Author: Lillian Milano

Flog #3

Lillian Milano

In class this week, we discussed critical play and how creating adversarial games helps engage with political issues and other topics of debate. Through adversarial design we can express agonism, and the examples (like the Feral Robotic Dogs and Agonistics: A Language Game) helped me understand what this looks like a little better. However, I am still having trouble thinking of an idea for hack #2. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on what I’m trying to achieve, but actually picking a good base game to reskin has been difficult. I had the idea to reskin one of those children’s makeup games, but a lot of them are old flash games and I haven’t figured out how to modify them in the way I want to. I also haven’t figured out the correct way to download an HTML5 game, so I may have to find a different genre of video game, or switch to a board game.

I also struggled a lot with GIMP in class. I’ve used lots of digital art software so I thought it wouldn’t be that bad, but for some reason GIMP doesn’t have any of the same shortcuts or indicators that I’m used to. That made things very difficult when trying to modify the sprites in “Passage”. Unfortunately, a lot of other digital art software don’t have the option to save as a .tga, so if the game I pick for hack #2 needs those files I will have to use it. Hopefully I can find a suitable game for my project this weekend!

Flog #2

Lillian Milano

This week I really struggled with the Makey Makey. While making our hack, my partner and I ran into numerous problems with the ‘click’ feature glitching out. Sometimes it was helpful, like with selecting colors which was a surprise feature even to us, but for the most part it just caused problems. The only way to fix it was to unclamp the alligator clip and then reclamp it, and I wish I knew more about what was actually going on internally. If I had more time to investigate the issue, I would have used a keylogger to see what the Makey Makey was sending to the computer. I don’t know if that would have actually helped, but since we were dealing with a clicking issue it may have been useful information.  

Another problem we ran into was coding the key input sequence for the clear function. We tried a few methods before eventually using AutoHotKey. This program created an executable that was running in the background to send the additional keystrokes and it seemed to contribute towards the clicking issue. It definitely wasn’t the sole contributor, as the ‘skipping’ the clicking was doing was present with and without the script running. 

We also struggled a lot with coming up with a feasible idea for our first hack. There were definitely a few phases of ideation that happened and it took quite a while to actually settle on our final idea. It was hard to get a good grasp on what was possible when we were having issues with the Makey Makey itself and also weren’t sure of its full potential. I’m glad I found the AutoHotKey program, because otherwise we probably wouldn’t have done the Etch A Sketch and I think the Etch A Sketch turned out really well and any alternatives would have been less polished.

Hack #1 Artist Statement

Lillian Milano

Our project is a reimagining of the Etch A Sketch, a classic children’s toy where knobs are used to draw an image on a small panel. When initially planning our hack we wanted to include ilinx in our final form of play. We considered using a rhythm game and making a controller that looked like a Dance Dance Revolution mat, but thought that while it included a lot of rhythm that played into our idea of using ilinx, that the mat would be too similar to the standard arrow key layout. We eventually settled on creating a controller that mimics an Etch A Sketch, and thought that the repetitive movements required to draw using an Etch A Sketch would be a great way to include ilinx in our controller. By recreating an existing toy we are also introducing mimicry to our hack, and this mimicry plays a big role in both how people will draw with the controller, and what they will draw. We had to carefully consider how we would impose the limitations of a traditional Etch A Sketch onto our reimagined version. 

The base for our Etch A Sketch is the program Microsoft Paint, which when used as intended does not behave like an Etch A Sketch. To better mimic the Etch A Sketch we wired it so that the ground wire and ‘click’ wire are connected to the same part of the controller, thus making it so that you’re always ‘drawing’. This created an interesting problem we were unable to resolve, which is that the ‘click’ function sometimes bugs out and does not work as intended. It will instead ‘flicker’ and not actually click or draw anything. The only way we’ve found to resolve this problem is to unclamp the click wire and then reclamp it. 

Another thing we tried to mimic was the ‘clear’ function of the traditional Etch A Sketch. While we didn’t know how to get the controller to respond to being shaken, we found that running a background script that remaps a single keystroke to a series of keystrokes was a satisfactory solution to the problem. It unfortunately caused additional problems with the clicking issue, as it will sometimes trigger the bug. 

Traditionally, the Etch A Sketch also does not use any electronic technology. The dematerialization of the traditional Etch A Sketch followed by the rematerialization of the toy in the form of a controller is an interesting commentary on how technology is sometimes used unnecessarily to fix issues that never existed. This Etch A Sketch controller has no real reason to exist, it’s less practical than all other solutions to drawing digitally, and it’s not even a perfect copy of the original Etch A Sketch. Despite this it is quite fun to play with, and its existence is just for fun’s sake. 

Flog #1

Lillian Milano

The thing I struggled with the most this week was the differences between agon, alea, mimicry, and ilinx. While I was reading I found it difficult to categorize the examples of play in these four categories since I felt like an argument could be made for all the categories (like how there may be a coin toss, alea, in sports and some element of disorientation, ilinx, but it’s still primarily agon), but after the in-class activity I feel like I’m a little better at doing that. I also didn’t realize that the point of the categories was that all games fall into almost all of them in some form, and after realizing this I found it a lot easier to understand. I think it’s more of a terminology then a hard ruleset used to differentiate parts of a game, but maybe that’s also incorrect in some way. I had a similar struggle with paidea and ludus, but since there’s only two of them categorizing feels a bit easier.

The Makey Makey was also a little confusing to set up, especially when I tried rebinding some of the keys, but I’ve figured it out so far and I’m a bit more confident with that now. The white wires also fall off very easily (even though I tried to kind of wrap them around the alligator clamp) and I’m experimenting with using a piece of tape to hold it on there better, maybe I won’t even need the slots on the back but they were easier to use than rebinding the keys.

Another problem I’ve run into is the limited number of controls we can use, since we only have seven alligator clamp cords for controls (and one is for grounding) it has put a limit of what kind of games we could use for our hack. I tried to play Minecraft with the setup pictured above and without mouse movement it’s basically impossible. There is a way to do mouse movement with the Makey Makey, but unless we can find more cords I don’t think it’s a great idea to use 4 of our control slots on just the mouse movement. My partner and I haven’t picked a game yet, but I’m personally leaning towards a rhythm game since those are fixed camera with more limited controls needed. We could also do some fun theming with fake instruments, though I fear that will be too similar to controllers like the one used in Guitar Hero. I looked into games with a physical drumkit used as the controller, and it seems like there was an attempt to make one but it was never mass produced so it could be interesting to try making one of those.

The final struggle I encountered this week was this flog. I don’t know how long this is supposed to be, and I also don’t know if EOD means midnight or like 5 PM… I’m going to ask that in the email I send with the link to this website, but I figured I’d put it here too.