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Turning a climbing wall into a video game

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Re: Turning a climbing wall into a video game

#12
I don't remember exactly the name of it but my local gym (Stone Gardens Bellevue) has an Android enabled climbing marker game in the kids area. You can pick from an elimination game or vary the routes and it times you. It uses some light sensor to determine if you touch the hold. The interface is a small android tablet on the wall. Its definitely an in-market product but a quick search didn't turn it up for me. Anyone know what its called?

Re: Turning a climbing wall into a video game

#13

Timing could be automated with a webcam and CV to just watch for any motion near the markers. With a recording of each run, you could push ghosted runs through the projector like racing games.

I assumed this does that, but after watching the video again it seems like he is basically projecting an image.

Re: Turning a climbing wall into a video game

#15
post #10

I've always thought it would be fun to somehow incorporate technology into climbing for tracking or otherwise augmenting the experience. Time trials sound like a quick avenue to painful injury, though. If I were a gym, I'd be cautious in encouraging it. In my experience, climbing prowess is not a matter of speed but control -- the more statically you can complete a route the more control you demonstrate. A friend of…

> Time trials sound like a quick avenue to painful injury

Oh it's already a thing, injury or no.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4n6xfu8VDU

Re: Turning a climbing wall into a video game

#16
post #10

I've always thought it would be fun to somehow incorporate technology into climbing for tracking or otherwise augmenting the experience. Time trials sound like a quick avenue to painful injury, though. If I were a gym, I'd be cautious in encouraging it. In my experience, climbing prowess is not a matter of speed but control -- the more statically you can complete a route the more control you demonstrate. A friend of…

Explosive power is pretty important though, and this would be a nice way to train it outside of campus boarding which gives you one movement on each side of your body. This gives an avenue for a lot of different movement, but then there are system boards for that as well and those are a little more "quantifiable". Maybe this would be a good way to mix it up of you're bored of system boarding?

I agree about being cautious about using this. It seems like a good way for new people to mess up their shoulders. The thought of hitting crimps that hard/fast is terrifying.

I do really want to take some of my friends who climb like Fred Nicole (super slow and static as possible) and make them use this though. Sometimes utilizing momentum is important. Sometimes climbing everything static is a huge waste of energy and is actually bad technique, despite being generally safer and better for training outright strength (as opposed to power).

Re: Turning a climbing wall into a video game

#17
post #10

I've always thought it would be fun to somehow incorporate technology into climbing for tracking or otherwise augmenting the experience. Time trials sound like a quick avenue to painful injury, though. If I were a gym, I'd be cautious in encouraging it. In my experience, climbing prowess is not a matter of speed but control -- the more statically you can complete a route the more control you demonstrate. A friend of…

> Time trials sound like a quick avenue to painful injury Oh it's already a thing, injury or no. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4n6xfu8VDU

That's pretty different than this though. Those people have made those exact moves hundreds or thousands of times. They know how to set their shoulders for those moves and aren't put in situations with novel foot work that could mess up their knees. Those routes are also rather easier than the hardest thing they could climb. All of the holds are massive, not necessarily good, but large enough that finger injury should be very unlikely.

The parent is worried about the combination of pushing the limit of what you can do safely with your strength and doing so as fast as possible. This can lead to being out of control, and strength and technique are part of what keep you safe.

You should probably have a very high level of climbing fitness before you even consider this, though I can see it being potentially quite useful. You would also have to break down what is going on in the route that is generated and how it might be dangerous. Throwing out drop knees[0] and heel hooks[1] and yanking on crimps[2] is a great way to get wrecked if you don't know _exactly_ what you're doing.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHlzC7EqyDA

[1] - https://climbingtogetherandotherfunadventures.files.wordpres...

[2] - really tiny holds => https://www.google.com/search?q=climbing+crimp&tbm=isch

Re: Turning a climbing wall into a video game

#18
post #5

This is really cool! Any chance of seeing it open sourced?

There was a clone that someone in r/climbing made and put up on github. Not sure how good it is though but I'd assume he's open to pull requests.

https://github.com/gumbykid/Climbing-Games/tree/master

Re: Turning a climbing wall into a video game

#19
post #5

This is really cool! Any chance of seeing it open sourced?

As others have posted, this is my code (someone linked me here from reddit) https://github.com/gumbykid/Climbing-Games/tree/master

I want others to contribute and I'm open to changing the designs of things, that part is fairly easy

Re: Turning a climbing wall into a video game

#20
post #5

This is really cool! Any chance of seeing it open sourced?

There was a clone that someone in r/climbing made and put up on github. Not sure how good it is though but I'd assume he's open to pull requests.

The code is okay.

The main mode has all the features - timer, high score, ordered score board, different layouts.

The other modes are more in testing and need some additional features, but are functional.

No motion sensing. It's far too complicated for such a simple game and a full time student with a job. A solution would be to make it on a tablet and whenever a climber hits a "hold", the person using the tablet could hit it as well, essentially doing manual motion detection. Could also click on a computer.

I encourage pull requests.

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