For my midterm, I am planning to create an interactive game called “LeBron James Simulator.” The idea is to develop a humorous basketball experience where the player uses their webcam to complete a series of basketball challenges while gaining points based on how their performance is similar to LeBron James. The game will take advantage of computer vision to track the player’s hand in order to complete the challenges.
The experience will start with a starting screen which will instruct the player to stand in front of the webcam to start the game. I am currently planning a few challenges which they will have to go through, such as trying to shoot a ball into a hoop and defense. The player will gain points on their performance, which will count toward a final ‘LeBron Rating’ shown once the game is completed. After players see their rating, they will get a chance to restart the game to try redeeming their legacy.
For the code, I plan to separate each step into states. The start screen, the basketball challenges, and finally the ending screen. I will also use object-oriented programming to create a basketball class that will store their properties such as shape, size and speed.with methods to check interactivity with the hoop and player.
The part of the project that i was most uncertain about was the computer vision and tracking. I needed to perfect this part as it is the main backbone of my experience. Fortunately i used the ML5.JS HandPose liberary to create a small prototype which suceesfuly worked in tracking my hand. The prototype was able to access my webcam and used the x and y to detect my fingertip to draw a small red circle.
Since my test was sucessful, my next step would now be figuring out how I can create the interaction between the player and the basketball.