Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room

thebureauorlando.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 27 posts

Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room

#11

Post by alexissantos »

moretta wrote: post #10

Great idea! Are the rooms reset after each round to make way for the next group, or is it built in such a way that they can continue from the previous attendees setup? Also I think as a potential player, it would be great to see an example video of it in action within the browser. Unfortunately the idea is something that could often be done poorly with a lack of actions/control, so I would prefer to see exactly what…

Thank you! They're designed to reset automatically!

We've got some very short clips at the end of this video to give a taste of gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQYt0L-6K-U We're probably burying it by presenting it this way.

I'll take a moment to figure out how to highlight that on the page better. Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room

#12

Post by mattlondon »

Great idea. I would have liked to have seen a video about what actually happens - e.g. is it just some Hue lights changing colour and a LCD screen that flashes green etc, or are there actual physical things that happen in response to players? Like does a door spring open if you "hack" something from your laptop? Do you need to pan and tilt the camera around? Do you have to physically move things remotely like turn a safe tumbler to the right combination etc? Can you drive a "drone" around to take a closer look at something on the wall?

Seems like a very scalable idea though :) Good luck with it! I can imagine one or two "SREs" running a warehouse with 15 or 20 rooms all going simultaneously and there to fix/reset if 100% automation cannot be done easily (e.g. a remote drone that gets stuck/falls over).

I know during lockdown our teams have been screaming out for team building activities that can be done remotely and this sort of thing would be great.

Nice one.

Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room

#13

Post by JamesSwift »

alexissantos wrote: post #2

Hey, Hacker News! I launched an escape room venue in Orlando about four weeks before everything went into COVID-19 lockdown. My team and I started noticing remote/virtual escape room offerings that were just Zoom calls where players direct a game master to look at/interact with things in a physical space. We liked the idea of playing with a real environment from home, but wanted to give players direct control over th…

Thats awesome. I'm sure the orlando dev community would love to hear about the implementation side of things. I know for a fact the IOT group would love it.

Are you in the odevs slack? If not send me your email and I will get you invited.

Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room

#14

Post by tonyhb »

Ha, this is ironic! Didn't escape rooms come about from 90's escape room flash games on miniclip? Now we've gone full circle making a virtual game of a real escape room modeled from a virtual room :D

This looks pretty fun, and definitely fit with the times! Splitting into two teams is also interesting.

Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room

#15

Post by alexissantos »

mattlondon wrote: post #12

Great idea. I would have liked to have seen a video about what actually happens - e.g. is it just some Hue lights changing colour and a LCD screen that flashes green etc, or are there actual physical things that happen in response to players? Like does a door spring open if you "hack" something from your laptop? Do you need to pan and tilt the camera around? Do you have to physically move things remotely like turn a…

Thanks, Matt! We've got a few quick shots of the experience tagged to the end of this teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQYt0L-6K-U

This is very much a v1 of our take on remotely playable games. Some quick examples: Players can control light, sound, some electronics that physically move (nothing crazy for now -- a tape deck, a centrifuge), and influence a "ghostly orb" to move around the room.

Here's a peek at what's coming down the pike: - One remote experience that's an adaptation of an existing in-person experience we have, but made in such a way that it can handle many concurrent sessions. The idea is that this'll help us with larger team building events. - Another experience with camera control, more influence on the environment, and more elaborate sets. This is definitely going to be a first of its kind.

Would love to see something like that warehouse style operation happening!

Shoot me an email if you want to arrange some team building.

Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room

#17

Post by alexissantos »

JamesSwift wrote: post #13
alexissantos wrote: post #2

Hey, Hacker News! I launched an escape room venue in Orlando about four weeks before everything went into COVID-19 lockdown. My team and I started noticing remote/virtual escape room offerings that were just Zoom calls where players direct a game master to look at/interact with things in a physical space. We liked the idea of playing with a real environment from home, but wanted to give players direct control over th…

Thats awesome. I'm sure the orlando dev community would love to hear about the implementation side of things. I know for a fact the IOT group would love it. Are you in the odevs slack? If not send me your email and I will get you invited.

Just shot you an email!

Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room

#18

Post by throwaway744678 »

willcipriano wrote: post #7
alexissantos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me know if you dabble with the RC cars! We were thinking of using an RC car for part of this experience, but figured we'd leave that R&D project for another day. Our main concern was designing/modifying the car (and its play space) in such a way where it doesn't get stuck. One of our goals was to make this an experience that can be managed and reset remotely by our team, so we wanted to avoid manual intervention…

I was thinking about using making a scale model of a cityscape and letting people race cars with cameras mounted to them. Getting stuck would be a feature (just like a real car race, if you get stuck somewhere you'll lose), and require human intervention to fix. I think latency is the real problem, games work around this in many ways that aren't possible in the real world.

You may want to check on 'Mario Kart Live: Home circuit' that Nintendo announced a few days ago. Basically an AR/VR mix of Mario Kart with real model cars running in your living room.

Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room

#20

Post by alexissantos »

valiafetisov wrote: post #19

I wonder what is the reason to make the game in the real world if it's played fully online? Wouldn't it be possible and more cost-effective to create same room and scenarios within let's say Unity and stream videos from there? Or is it something about the pricing?

If we can re-use an existing environment from one of our in-person rooms, the costs to get something like this up and running is marginal. We'd wind up getting a second playable experience, with a potentially wider audience, for not much more spend.

That said, this experience was purpose built to experiment with the remote game concept. (At the time, we weren't sure how to adapt our existing in-person games.) It's a small physical space (approx. 11ft x 9ft), and we used a ton of props we already had.

Post reply on HN