Hi everyone

I was directed to this board by my tutor, and he was certain that i'd be able to get the help i needed to implement my idea.

The concept is Endless Marco Polo
I want to recreate what it's like to play Marco Polo; but of course, you can't win
After the user input of "Marco!", i would like the program to play back the response, "Polo!", through one of the 5 channels randomly, at a random volume.
Theoretically, the response and "perceived distance" of the person playing Marco Polo with you would always be different.

Ultimately:

The setup would be a booth of sorts, with a kiddie wading pool
5.1 surround setup
microphones to pick up the user's "Marco!"

The tough/technical part would be to how i've been thinking of implementing the concept

Basically, i want to create something that would allow the response; "Polo", to be played back in a random channel after input.

Looking at my tutor's PD program he used for a generative audio program; something called Fiddle would work in converting the raw input into something that can activate the other components, but for now, i'm interested in how i could use PureData to playback a sound in a random channel, and also how to interface the program with Digidesign.....This is the system used at uni in our surround sound recording lab.

I have very limited knowledge of coding, so any help would be appreciated, and please ask if you need things clarified.

Thanks!

Please, explain more about this game, how does it work, how many players, how does the computer fit into the model? What are the rules? Why?

we used to play it when we were kids.

basically one person is 'it' , and they are blindfolded or close their eyes,,,, the person who is 'it' can say 'marco' to get an answer 'polo' from all the other players.

then if they can tag another player they can take off the blindfold / open their eyes...and the other player becomes it.

so...anyway....here's my advice....tell your tutor i want 50% of their salary:

to catch the 'marco' voice, your tutor suggests "fiddle~" , but i suggest "bonk~" , because that is going to be what will best pick up the sudden audio spike of someone saying "marco"

so, someone says "marco" (or whatever....unless you use some really sophisticated voice recognition stuff they could say "bing bong bango pants" and it would still trigger your system)

and that trigger sends a bang to 5 different [random] objects, which you will use to scale the volume coming out of your 5 different sound output channels.

i'm assuming you have a sample of the person saying "polo", and you know how to trigger that with a [tabplay~]

so you just route the sound output of that [tabplay~] through 5 different volume scalers ( ie [*~ ] objects ), and send it to the output of your digidesign.

I think i'm understanding, thank you for your reply hardoff

my knowledge of PD is extremely limited as of this stage

so you're saying, as i understand it anyway, instead of having two random no. generators to randomise what channel im outputting to as well as the volume of the output, i just have one which controls all 5 volume outputs on the channels, then when one is selected, it mutes the others?

so like Polo! is piped through all channels, but PD tells the other four to be quiet after the number gen picks a channel

to add a bit of clarity....

You'd go in, say Marco
then, "Polo!" would be randomly played back to you in a channel at a random volume (for arguments sake lets just say out of 100)
e.g. Polo comes in at volume 63 in the center channel
then you sya Marco again
then Polo responds at volume 99 in the front right channel

Thanks everyone again for looking

no, have 5 speakers all outputting the signal, and random generators with which to scale the volume coming out of each speaker.

you'll have to choose different numbers as the arguments for each [random] object though...or else the results will be the same for every channel.