to integrate a stun gun into the mask. Added to this is the ability to change speech. The result was a spectacular thing, and we were even scared for those who were next to it - the mask sparkled and crackled. Not about fire and lava, of course, but the effect was impressive.
The second task stemmed from the fact that in role-playing games there are many races and peoples who communicate in different languages and do not understand each other. It was necessary to make such masks so that they would enable communication between the participants who wear them - while the strangers would not understand anything. Here, too, there were interesting prototypes, including those based on cryptography.
When role-playing games take place in a large space, some of its zones have certain effects. In STALKER, this may be a radiation-infected area, in fantasy games some blessed places, etc. The idea was to make a device that shows the player what zone he is in and what effects he is experiencing.
One original decision was remembered when one of the teams made a smoke gun from a vape and a bottle of water. And on the players hung devices that, recognizing smoke, gave the person the necessary information about the area where the player is.
We awarded the hackathon participants in several different nominations. They did not coincide with the tasks described above - moreover, one of the teams deserved our award by completing their own task.
Here we noted the Kotpley team and their solution for automating the actions of the game master (“alchemist”). The basis of their solution is an augmented reality table with markers that correspond to certain ingredients.
Here is a table with ingredient markers
And here is the “magic” of augmented reality
When collecting the necessary ingredients, the creation of the "elixir" is fixed in the mobile application. It also contains game recipes. So far, the application uses third-party server capacities, but in the future it is planned to transfer it completely to the client side. And also expand the possibilities of customization for different role-playing universes and take into account the game level of the hero when crafting.
Another winner in this nomination, the Cyber_Kek_Team team, created a solution for zoning the playing space using the principles of triangulation. In the right areas on the field are placed beacons based on the inexpensive ESP32 microcontroller. Players are handed out similar devices based on ESP32, but more functional, with a button that performs some kind of predefined action. Beacons and user gadgets find each other via Bluetooth and exchange game information. Thanks to the flexible configuration of the controller, many scenarios can be implemented in this way - from enclosing safe areas and transferring first-aid kits to damaging grenades and spells.
Finally, we marked the 3D team. She created a universal application that calculates the effects of throwing polyhedral cubes, taking into account the characteristics of the character in D&D and similar games.
In this nomination, the School 21 team distinguished itself, which worked on the automation of the work of alchemists. It was these guys who made the decision, reminiscent of a real boiler, which we wrote about above. Up the player lays the ingredients, which are determined by the system by color, and if the necessary components are present, the system gives out something that symbolizes the new “elixir”. On it there is a QR code, by scanning which you can find out about the properties of the elixir. An important advantage here is a low level of abstraction: binding to physical objects supports a “magical” role-playing atmosphere.
In this nomination, we noted those who in two days of the hackathon were able to jump above their heads - the Natural Zero team. The guys created a universal set for the game-mechanical exploitation of magic artifacts in role-playing games. It consists of a “magic charge” measuring device - a meter based on a Hall sensor. As you approach the storage devices with solenoids inside, the meter lights up brighter. The system also has a third class of devices - absorbers - which is responsible for reducing the charge on the drive. This is due to the fact that through the RFID tag of the absorber, the drive receives a command to supply less current to the solenoid. Accordingly, in this case, the measuring device will give a less bright signal - show a lower level of "mana" (or any other indicator, depending on the game).
One prototype of Natural Zero
Many hackathon participants demonstrated original and unexpected solutions, attracting very technological tools. But still I wanted to single out the “A” team. These guys made their smart gesture-recognizing staff - CyberMop . It consists of three main parts:
For gesture recognition, the principal component method and the decision tree are used:
Why do people need cosplay and role-playing games? An important reason is to get out of the box of the ordinary reality that surrounds us day after day. Many roleplayers, reenactors and cosplayers at work constantly solve IT problems, and this experience helps them in their favorite hobby. And for some, CraftHack themes are, in principle, much closer than the themes of traditional "industry" hackathons.
