5 In 5 Project: Make Alien Newcomer’s Live Better(MANLB)-Day#2 Boogie

Yufei Zhang
Sep 1, 2018 · 5 min read

Background story:

1996, Red Coast Base, human receive the first message from another life form for the first time. On the screen of the translation machine shows a simple line:

LET’S PARTY!

20 Years later, more and more aliens who have been analyzed to determine that they can live on Earth have come to the planet. Although they can adapt to the living conditions here, they still face many problems, especially those lives in the most complicated city of Earth: New York.
So that’s why we are here: to help those newcomers who came to us for help and bring them a better living condition.


PART01: INTRODUCTION

CASE NUMBER:11235802

These white marshmallow-like creatures come to the earth in pairs. They communicated very frequently and quickly with each other. Each one has a pair of different nerve tentacles, and the two organisms are connected positively to negative to exchange information quickly. These magical creatures more than one-meter tall sleep during the day and will only start when the night comes. They use jumps instead of walking. Due to their low-density marshmallow-like body structure, they can float forward a considerable distance after jumping. At the same time, because of such a special structure, even if an accidental collision occurs, they will not be seriously injured. Coupled with their nocturnal nature, their survival is relatively safe.

Science lab Document

But according to Mr. Boogie’s message, the biggest problem they are facing now is the barriers to communication with humans — in fact, we spent a long time, and invited a special interstellar language expert to understand Mr. Boogie’s intentions.

Since humans do not have positive and negative nerve tentacles, and the corresponding simulation devices are not only expensive but may also cause harm if they are handled improperly. So the simplest solution is to let people understand the emotions they are demonstrating by the shape they are.


PART02: Design Progress

●Shape

●Emotion

●Learning

Mind Map

The first idea I came up with was to use a smart program for shape recognition and then display the emotions they wanted to express based on the identified shapes corresponding to the relevant experts' records. But after a series of research, I found that shape recognition is a very complicated problem. The most common way to solve this problem is to use machine learning.

Two-dimensional object recognition method |||src:https://blog.csdn.net/app_12062011/article/details/53408289

The current common methods are: by identifying the edge of the object and comparing it with the shape in the database to obtain the shape, identifying the shape by recognizing the slope and slope’s change, and identifying the number of identified angle and breakpoint. But these are a bit too complicated for today’s projects, and it is almost impossible for us to solve them in one day. So we decided to use another method:


PART03: Making Progress

First of all, we use the laboratory’s test records and the help of interstellar language experts to create correspondence tables, and through a simple manual, people can quickly and accurately find what emotion this shape means.

Comparison Table

Due to time and space limitations, here we only show the simpler shapes and emotions as the content of the game as a beginner level.

Next, we are going to make the game. The platform we use here is Processing. We enter different shapes and corresponding feelings into the database, and then enter the game will generate a picture and three answers. Whether you choose to be right or not, you will continue to play because it is an educational game for beginners. This level will end when you reach 15 questions. If you answer more than 10 questions, it will be winning.

Wireframe
All the Shapes!

The first problem encountered when making the game is how to get a random integer. Because I only knew how to take a random number between 1 and 15, but I can’t guarantee that it is an integer.

int() function where was this my whole life

Later I found the int() function! This function converts the generated random float number into an integer. This allows you to generate random numbers between 0 and 15, which in turn generate random questions and options.

Poor little screenshots
START SCREEN
Game scene

There are still many problems with this game until now. The first problem is that when generating options, in addition to the correct answer to the randomly generated picture number, two other answers are generated. But the problem is that the randomly generated answer may be the same as the correct answer, which is a problem that needs to be solved.

Another problem is the if loop used in my draw function. Since the if the loop is running non-stop, the if loop is executed multiple times when the player presses the option. Since the loop runs very fast, the counter will immediately reach fifteen to cause the answer to end. Even after using the delay function, since the buttons for each question option are the same, the program will determine that the next multiple questions have uploaded the same answer during the button press. This can lead to a large number of problem determination errors that can cause the game to fail. This is a tricky issue and I am still looking for a solution.

Ah, life.

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Yufei Zhang

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MFADT 2018

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