OnTrack is a client project at the Entertainment Technology Center sponsored by the United States of America Track & Field Foundation. The students on the project are working with representatives of USATFF to develop interactive software targeted at promoting track & field, as well as general fitness. The goal of this project is to create a high-energy, interactive track & field game that will enable kids of all ages to compete in various track & field events against/with current Olympic athletes as well as their peers.
Project Description
About USA Track & Field Foundation
Launched December 5, 2002, at USATF’s Annual Meeting, the Foundation provides a means to attract and guide funds to new and innovative track & field programs, with an emphasis on providing opportunities for youth athletes, emerging athletes, and distance training centers. The Foundation assists dedicated Olympic hopefuls who can realize their dreams and potential if given the opportunity. The Foundation is committed to promoting the development of Team USA, the World’s #1 Track & Field Team through its Elite Athlete Grant program and financial support of other elite-oriented programs.
Team Development Blog
Week 15
April 27, 2016
As softs for this week are on Monday, we delayed our client meeting until Thursday this week. During softs, much of the faculty feedback highlighted on problems that we already knew about such as issu...Read More
Week 14
April 26, 2016
Week 14 is most importantly our last week to fully prepare the game before softs. We started out the week with a meeting with the clients, in which we updated them on the current progress of the game ...Read More
Week 13
April 25, 2016
Our client meeting for week 13 was relatively brief, and mostly revolved around us discussing the development of the live event system and the updates to the athlete uniforms. The clients were happy w...Read More
Team Info
Shantanu Das
Shantanu is on the programmer track in the Entertainment Technology Centre, Carnegie Mellon University.
Prior to ETC, he worked as a senior software engineer for 4 years at Sony India. As a programmer, Shantanu has worked on building prototypes to showcase how new technologies like augmented reality, gesture recognition can enhance user experience in Sony applications. He has also worked as an optimisation engineer where he was responsible for enhancing the graphics performance for Chromium Engine.
Shantanu is interested in gameplay programming and wants to explore how new technologies can be used to bring out new game play mechanics to enrich user experience.
Ankit Patel
Role: Gameplay Programmer
I am currently doing Masters of Entertainment Technology at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), Carnegie Mellon University. I have 3+ years of professional experience as a Game Developer and I am proficient in cross platform mobile games and applications development on iOS, Android and Web platforms.
My work in games began with programming in 6502 assembly for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in a highly constrained environment with 2K RAM, 8K for programming and 8K for graphics. This was a MacArthur Foundation funded project to create new games (and a development kit) for a $10 computer that is widely sold in developing countries. I worked with a team in India (and an international open source community) to create innovative educational games for underserved children in rural areas. We distributed $10 computers with our preloaded games and conducted field trials in Ahmedabad, India. One of the most interesting experiences during this field study was to understand which aspects of our games engaged our young clients and how we could improve their experience. I have learned to contribute in multifunctional teams consisting of designers, co-developers, fellow-researchers and testers.
Since 2012, I’ve worked as a Lead Game Developer at Playpower. Most of my time at Playpower has been spent creating games for building core math skills that provide a foundation for success in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). I have worked extensively on dozens of games on multiple platforms over 3 years and I have developed phenomenal ability to manage and lead multiple development projects at a time. I don’t just believe that fun aids learning—i believe learning is fun. My interests include thrilling sports, travelling and cooking food.
Kai Chi Huh
Artist
Eric vonFischer
Producer
Brent Kasmiskie
Game Designer
Advisor Info
Shirley Yee
If Life can be described as going full circle, Shirley Yee is the poster child. Growing up in Pittsburgh, in a bilingual household, she read stories, wrote stories, and drew pictures to accompany them. After graduating from the CMU Design department, she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree on a Disney scholarship from California Institute of the Arts. Focused on starting her career as a college teacher, she left Los Angeles for Muncie, Indiana to teach at Ball State University. After two years there, and two years at the University of Kentucky, she returned to California, to gain industry experience. In San Francisco, Shirley worked at the design firm Pentagram, and at Hal Riney and Partners, creating advertising campaigns for the Saturn, See’s candies, and Stroh’s beer. Teaching continued to be a career interest, and she taught adjunct at UC Berkeley and at California College of Arts and Crafts. Family crises lead her back to Pittsburgh, where she has continued her work in design studios, advertising agencies, and education. After 11 years as Director of the Graphic Design department at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Shirley is thrilled to be back at her alma mater, working with students in a collaborative and creative environment.
Mike Christel
Mike is interested in the development and evaluation of transformational games, especially in the areas of education and health care. Mike joined the ETC Faculty in 2008, moving from Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Department where he was working at the intersection of speech recognition, image processing, and multimedia interface development and evaluation. As a member of the Informedia Digital Video Library research team, he received the Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence. Before that, from 1987 to 1997 he worked at the Software Engineering Institute at CMU. Mike received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 1991 with a thesis examining dynamically generated digital video interfaces. Entertainment builds from experiences, and Mike loves to travel with his family, having enjoyed each of the 50 states in the U.S. on various journeys.