IT specialists with some training have revealed themselves here, and far from IT roleplayers and cosplayers, on the other hand, were able to expand their technical horizons. The experience gained at the hackathon can be useful to them for solving similar problems in real life - IT tools mastered at CraftHack have many areas of application. It seems to us that in the end, each side received a good creative bonus - +5, or even as much as +10.
Gradually, five business guys dressed in heavy capes stood out from the general group. Not the most suitable clothes for + 30 ℃. Especially if you wind circles under the scorching sun and glue labels on 400 bowlers. You glue it many, many times, as each "potion" is ready. Three days in a row.
You read a short sketch from the life of field roleeviks. Those five who had a hard time are “alchemists”. Imagine how much nicer their life would have become if they had, say, an application for monitoring bowlers. And this is only one scenario - both field and cabinet role players have their sore points. Cosplayers and desktop fans alike. “Why not try to solve them using technology?” We thought at BrainZ by CROC and organized CraftHack.
Who are they at all?
For the outside observer, everyone we want to help is not very different from each other. Well, maybe someone has a cool suit, but someone does not have such a suit. In fact, everything is somewhat more complicated:
Reconstructors - recreate events, scrupulously observing historical authenticity. If the battle is recreated (which happens most often), its course and nuances, the winner is determined in advance. Most of all, reenactors value realism, make the most believable costumes. Moreover, they do not stop at the external resemblance, but restore the process of “crafting” itself: weave textiles on authentic looms, forge armor in real forges. Reconstructors are often distinguished by the physical strength necessary to handle swords, axes and all kinds of chain mail.
Roleplayers are a large group of people who, in full accordance with the name, get used to the roles of their characters and act out them. According to the most common feature, they are divided into two groups: field and cabinet role players.
We already wrote about the first in the beginning - these are guys who need space, who like to build something. The cabinet role players have more modest inquiries about the territory - they rent apartments, lofts or small hangars. In addition, role-players are divided by fandoms - someone lives in the Tolkien universe, someone closer to Star Wars or something more exotic. Costumes and accessories, respectively, are made according to the fandom - just like in a book or in a film. Many role-players carry their alter ego into real life and really dislike being called real names.
Separately consider the "desktop" role-playing, which reincarnate when playing board games such as Dungeons & Dragons, and usually even without costumes and accessories. All actions are played out in words and are simulated according to the agreed models using mathematics.
With regard to reliability, the role-playing rule of five meters applies: "if it looks good from five meters, it’s good . " Entourage is a bonus. The main thing here is how you get used to the role.
Cosplayers are people who choose an image and recreate it as much as possible with the fandom. Cosplay began with anime fandoms, but then people began to cosplay characters from Dota, Warhammer, Warcraft and other universes. Recently, they began to distinguish cosplay in Russian, when the characters of the characters are the heroes of Russian fairy tales and films - Tsarevna Nesmeyana, Vasilisa the Beautiful, etc. The main difference between cosplayers and role-players is in the complexity and thoroughness of the image. Cosplayers usually have terribly uncomfortable costumes that make it difficult to survive even a few hours at a cosplay festival.
All these people have problems that interfere with improvisation and disrupt the whole fan. Alchemists knock down, confirming the successful creation of each potion. Fans of board games are forced to manually perform complex calculations each turn to calculate the effects of the rolls of the dice. "Space" role-players need to win back the movement between neighboring galaxies and other huge locations. For these and other problems, we decided to look for technological solutions.
CraftHack who wants to help everyone
Hackathon CraftHack was held at the Copter Youth Innovation Creativity Center (CMIT) in Moscow. On Friday, August 9th, we gave assignments, and on Sunday August 11th we already awarded the winners. Now - about the most interesting quests and projects.
Space flight simulation
In space role-playing, it is necessary to win back the movement between huge locations - for example, virtual galaxies that overlap a piece of terrain, sometimes up to several kilometers. From the point of view of the game, these are different locations, but physically this is the same space.
