Concept: Rusty's Machine

- Themes: Dichotomy of hard and soft; mechanics of dreams

User Experience

As you travel through the Castle of Miracles, every now and then you hear a loud clanging sound. It’s not annoying, and the sound is almost melodic in a way, like a xylophone made out of garbage cans. Curious, you try to find its source.

Rounding a corner, you find yourself at the castle forge. There is a colorful mess of wood, metal, and rope, and it looks as if Rusty has been hard at work in creating tiaras and necklaces for the princesses, and suits of armor for the knights of the castle. In the center of it all, there is an enormous machine that looks like its right out of Leonardo DaVinci’s Notebook. The machine looks like half of it is a big wooden loom, and the other half of it belongs in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory.

Looking to your left, you see a sign that Rusty has made. Rusty explains that he has been trying to build a machine that makes pillows! Rusty also apologizes for all the noise that he’s making, but explains that as a man who spends his days in hard metal, he desperately longs to create soft, comforting things. He’s decided to make pillows, and can use your help. He’s left helpful notes around the machine to let you know what to do at each station.

Intrigued you, walk up the machine, and are greeted with the “Happiness Collector 5000”. It looks like a crystal heart connected to a large series vacuum tubes and lights. Rusty has left you a note reading, “All pillows need a little bit of happiness to make sure your dreams stay happy too”. The “Happiness Collector 5000” also has instructions printed on it that say, “Just grab hold and think of something happy and fun. We’ll do the rest”. You grab hold of the heart. It slowly begins to glow, vibrate and warm up. The tubes connected to it begin to light up and bubble. The liquid inside them changes color too! After a few seconds a bell goes off. You have collected enough happiness.

The now filled liquids empty into a second transport tube. You follow the flow of the happiness to a Flintstone-like conveyer belt you can see through a window in the machine. You see something inside, and hurry over to it. It’s an un-inflated bag attached to a bellow. The sign over the window says that this station is to convert the happiness into pillow fluff. There is a wheel of commands, much like you would find on the bridge of a ship. The arrow on it turns to point to “push”. Looking at the inputs in front of you, you spy a large accordion bellows. As you push in on the bellows, you see the pillow filling up with the happiness you collected. It looks like a cotton candy machine in motion. Now, the ship’s wheel says, “spin”. As you spin the comically large wheel, you see the pillow inflate even further as a hose connects to it, adding in the extra softness.

You now have the basics of a pillow in front of you. The machine asks you to put your tag in the tag into a slot. You go to put in your tag when the machine automatically sucks it up! In the window you can see an arm grab your tag, and place it on top of the pillow. All of a sudden, the pillow begins to glow, and in a flash of light, the tag disappears, but the pillow stays slightly glowing.

The last step is to choose the type of pillow that you will receive. Below the window are three giant buttons that say ‘knight’ ‘princess’ and ‘jester’.

The final commands appear on the wheel. Pull has you pulling a chain; spin has you spin as many knobs as you can; and slide has you adjusting all the levels. As you do this, pipes full of different color start spraying your pillow. They make such a mess that the window of the furnace gets covers up in paint. Eventually the chaos stops, and the window opens up, some steam seeps out, and inside is your pillow!

The chaos stops, and a small wiper cleans away the color, and inside you see your pillow. It is now nicely decorated! It slides out of frame, to a big metal door. You run over to it, and open it up. You now have a pillow. Thanks Rusty!

Location Treatment

Rusty’s Machine is comprised of 2 major components; the “power plant” section, the “Conveyor Belt” section. All of these components of the machine are free standing.

The architecture of the system is based off of 1 computer. This computer acts as system control and manages communication, and the exhibit’s audio and lighting via DMX. The computer handles the input and feedback of the Happiness Intake and all the input devices via a Phidget board. The computer also runs the screen/window on the conveyor belt section of the exhibit.

