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Playing online PacMan by tipping the Macbook to send directions

By Jaems • Apr 25th, 2008 • Category: Video

This was done by getting coordinates from the MacBook’s sudden motion sensor and routing it into keyboard strokes (arrow keys), then sending it to an online game of Pacman.  

NEW: You can do this by downloading and running the new Tilt2Joystick application. This is a standalone application that will allow you to play games and control documents by tilting the Laptop.  It is available for free for compatible Macintosh laptops from this link. 

You can do this using Bookmotion and Max/MSP. Please note that you might need to have some experience with Max/MSP in order to get it running.  Once you have gotten your coordinates from Bookmotion, you can send them to keyboard strokes using aka.keyboard.   Use Tilt2Joystick!

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11 Responses »

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Omer Said,
May 18th, 2008 @2:43 pm  

Hi James,
I enjoy your website very much.

Would you mind explaining a little about how you got the sudden motion sensor info into max?
I want to try to make a patch like yours so I could play with it too :)

Thanks

Omer (Israel)

[Reply]

Jaems Said,
May 18th, 2008 @6:51 pm  

Hi Omer! Thank you for the feedback.

First I get the motion sensor into values using aka.bookmotion, a great tool located at http://www.iamas.ac.jp/~aka/max/ There, you can get all sorts of interesting input devices to work in Max. Once you capture the values (very simple using the help file) you need to get it into a game. Any game will do… but it’s tricky to send things out of max again – much easier to get it in there. So what I did was use Midiout and then use a program called MidiStroke to turn Midi data into keyboard presses. Then I could just open up an online flash game and use the keyboard presses there. (left, right, up arrow and so forth)

[Reply]

Omer Said,
May 23rd, 2008 @5:12 am  

thanks James, with AKA objects it was indeed very easy to get the SMS coordinates into max. Very cool!

[Reply]

Omer Said,
May 25th, 2008 @3:52 pm  

Hi again James,
Would you mind sharing your patch with me so I could learn from it? I d/l MidiStroke, but I didn’t manage to get my patch to actually do something with it. plus I got terribly addicted to this lame flash pac man game by paul neave. I spent more time playing then working lately! :)
cheers

Omer

[Reply]

Jaems Said,
May 25th, 2008 @6:46 pm  

Hi Omer,
I am including screenshots of the Patch, and of MidiStroke. MidiStroke can be very fussy. All of this requires a bit of tipping and tweaking, and a lot of patience. Check out the pictures below and see if that helps:

and the MidiStroke window (this is for one value, but you can extend it to the others as well)

[Reply]

Omer Said,
May 25th, 2008 @9:38 pm  

You’re awesome!

Thanks!

[Reply]

Jaems Said,
May 25th, 2008 @9:45 pm  

No problem. Let me know if you get it running.

[Reply]

YhG Said,
November 24th, 2008 @6:14 am  

hello, may I know how to using the aka bookmotion?
I cannot open the help file.
Help Viewer said it do not know how to handle it.

[Reply]

Jaems Said,
November 24th, 2008 @3:06 pm  

The help file is not made in the traditional Mac help way, where you can get info from the Help menu. It is a Max/MSP patch and needs to be opened with that application. You can’t run the aka externals unless they are located in your Cycling74/Externals (or Max-externals) subdirectory (see below). This subdirectory can be found via a shortcut located in your Max/MSP App directory. Ideally, the help patch should be put in the max-help subdirectory, though I don’t think this is necessary in order to open it.

[Reply]

Omer Said,
September 9th, 2009 @4:58 am  

Hi James,
I enjoy your website very much.

Would you mind explaining a little about how you got the sudden motion sensor info into max?
I want to try to make a patch like yours so I could play with it too :)

Thanks

Omer (Israel)

[Reply]

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