Ask HN: Can I Kickstart "Laser Skyscraper Tetris/Donkey Kong"? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can I Kickstart "Laser Skyscraper Tetris/Donkey Kong"?

8 pointspossibilistic7 comments

Hi HN,

I live in Midtown, Atlanta, and I just got laid off last week. I was the sole developer of a medical messaging service, and the owners just raised half a million dollars (or a figure pretty close to that). Over the New Year they moved the development to a large firm in Seattle. The specifics don't really matter, and I've got nothing against them. The worst of this is a case of bad timing; I was initially told I could finish up with my cs/biochem degree, but it looks like that's out of the question for now.

In my spare time prior to being laid off, I've been (slowly) working on a few projects. One of them is a science show that is in pre-production, and the other involves crafting laser video games that are projected onto very tall buildings. I'm wondering if there might be a possibility to Kickstart the laser project and work on it full-time. Most of the money would go for equipment purchases required to scale up the display and appearance (brightness, draw complexity, speed, beam collimation/"sharpness", etc.), and I'd only pay myself a small stipend necessary to live off of.

There's an index of videos about the laser here:

* http://lasers.io

In case this website gives you trouble (I wrote it in a hurry), here are links to a few of the videos, and you can find the rest via my Youtube channel:

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTi-jf-ans

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x034jVB1avs

(Continued in post... sorry for length!)

(Continued from text post)

First of all, I'm wondering if you guys think this is a viable idea for a Kickstarter project. I believe this would function like an artistic grant. By the project's end, several cities would get an unusual and unique, completely interactive light display.

In order to deliver a beautiful finished project, I'll need to draw lots of complex geometry. This requires that I raise the money necessary in order to build several high-quality projectors to comprise a distributed multi-projection array. I may need to build between 10 to 20 units to support a large-scale game, and I'll need a few Core i7 machines to coordinate lots of simultaneous I/O. It's not cheap, but the results would be astounding.

I'll need to work up a few different hardware configurations that can be funded at different levels depending on donor interest. The projectors I have now cost about $1,300/each. The components are neither bright nor precise, and you can see that in my videos.

I think a sweet spot is a $3,000-$5,000 build per projector as I'll need a lot more Wattage, better color, vastly improved beam collimation, high speed, and high scan angle. Another possibility would be to get a fewer number of super fast and bright projectors ($10,000) and support that with many more lower quality units (such as mine) that would be used for projectile and particle effects. Additionally there's the DACs and computational hardware to budget for, but that's modest in comparison to building the projector array.

With this hardware, I propose building several of the following games:

- Tetris

- Tetris Attack

- Breakout

- Donkey Kong

- Space Invaders

- Galaga

- Ikaruga-like shoot 'em up

- A shoot 'em up where you play against your own scanned face/image

- (There are probably a lot of additional games that can be suggested for this list.)

Some of these games might have legal/licensing issues attached that I'll have to investigate, so generic or completely novel ideas might be chosen instead.

In addition to programming games for the projectors, I am also interested in building an interactive canvas that would allow local artists (or kids or whomever is interested) to draw on the buildings. Painting with lasers is a really neat experience.

To make this even more of a community experience, I'll post weekly or twice-weekly videos detailing the experiments, algorithms, personal anecdotes and lessons, hardware build progress, etc. And although I'd be building code for an array of projectors (as opposed to a single projector), I could provide code access for those with projectors or for those who want to build one and experiment for themselves.

Further, I could release a multiprojection emulator that allows other game devs to build for the platform. I'll be building an emulator for multi-projection to support my own work anyway, so I may as well open source it.

Does this sound feasible or ridiculous?

If you think it could work, I'm also mulling over what kind of rewards would be good to offer to donors. This isn't strictly a "product", so that may be one of the biggest pitfalls with funding a project like this.

Some ideas I have are as follows:

- Standard t-shirt, "name in credits", etc.

- Project your name, graphic, or (appropriate) message onto a building (with approval)

- Build and deliver a 1W, 30Kpps laser projector (EE isn't my specialty, so I couldn't offer this in bulk -- although I could team up with an EE colleague)

- Travel to an event and project laser video games or custom shows

- Travel to a corporate launch party or company event and project stuff (a higher end reward)

- Write a game inspired by an arcade game of your choice (a very high end reward as it would take time)

Some of the "stretch goals" I could offer might be:

- Live stream skyscraper gaming on Twitch or another service

- Internet-enabled socket-based, live-streaming skyscraper gaming on Twitch or another service

- Turn a building into a Twitter feed

- Turn a building into an interactive drawing canvas (possibly internet-enabled) as detailed above

- Write an NES emulator or at least duplicate some simple games

- Travel to various cities as voted on by the donors (and with proper building approval)

- Publish the low level interface that works with several DACs as open source

- Publish a higher-level graphics engine

- Open source everything

I think this could be accomplished in a 6-10 month time frame, with certain interactive milestones being accomplished in spring, others coming online in summer, with ultimate completion of all of the tasks by fall.

