Description of ArtHistoryPuzzle (MARQ Test Content v1.0)

The aim of the demo is to show some of SAM's features in a museum related context. The demo consists of a game for 1-4 players, which have to cooperate to solve a common task. If a player is stuck, he can ask a virtual character for help.

Game Description

The aim of the game is to bring the 10 (virtual) artworks into the correct order on a timeline. At the beginning, all artworks are placed at a random position on the markers. A user can take an artwork off the wall onto his PDA, but only place it back at a free marker, which requires talking and cooperation with the other players ("Joe, please take of that picture, i think this Venus von Willendorf would be correct at this position..."). When an item is located on the PDA the player can read basic information about this item.

After an artwork is placed onto its correct position, it cannot be moved again and is marked as being placed correctly.

When an artwork is put onto a PDA, the user can read the title and information about it on the PDA's display. If a player is stuck and does not know where to put the item, he can ask Prof. Wagner, a small virtual character, who's an expert in arts history. Prof. Wagner is ~15cm large and walks around his small (real) table when he is not busy. A player can put am item from the PDA onto the table and Prof. Wagner will start explaining the content and the position of the artwork in the timeline. Then the player takes the item off the table back onto the PDA again.

Since all players have to cooperate they get a team score which is calculated from the time they needed to sort all items, how often they switched items and how often they asked Prof. Wagner.

For the special case of just one player or in order to make the game faster (and easier), more markers than items can be made available.

Changeable Degrees of Difficulty

The difficulty should be adjustable to the current audience (technical demo, art experts, etc.). To achieve this, the following items can be turned on/off at runtime via commands on the server

• 3 modes to display the artworks' dates (small tags below each marker)
  • all tags become visible when all items are on their final position
  • a tag becomes visible when the corresponding artwork is at the final position
  • all tags are always visible but switch color (e.g. gray to gold) when an item is at its final position
• Show the relative correct order. If two items next to each other are in wrong order (e.g. 1705 left of 1080) a symbol between these two items tells the player about this issue.
• Minimal information about an item can be browsed directly on the PDA (after taken off the wall)

Notes

Topics to consider:

• Univ. Prof. Manfred Wagner will be responsible for the selection of content and artwork descriptions. He will be available on video (short introduction) and as a virtual character, incl. audio (German dubbing).
• All text should be available in 3 languages: English, German, Spanish. Players can switch languages at runtime.
• Joe Newman will do the English dubbing
• Erick Mendez will do the Spanish dubbing
• Daniel Wagner and Matthias Stifter will do programming
• Imagination will do part of the content creation
• We want to show as many media types as possible:
  • 3D objects
  • 3D animated character
  • Video
  • Audio
  • Chat
  • Flash (for menus)?
• There will be 15 art items all together from which 10 are available at a time in the game. Before the PDAs connect to the server, the list of the 10 items available in the game can be modified using a GUI. All content will be automatically downloaded to the PDA at startup (simple demo of content management).
• Deadline: Oct. 5-8 2005 (ISMAR'05)

Demo Screenshots

Here's a demo screenshot (work in progress): "Mona Lisa" currently on the PDA, "Der Schrei" still on a marker.