Since audio is an ancient platform for story-telling, we wanted to try to deliver a story by using our interactive audio-only concept. We knew that a common problem with interactive story telling is that immersion is often hindered by a high level of interactivity. Our goal was to find a good balance between immersion and interactivity. We made an interactive version of “Jack and the Beanstalk” where the guest assumes the role of Jack. We changed the story a little in order to better fit our technology. Instead of having a separate guide in the story world, we decided to use Jack’s mom as a guide. By doing so, the guest would feel that he/she is in the story, interacting with another character, while being told what to do next.
We combined 2D and 3D environmental sounds in order to create more realistic environmental sound. A lot of simple interactions with sound are used in many places such as grabbing the beanstalk, catching the hen and chopping the beanstalk. Also, we used the voice recognition technique when the guest tries to get the golden harp. So, to obtain the harp, the guest has to play the harp, and sing and match the tone that he played. Some guests had a hard time matching finding objects, so we added a “Hot & Cold” feature, where various characters guide the guest to certain objects if they take a long time to locate them. For example, when the guest cannot find where the beanstalk is located, our program calculates the distance from the beanstalk and the guest’s position, and then if the guest is coming towards to the sound, Jack’s mom says “that’s right. Come closer”, and if the guest is going further from the sound then mom says “Jack! Where are you going? It is not over there”.