This week I had the unique opportunity to take part in the Kinect Code Camp, a quiet event starting 24 hours before the public launch of the Kinect SDK.
From the beginning there was a great vibe going on provided by the Channel 9 and Coding 4 Fun folks. Everyone was excited about the possibilities of Kinect and we were all ready to see what we could build in 24 hours.
Here’s a brief run through of how the event went down:
0900 – An overview of the new Kinect SDK is presented by Dan Fernandez and Clint Rutkas.
1015 – Team Chupacabras consisting of Rick Barraza, Dennis Delimarsky and myself begin coming up with an idea for our project.
1205 – We knew we wanted to do something with the Joints API and we’d been working with Windows Phone lately – thus Bunny Hop was born. A multiplayer co-op game where one player uses a Windows Phone as the birds-eye view navigator and the other hops through the maze with a first-person view using the Kinect.
1400 – At this point, Dennis and I had gotten through the mystery of connecting the two clients (Phone and WPF app) to the service. Rick had a WPF 3D world up and running from scratch. With the mysteries out of the way it was time to write app-specific code.
2100 – Correct data is now flowing from Phone to server and on to WPF app, as well as from WPF app to server to Phone App. Direction of the player comes from the phone using accelerometers, hopping (moving forward) and grabbing and dropping objects comes from the WPF app using the Joints API. Rick begins integrating the Kinect-enabled WPF app with the networked WPF app.
0530 – After hours of debugging, fine-tuning, eating snacks and hiding under space blankets, we decide to try and grab some sleep before the big live show.
0815 – Arrive back at Code Camp (showered, somewhat refreshed) we still need to clean up graphics on both Phone and WPF app.
0845 – Bus shows up to take us to Studio 20 for the Live event, finishing up graphics in the Lobby.
1000 – We head into the studio to demo our brand new Phone/Kinect game on Channel 9 Live. You can see our demo by viewing this video and fast forwarding to minute 40.
1030 – Back to the Code Camp to talk to the press about our experience:
- Microsoft Research (video)
- Todd Bishop from Geek Wire (video)
- G4′s Attack of the Show (photo)
- IGN, CNET and more
Here’s a screenshot of the Bunny Hop game in the bird’s eye view on the Phone, followed by the first person view in the Kinect-enabled WPF app.
In Conclusion..
It was a great experience and the Kinect SDK is really well put together, its very easy to get started with. Although our game was hastily put together, I am very happy with the results. The big win though was taking time out to go through the process of building a Kinect-enabled app and thinking through the new dimension the Kinect adds to software development.
And thanks to Jessica Chobot for enhancing the name. It is no longer just “Bunny Hop”, it has been renamed “Super Hyper-Cute Bunny Hop”. Hop along now.
