Danny Pan

I hope to create something like this in Half Life 2.

1. Concept

The main focus is to create a music instrument in half life that the user can play by walking around on it. Like the giant toy store piano in the movie Big. What interests me about this is that it allows the user to be the artist, along with the mod creator. I will abstract it by simply creating objects that will trigger a sound/voice when the user collides into it (like what we learned in class last week). It can be as simple as a dull room, with some rectangles on the floor that resemble a piano. My final product will be a video of various people's "experiments" with my giant piano, running over the keys, shooting rockets at it, pushing objects onto it, to trigger the sounds.

2. Technical

This will probably be based on Half Life 2 single player, though ideally, I would like it to be mutliplayer (how else can you play "Chopsticks" on a giant piano keyboard?) Techniques I will apply include: SoftImage (modelling the piano keys), Hammer (room building, triggers), Audacity (processing sound files). Technical problems I foresee are: slow PCs, as well as the occasional unforseen error message that pops up.

3. Schedule
Sad to say, I will be unavailable for most of the class on May 2nd (some other important business). But I will work my butt off during the rest of the week to finish this.