E-I-E-I-O!

BY CINDY ZHANG // CMZ@STANFORD.EDU

ABOUT

E-I-E-I-O! is a sound memory program designed to help children learn and memorize animal onomatopoeias and help players of all ages with their short term memory with regards to sound and pitch.

The premise is that you (the player!) own a farm, but you can't remember what your animals are doing. Are they sleeping? Jumping around all over the place? Luckily, you do remember what kinds of sounds they make, and it's up to you to recreate your farm scene to match the sound clip that is generated at the start of the game. Animals that jump around tend to make higher intensity sounds (think high-pitched neighs, faster moos, shorter barks), whereas animals that are sleeping will not produce any sound at all. As the player, you need to toggle animals to the matching state based on what you're hearing in the sound clip.

SETUP

  • download and unzip the file
  • run Builds/eieio.app
  • begin! you can choose from easy mode (guess the correct animal) or difficult mode (guess the correct animals AND toggle them to their correct states)

MANUAL

EASY MODE
  • In EASY MODE, your task is to play the Sound Clip (see the button on the lower left hand corner) and match the animal to the sound.
  • To "match" an animal, you just click on the animal you want to activate! Once clicked, that animal should start jumping around and producing noise.
  • To see if you're correct, just take a look at the upper left-hand corner and the status will change to reflect whether or not you've correctly identified the animal!

DIFFICULT MODE
  • Oof. This is where it gets tricky. You have to correctly map the sounds in the sound clip with the sounds in the farm. Not only that, there are multiple animals this time around. Not only that, animals can now sleep (no sound), sit around (sounds with no intensity adjustment), walk around (medium-intensity sounds), run around (high intensity sounds), and jump around (REALLY high intensity sounds!). To toggle between these states, just click on the animal and it will progress to the next level of intensity, starting from Sleep --> Sit --> Walk --> Run --> Jump. (If it's jumping and you click again, it'll go back to Sleep.)
  • Listen carefully! The sound clip is purposely staggered to have multiple animal noises, so you must discern which level of intensity each animal sound is producing.
  • If it helps, click the "Listen to your farm!" button in the lower left hand corner to compare and contrast your farm sounds with the sound clip.
  • If you do not hear the animal in the clip, they are likely sleeping and thus you don't need to disturb them! :)
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
  • PITCH: Did you know you can change the level of pitch in the scene by hitting the 0-4 keys on your keyboard? By default, the pitch is set at 1 (Medium), but you can go down an octave lower to 0 (low) or go really really high up to 4 just by pressing the 4 key!
  • VOLUME: Did you know you can change the volume AND the size of the animals in the scene by hitting the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard? By default, the volume is set to medium, but if you press the up or down keys, the animals will resize AND the volume will increase/decrease based on the change.
  • Changes in pitch and volume are updated accordingly on the upper left hand corner. These do NOT affect whether or not you achieve the correct animal scene arrangement, so have at it! :)

SCREENSHOTS

For a video demo, see here

THOUGHTS

Motivation: This project went through many iterations and ideas! I wanted to create something that was whimsical and playful but potentially educational, and when I thought of designing something for children, I thought of everything from pure silliness (nonsense noises!) and nursery rhymes, which led me to explore onomatopoeias as a design idea. However, in trying to design a more nuanced version for non-children and broaden my audience, I decided to add different modes beyond just matching an animal with its correct sound. I created a difficult mode which would test a player's short term audio memory as well as give them more room for creativity to modify the animal noises to their own device without consequence. :)

Purpose: The purpose of this product is largely educational, but not without its moments of delight sprinkled throughout the game. The environment and use of animals encourages interaction and play, in a way that is more interactive and stimulating than flash cards.

Under the Hood: This project was created in Unity. ChucK is used to generate and create a sound clip of randomly selected animal noises, as well as controls for the intensity, pitch, and volume of the sounds.

Metrics: Overall, I wanted to have a solid idea for a game and be able to build off of that. The idea (match the movements to the sounds) had to be solidified and working sturdily for me to feel like I had achieved a sense of completion. Because I have a solid game structure, I am more empowered to add different features to the game, such as variance in pitch and volume.

CREDITS