The window is actually a large monitor / flat TV that is mounted to the wall, and framed to look like a window. It is connected to a computer housed in the base of the machine. This monitor is built into a hinged window system that will open up, to reveal the tangible pillow behind it. The on-screen pillow and environment will be modeled to look exactly like that inside the machine.

The Happiness Intake is a conductive metal surface that is themed. It simply tells the main computer whether or not it is being touched. While it is touched, the computer ramps up lights in and around the input device, along with audio effects, shakers, and heat. The bubble tubes are enclosed containers with air jets inside of them that are activated by the computer.

The Tag Suction component is built just like the Clown Suction outside the Ginger Bread House. There will be a basket at the bottom of the machine to hold the tags for easy retrieval.

The conveyor belt section is a “window”, which is a monitor. The graphics on this monitor are activated by the main system. Each input device operates on a phidget connected to the final computer. The final station, with the multiple inputs, is simply keyed lighting by the final computer. When the final hatch opens up, two water misters create a smoke simulation.

The main computer manages the final exit of a tangible pillow and its retrieval.

The estimated cost to create this treatment can be broken up as followed:

• Estimated cost of computer with video/5.1 audio card and monitor, controls entire show ($700)
• Estimated cost of 5.1 audio speakers for monitor, as well as hidden in branches above ($100)
• Estimated cost of fiber optics ($200)
• Estimated cost of lighting (~$2.5K)
• Estimated cost of voltage (capacitive/resistant) sensor ($20)/shaker ($100)/heater (induction coil) (4 at $15) (DMX) for heart button ($400)
• Estimated cost of back-lit lights for buttons (EL wire) ($15), DC power ($100), can switch with DMX ($400)
• Estimated cost of 3 touch sensors for buttons (knight/princess/jester) ($15 each)
• Estimated cost of crazy input devices (~$200)
• Estimated cost of circuit switch ($10) & voltage sensor for bellows (~$40)
• Estimated cost of phidget I/O board ($100)
• Estimated cost of water mister (~$25)
• Estimated cost of DMX water valve (~$30) + ($400)
• Estimated cost of electric motor (DMX) (~$100) + ($400)
• Estimated cost of 6 dimmer packs (~$150 each)
• Estimated cost of physical input devices ($500)
• Estimated cost of construction materials (~$10K)

Total Estimate: 17,345

Game Design

The goal of Rusty’s machine is present the guests with a fun, yet simple and always winnable game experience. The aim is for everyone to win a pillow while having fun, not necessarily to have a reward-through-challenge experience.

A key function for all of these activities is that they all must complete themselves on their own, after a time delay, if no interaction happens. This will account for worst-case guests that cannot play the games, but will value the experience.

First and foremost, the entire machine must be appealing, and draw guests to it. Its large, whimsical construction will be a focal point of the room. This visual draw, coupled with the “metallic xylophone” sounds that it makes should be enough impetus to draw guests to it.

The second consideration is flow. The experience is comprised of discrete action stations (each taking no longer than 30 seconds to complete). It is important for the entire experience to exude a sense of flow from one end of the other to encourage guests to quickly traverse the experience. Between each station, there will be a thematic flow element such as internal lights or music that leads them on. For example, from the Happiness Intake to the conveyor belt, will be piping in which colored liquid will flow from the user to the next station.

The first interaction is simply a ‘touch the object’ station. When that object is touched for a length of time (5 seconds or so), the guest is presented with a series of visual and audio feedback cues, both in the object, and the environment.

The next series of interactions are very tactile. The user has to use their hands to move various objects to simulate filling the pillow. They will push on the handle of the bellows, turn the handle of the wheel, and pull on various levers made of ropes or ropes. There is also a hole that suctions in objects; in this instance, the tag the child receives when arriving at the village.

Once this is done, they are presented with graphical feedback of their pillow being made. The child will watch their pillow being converted from a white pillow to a colorful pillow, and then they will open up a hatch that will reveal the pillow inside of a box.