What do you guys think? Could this be a viable Kickstarter project? How would you go about setting this up? Can you think of better rewards/offers? Is there a better angle to market this idea?

I really want to do this, but is it just an unrealistic flight of fancy?

Thanks, HN!

There are plenty of people smarter and more talented than me on here - hoping that your post reaches them because I can see quite a bit of potential here. That said, I'm just a web dev with no marketing experience so, a grain of salt before proceeding.

Got a look at the Pong demo and the way people stopped off for a go at it shows that at the core of it, you've got something interesting that people enjoy (presumably) because they can get their hands on it. The dude going head to head with himself on two thumbsticks seemed to really enjoy himself even without P2. (side note: chomping down a chicken biscuit and heading outside for a game of brickwall pong sounds like a fun way to end a night)

I think the main obstacle would be packaging the idea into something people can get behind. The novelty of it is enough to get people passing by on board for a quick game but I think there's a lot more that could be done with your idea, as pointed out in your list.

Another thing that comes to mind would be providing custom promotional solutions to folks looking to market something. The one thing I can think of right now is Alternate Reality Games - a clue flashed on a building at a specified time and date that must be deciphered by participants, or a countdown that hops from building to building (spanning cities?) leading to an announcement, etc.

I'm not quite sure how you'd package it (LAAS - Lasers as a Service?) so that people could get behind the tech enough to fund its infancy while communicating the bigger picture and potential.

At the end of my comment I suppose I've successfully said nothing you didn't already know, but wanted to lend my support and say that this is something I'd definitely back. Also, great to see local talent.

Best of luck to you and hopefully some of those smarter folks will be able to help out more. Be sure to Show HN if you end up on Kickstarter!

Uses for a LaaS off the top of my head

- Homeowner Associations - they throw parties and stuff for the kids, there's probably a house or something they can throw it on. I remember one year for halloween someone had "The Great Pumpkin" playing on their garage door.

- Event companies. It's an interesting offering in addition to the standard inflatables and maybe jumbo movie screens. I could see it being a big thing at corporate events and college campuses.

- Student associations. Generally they have some money for this sort of thing so they own it and don't have to rent it. They probably wouldn't fund a kickstarter though because of restrictions on how they can spend their money.

Agreed, I think ideas like these and @pedalpete's hint at making a play commercially lends to packaging this up into a LaaS (ha!) offering and putting a Kickstarter campaign in front of that. Depending on your costs, needs, and some more feedback, you might offer some custom solutions/packages to backers on the higher-end.

+1 on Student associations being restricted. If I'm not mistaken, GSU has these sorts of restrictions [0] - although it couldn't hurt to get some grassroots support that isn't necessarily monetary

0: I did some web development for a student association at GSU and provided some basic tech support for a symposium.

Thank you guys so much for your advice!

Feel free to get in touch with me if you like. I'm bt at brand dot io.

As you probably know, there are already a thousand companies that specialize in this type of projection [1], mostly for advertising, including most of the interactive ideas you mention; most use high-power projectors, some LED arrays [2]. What advantages would a laser projector have over these (since cost looks higher, and image quality lower)?

That means a lot of people have already seen something like this, so the novelty value of the technology is not enough to guarantee a successful campaign. In my opinion you need a compelling theme and story to engage people and add cultural value to the project. Some quick ideas:

- partner with local artists (and game developers?) for the city tours

- find a cause you care for and propose the project as a marketing tool

- create novel ways of interacting with it beyond arcade controls and ipads

- all of these at once?

In short, something that has meaning and ties with local culture, and that people look forward to participate in or support, beyond the tech.

Or just reach for the geeks with "the largest projection in history" if you can pull that off :)

[1] http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=3d+mapping

[2] http://www.demotix.com/news/1946115/classic-video-games-play...

Though I think a kickstarter artistic grant may be a possibility, I think you could do quite well with this commercially. Not for personal use, but they may be great for a marketing campaign. Think about somebody like AT&A or Monster Energy at SXSW allowing people to play a video game at one of their outdoor parties. If you can incorporate messages and logos into the games, all the better.

From the video, if you can focus on getting the quality of the game up just a bit, I think you could have something. Think about pong, and rather than an empty ball, the Pepsi logo bouncing around. Is something like that even possible?

I'm not sure where you're based, but speak to a few marketing people and get their feel for it. You don't need to sell the projector at first, actually serve the customer directly and you'll get a better idea of their needs and get a chance to work out any bugs.

I think it's a great idea you've got. If you can focus on multi-player games, and possibly massive multi player (no idea what) and get people to control with their phones, I think you'd have a major WOW for anybody in marketing. You'd be the hit of many real life events.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com