This is usually solved in two ways. The first is the "spaceships in boxes." Here, reaching the border of a certain area, players are transplanted into "starships" - they can be anything, from jeeps to cardboard boxes - and beyond this border they already travel in space. When they get to some other fixed point, they crawl out of the boxes and continue playing in another zone. The second way of acting out is when “space” is a limited zone, a room. Players enter there, “fly” for some time in space, and then exit at another point (from the perspective of the game).
For the second method, people write unpretentious simulation applications, where sometimes even the cabin of a spaceship is recreated. Or they make mods based on well-known flight simulators. But all this usually turns out buggy or too artisanal. At the hackathon, we invited the participants to create a space simulator in which it would be possible to solve the main tasks of space role-playing games: maneuver in space, control ship engines, weapons, docking and landing systems. In addition, the simulator should represent hitpoints (health points) of various ship systems, and in the event of a failure, disable their management.
As a result, one team was so carried away that it made its own simulator in VR. Moreover, when they put forward this idea at a preliminary discussion, we replied that we did not have the necessary technical base at the hackathon. This did not stop the guys - they had everything with them: one of the top helmets and a powerful system unit. As a result, it turned out beautifully, but, unfortunately, too "arcade". The team lost sight of the fact that in space their laws of physics are not the same as in conventional flight simulators. It was very important, and therefore, unfortunately, we could not note their efforts. Other teams made more standard decisions - dashboards and other elements of spaceship interfaces.
Confirmation automation
We raised this problem at the very beginning. On mass role-playing, several hundred people regularly repeat important game actions (for example, brew potions or inflict damage on the enemy with these potions), which must be confirmed. And five unfortunate alchemists - masters, to put it more generally - is clearly not enough here.
There are automation systems for specific games, but these solutions, as they say, are “nailed” to specific games. We thought it would be great to create a universal system that can accept and confirm the actions of players, giving results instead of masters. And so that the wizard could monitor the operation of the system.
The conditions of this task gave greater freedom of action, so many took up it. They proposed solutions based on a stationary computer-terminal protected from all weather, which prints shortcuts and stickers for teams. Someone made a physics lab. Implemented a couple of ideas based on augmented reality. There were solutions based on QR codes: first you need to scan a number of QR codes on the territory (“collect the ingredients”), and then using the final QR code confirm that you combined all the ingredients in the potion.
Separately, it is worth noting a solution with RFID - the guys implemented a “boiler” on servos. He determined the components that were added to it by color and threw the result. Of course, due to the limitations of the hackathon, it turned out to be damp, but the originality was very pleased.
“Ss-smokin!”: Tasks with masks
Masks are an important element of cosplay and various role-playing games. Therefore, we had several tasks associated with them.
In the first task, we were inspired by the hobby of one of our colleagues, who creates silicone masks for casting a person’s face. For some demonic images, she needs, for example, that the mask creates the effect as if the face is covered with lava, or that the mask shimmers as if it were melting. There are such solutions in the USA, but they are quite expensive. Using simple LEDs to create the desired effect does not work. One team took this task at the hackathon and was able to integrate a stun gun into the mask. Added to this is the ability to change speech. The result was a spectacular thing, and we were even scared for those who were next to it - the mask sparkled and crackled. Not about fire and lava, of course, but the effect was impressive.
The second task stemmed from the fact that in role-playing games there are many races and peoples who communicate in different languages and do not understand each other. It was necessary to make such masks so that they would enable communication between the participants who wear them - while the strangers would not understand anything. Here, too, there were interesting prototypes, including those based on cryptography.
“Do not fit! Kill! ”
When role-playing games take place in a large space, some of its zones have certain effects. In STALKER, this may be a radiation-infected area, in fantasy games some blessed places, etc. The idea was to make a device that shows the player what zone he is in and what effects he is experiencing.
