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Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

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Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#11

Post by pstuart »

nicoles wrote: post #6
vunderba wrote: post #5

Nice job! Very slick demo video. As a dev, a couple of things immediately stand out to me. 1. Launching at $500 means it is going to be a "relatively" boutique product. At around the same price as an iPad Air, you're definitely going to want to focus on how the included games simply would not be playable on a more conventional touchscreen interface without the corresponding physical components. Which leads to my seco…

1. This is absolutely the case for the launch portfolio. These games are super unique experiences that are really only possible from mixing the physical and digital in this way. Does the site not make that clear to you? Super useful feedback! 2. The piece sets can be used as is for new games/apps, especially for prototyping! However if it’s super promising and you want to bring it into our (future) store, we’d love t…

How are the pieces sensed?

Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#12

Post by nicoles »

gedy wrote: post #10
nicoles wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is absolutely the case for the launch portfolio. These games are super unique experiences that are really only possible from mixing the physical and digital in this way. Does the site not make that clear to you? Super useful feedback! 2. The piece sets can be used as is for new games/apps, especially for prototyping! However if it’s super promising and you want to bring it into our (future) store, we’d love t…

Looks really cool though did not see what the SDK is or languages it requires? I've built game tables before with flat panel TVs and web tech, but have wanted to integrate miniatures, position, etc into the apps.

Currently the sdk is built for Unity, we’re working on Unreal/Godot though!

Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#13

Post by vitovito »

pstuart wrote: post #11
nicoles wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is absolutely the case for the launch portfolio. These games are super unique experiences that are really only possible from mixing the physical and digital in this way. Does the site not make that clear to you? Super useful feedback! 2. The piece sets can be used as is for new games/apps, especially for prototyping! However if it’s super promising and you want to bring it into our (future) store, we’d love t…

How are the pieces sensed?

Not the OP, but in the TechCrunch Disrupt launch, founder Brynn Putnam says, "capacitive material manufactured into the pieces."

If you put capacitive material in a unique pattern on the footprint of each piece, and the rest of the piece material was conductive enough to carry your body's charge to register a touch, the shape of that touch could be unique per-piece.

There's no mention of syncing pieces, charging pieces, keeping pieces in view of a wide-angle camera, anything like that, so that's my bet. (This would also mean moving a piece using a non-conductive material would be a way to cheat by having it not get registered!)

I just shared this on LI this morning, linking back to a video showing showing related touchscreen explorations I did for a colleague in early 2013, sensing different coins by their radii as you touch them: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vmiliano_a-vertical-triptych-...

Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#14

Post by nicoles »

vitovito wrote: post #13
pstuart wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are the pieces sensed?

Not the OP, but in the TechCrunch Disrupt launch, founder Brynn Putnam says, "capacitive material manufactured into the pieces." If you put capacitive material in a unique pattern on the footprint of each piece, and the rest of the piece material was conductive enough to carry your body's charge to register a touch, the shape of that touch could be unique per-piece. There's no mention of syncing pieces, charging piec…

This is nearly bang on correct. The pieces don't contain any electronics or sensors, they have a conductive pattern built into the surface using specialized materials and a manufacturing technique we developed in house. Our custom software stack processes the raw data from the device's touch sensor using embedded ML on the NPU, which detects and tracks the pieces in real time.

That said, the device can detect the pieces whether you touch them or not. Touching them absolutely does change the response, and we pass that along as a parameter to the SDK.

Your coin exploration is seriously cool, please hit me up when you're next in NYC!

Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#17

Post by nkrisc »

vunderba wrote: post #5

Nice job! Very slick demo video. As a dev, a couple of things immediately stand out to me. 1. Launching at $500 means it is going to be a "relatively" boutique product. At around the same price as an iPad Air, you're definitely going to want to focus on how the included games simply would not be playable on a more conventional touchscreen interface without the corresponding physical components. Which leads to my seco…

> At around the same price as an iPad Air, you're definitely going to want to focus on how the included games simply would not be playable on a more conventional touchscreen interface without the corresponding physical components.

And why that’s worth $500. I can’t think of any game(s) that are so fun or unique I’d pay $500 to be able to play them, even with my family.

Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#19

Post by [deleted] »

escapecharacter wrote: post #8
vintermann wrote: post #7

Not quite the first such product, Microsoft's original "Surface" advertised similar boardgame potential. But if it worked well, I don't know of anyone who was rich enough to try it! Hopefully the technology has matured since then.

(Disclosure: I worked on both) Detection technology on Board is much more robust. The MS Surface FTIR approach was lovely, but so over-featured no one could imagine a scoped-down (ie. cheaper) version of it.

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