With Perth being a relatively small city (most of you have probably not even heard of it, but it is in the western part of the country 
), it is quite overwhelming to attend the yearly run Wai-con event, which gathered together over 3,400 people this year. Held at the recently constructed Perth Convention Centre, attendees can enjoy a weekend of anime screenings, cosplay competitions and photo-shoots, panels and workshops, video/card game tournaments and this year a very special performance by the Eminence orchestral unit.
I have been volunteering at the convention for the last two years and decided last year that I would really like to see osu! have a presence, both to make the game better known locally and to get some sort of real-life social interactions based around the game. So this year I set out to make this possible, completing the first prototype of osu!arcade - a fully self-contained arcade cabinet version of osu!. With custom-made hardware and an arcade-specific branch of the osu! codebase, the system was looking very ready for its debut last weekend (after some very rushed last minute preparations).
Arriving on the night before the convention started, many of the other people helping with setup were already enjoying the machine. It was decided we definitely needed some kind of hygiene control on the touchscreen, and this was a good call after seeing exactly how black a single wipe would leave a cloth! I also got some quick feedback on the interface (mainly song select) and generally what was confusing to the end-user when first trying to play the game, which allowed me to dash home and make some overnight changes before the event.
While I had other duties throughout the convention, I was able to hang around the machine for a good amount of time and get some feedback by talking and watching how beginners and Ouendan/EliteBeatAgents veterans play the game. Throughout both days, there was a constant stream of people playing osu!, and I can't remember a single moment when the machine was NOT being played! It was quite a happy sight indeed. At most times it was hard to even see the screen because of the amount of people gathered around.
As the hardware unit used was a relatively rushed effort, I do plan on making a second prototype in the near future which may appear at more conventions locally (please contact me if you have any interest in seeing osu! at a convention you are involved with!) and hopefully allow for some multiplayer action, too. There were a lot of people with sore fingers from sliding and spinning (including myself) and this will definitely be addressed one way or another.
A big thank you to those that allowed this to happen on such short notice:
My Dad (construction of the cabinet)
Cuzza (running the Wai-con video games room and tournaments)
Wai-con Committee/sub-committee/volunteers (making the event happen, and run scarily smoothly)
Those who helped with song recommendations on Friday night - collected a great collection of around 120 sets in total.
Everyone who played osu! at the convention (or watched
)
And of course, the online osu! community - because there's no way osu! would have come this far without all of you.
If there is enough demand, I will setup a live stream with requests for beatmaps with a top 50 player playing on osu!arcade in the near future!
), it is quite overwhelming to attend the yearly run Wai-con event, which gathered together over 3,400 people this year. Held at the recently constructed Perth Convention Centre, attendees can enjoy a weekend of anime screenings, cosplay competitions and photo-shoots, panels and workshops, video/card game tournaments and this year a very special performance by the Eminence orchestral unit.I have been volunteering at the convention for the last two years and decided last year that I would really like to see osu! have a presence, both to make the game better known locally and to get some sort of real-life social interactions based around the game. So this year I set out to make this possible, completing the first prototype of osu!arcade - a fully self-contained arcade cabinet version of osu!. With custom-made hardware and an arcade-specific branch of the osu! codebase, the system was looking very ready for its debut last weekend (after some very rushed last minute preparations
).Arriving on the night before the convention started, many of the other people helping with setup were already enjoying the machine. It was decided we definitely needed some kind of hygiene control on the touchscreen, and this was a good call after seeing exactly how black a single wipe would leave a cloth! I also got some quick feedback on the interface (mainly song select) and generally what was confusing to the end-user when first trying to play the game, which allowed me to dash home and make some overnight changes before the event.
While I had other duties throughout the convention, I was able to hang around the machine for a good amount of time and get some feedback by talking and watching how beginners and Ouendan/EliteBeatAgents veterans play the game. Throughout both days, there was a constant stream of people playing osu!, and I can't remember a single moment when the machine was NOT being played! It was quite a happy sight indeed. At most times it was hard to even see the screen because of the amount of people gathered around.
As the hardware unit used was a relatively rushed effort, I do plan on making a second prototype in the near future which may appear at more conventions locally (please contact me if you have any interest in seeing osu! at a convention you are involved with!) and hopefully allow for some multiplayer action, too. There were a lot of people with sore fingers from sliding and spinning (including myself) and this will definitely be addressed one way or another.
A big thank you to those that allowed this to happen on such short notice:
My Dad (construction of the cabinet)
Cuzza (running the Wai-con video games room and tournaments)
Wai-con Committee/sub-committee/volunteers (making the event happen, and run scarily smoothly)
Those who helped with song recommendations on Friday night - collected a great collection of around 120 sets in total.
Everyone who played osu! at the convention (or watched
)And of course, the online osu! community - because there's no way osu! would have come this far without all of you.
If there is enough demand, I will setup a live stream with requests for beatmaps with a top 50 player playing on osu!arcade in the near future!