One original decision was remembered when one of the teams made a smoke gun from a vape and a bottle of water. And on the players hung devices that, recognizing smoke, gave the person the necessary information about the area where the player is.
Live to win!
We awarded the hackathon participants in several different nominations. They did not coincide with the tasks described above - moreover, one of the teams deserved our award by completing their own task.
Area Effect: The Most Applied and Scalable Solution
Here we noted the Kotpley team and their solution for automating the actions of the game master (“alchemist”). The basis of their solution is an augmented reality table with markers that correspond to certain ingredients.
Here is a table with ingredient markers
And here is the “magic” of augmented reality
When collecting the necessary ingredients, the creation of the "elixir" is fixed in the mobile application. It also contains game recipes. So far, the application uses third-party server capacities, but in the future it is planned to transfer it completely to the client side. And also expand the possibilities of customization for different role-playing universes and take into account the game level of the hero when crafting.
Another winner in this nomination, the Cyber_Kek_Team team, created a solution for zoning the playing space using the principles of triangulation. In the right areas on the field are placed beacons based on the inexpensive ESP32 microcontroller. Players are handed out similar devices based on ESP32, but more functional, with a button that performs some kind of predefined action. Beacons and user gadgets find each other via Bluetooth and exchange game information. Thanks to the flexible configuration of the controller, many scenarios can be implemented in this way - from enclosing safe areas and transferring first-aid kits to damaging grenades and spells.
Finally, we marked the 3D team. She created a universal application that calculates the effects of throwing polyhedral cubes, taking into account the characteristics of the character in D&D and similar games.
Engin-seer: the most creative solution
In this nomination, the School 21 team distinguished itself, which worked on the automation of the work of alchemists. It was these guys who made the decision, reminiscent of a real boiler, which we wrote about above. Up the player lays the ingredients, which are determined by the system by color, and if the necessary components are present, the system gives out something that symbolizes the new “elixir”. On it there is a QR code, by scanning which you can find out about the properties of the elixir. An important advantage here is a low level of abstraction: binding to physical objects supports a “magical” role-playing atmosphere.
"Level-Up": for the most significant progress in development
In this nomination, we noted those who in two days of the hackathon were able to jump above their heads - the Natural Zero team. The guys created a universal set for the game-mechanical exploitation of magic artifacts in role-playing games. It consists of a “magic charge” measuring device - a meter based on a Hall sensor. As you approach the storage devices with solenoids inside, the meter lights up brighter. The system also has a third class of devices - absorbers - which is responsible for reducing the charge on the drive. This is due to the fact that through the RFID tag of the absorber, the drive receives a command to supply less current to the solenoid. Accordingly, in this case, the measuring device will give a less bright signal - show a lower level of "mana" (or any other indicator, depending on the game).
One prototype of Natural Zero
Madskillz: for the coolest set of technologies and skills
Many hackathon participants demonstrated original and unexpected solutions, attracting very technological tools. But still I wanted to single out the “A” team. These guys made their smart gesture-recognizing staff - CyberMop . It consists of three main parts:
- Raspberry Pi Zero - recognizes and remembers user gestures, sends commands to attributes;
- Arduino Nano - receives data from sensors and sends them to Raspberry for analysis;
- Mop - “housing for the device, a unique form factor.”
For gesture recognition, the principal component method and the decision tree are used:
Epilogue
Why do people need cosplay and role-playing games? An important reason is to get out of the box of the ordinary reality that surrounds us day after day. Many roleplayers, reenactors and cosplayers at work constantly solve IT problems, and this experience helps them in their favorite hobby. And for some, CraftHack themes are, in principle, much closer than the themes of traditional "industry" hackathons.
IT specialists with some training have revealed themselves here, and far from IT roleplayers and cosplayers, on the other hand, were able to expand their technical horizons. The experience gained at the hackathon can be useful to them for solving similar problems in real life - IT tools mastered at CraftHack have many areas of application. It seems to us that in the end, each side received a good creative bonus - +5, or even as much as +10.
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