

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

Hi HN,<p>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&#x27;t really matter, and I&#x27;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&#x2F;biochem degree, but it looks like that&#x27;s out of the question for now.<p>In my spare time prior to being laid off, I&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x2F;&quot;sharpness&quot;, etc.), and I&#x27;d only pay myself a small stipend necessary to live off of.<p>There&#x27;s an index of videos about the laser here:<p>* http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lasers.io<p>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:<p>* http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=5XTi-jf-ans<p>* http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=x034jVB1avs<p>(Continued in post... sorry for length!)
======
possibilistic
(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!

~~~
j-hernandez
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!

~~~
caw
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.

~~~
j-hernandez
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.

~~~
possibilistic
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.

------
ricardobeat
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](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=3d+mapping)

[2] [http://www.demotix.com/news/1946115/classic-video-games-
play...](http://www.demotix.com/news/1946115/classic-video-games-played-giant-
led-screen-sao-paulo)

------
pedalpete
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.

