[Fluxus] advise on auto-start

[Kassen]

>
>
> Make sure you get them to take lots of pictures and video of the public
> playing your game (or to be on the safe side do it yourself). I only say
> this because I always forget due to being too worried about the tech
> details.
>
>
Here we go;
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=10150124935743126&id=51265993125&aid=315603

<http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=10150124935743126&id=51265993125&aid=315603>That's
a FB photo album (hopefully visible for people not on FB as well). DIY
arcade cabinets. A C64 emu running a new game, a flash game about wikileaks,
something abstract that confronted the player with videos related to the
objected they selected, a board game matching up ideas from Sim City
with cellular automata that could be played electronically with lights or
physically on the floor& us.

As we had the largest setup we were also at the edge of the dancefloor once
the music started. The concept of projecting at dance events and the visuals
also forming a game has been nagging me for quite a while now. Dancefloors
seem to already have many of the interactions that games do (competition,
provoking, etc) albeit less formally. Before now I didn't get to actually
try whether this worked in practice but it does (sadly not pictured in this
album).

I strongly recommend other Fluxus users (Fluxers?) try that approach. We are
using the type of button that industrial machinery uses to stop in
emergencies, meaning we can relax about drinking and playful audiences as
short of outright violence using tools they'll be fine. They are also large
enough to make missing their presence unlikely. Not cheap (if you have to
buy them, which we didn't), but I once had to put in 16 new pots in a
installation after a festival and from now on I'm not using anything
not specifically meant to be able to take harsh conditions.

Other lessons;

Projecting on slightly shiny tiles is tricky and seems to benefit from a
"bright mode" on the projector.

Something seems off about the mouse buttons when using X without a window
manager. I use the left&right mouse buttons for testing (so I don't need
those towers when coding). This means I need to press both left&right at the
same time to start the game (with two fingers emulating two consenting
players) on a three button (3rd is scroll wheel press) mouse. This works
fine with Fluxus under Gnome, without Gnome I first needed to press the
middle button once before the other two would work as expected from there
on. They will keep working even after recompiling my code after that. Tested
with two mice from different companies. I suspect a X issue is to blame but
it might be a Fluxus one.

Without a desktop manager I also noted what looks like a 1 pixel window
border at the top of the screen that seems coloured like the
login screen's background. This was while I tried to force full-screen and
also set a screen-size in pixels that was identical to the monitor screen
size. This is likely beyond our control but I wanted to note that.

Finally; thanks again for all the speedy help and fixes! This would've been
utterly impossible without those.

Yours,
Kas.
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