IDEA: maybe using a game editor: generate a graph of a room full of people

[urlwolf]

 Ok, this one should be easy for people who are into games (maybe the sims?) and
have played around with game editors.

The reason I need this (weird) thing is that I'm going to use it for a
psychology experiment.

I need a graph of a "room" (square) full of people. The people should be
different from one another, and should be in random locations. I plan to
generate several (many) rooms with different numerosities (i.e., 19, 23,...60
people). Ideally, no person should appear in two rooms.

I can generate random coordinates and pass them to the program (game editor?) or
I can just use the random coordinates that the program generates itself.

I will need 20 + 10 + 60 = 90 rooms, so it'd have to be something that doesn't
require manual intervention (i.e., works in batch mode).

Finally, it doesn't matter if the people are trolls, astronauts or wearing roman
togas but they should all be part of the same category, i.e., no one guy
sticking out. Maybe contemporary clothes would be best (I'm thinking sims?
then?).

Doable?

[urlwolf]

*bump*

easing the requeriments:
the graph generated could be just a jar containing marbles, or a parking lot containing cars, etc.
As long as I can input a number and the program gives me an image with <number> things, I'm happy.

There must be a program out there that does this, I'm sure, but it does require a bit of 'lateral' thinking...

[dajo]

You might do it with Excel.  Just put =RAND() in a grid 2 columns wide and X rows long, then do a plot graph.  Not fancy, but maybe you can pretty it up with other kinds of markers and colors.

[urlwolf]

Thanks dajo,

Actually I have generated the random matrices and dot clouds already (using R, my favorite prog. language).
What I want is to actually have a graph of a room with little characters (taken from a game maybe?) to make sure that they are all different and memorable...

I did the experiment already with random dots as your screenshot describes. It failed beacause people cannot remember them well.

This is the reason I want to make the "room" idea. Rooms should be a lot more memorable, since the random location of characters are... well, not simple dots, but people.

Any ideas for something that takes the coordinates and generates a graph of people (or objects. whatever)? I'm thinking about some isometric view of a room but a bottle full of marbles would do too.

Thanks a lot

[dajo]

You might try Google SketchUp.

It supports scripting in Ruby, which might let you load the people dynamically.

[urlwolf]

Just did the tutorial and it's fantastic.
Not sure how to bring objects/people and use the scripting to do that.
Dajo, are you good at google SketchUp? If you want to take up the job, I can pay you (donationCredits, for example?)

[dajo]

I would be glad to help.

Another idea, which might be better than sketchup, would be for you to put your experiment on SecondLife.  Secondlife is another immersable 3D environment, but with more emphasis on social interaction as compared to Sketchup's emphasis on architectural design.

With your experiment on Second Life, people could be anywhere in the world and participate in your study.  (Or you could run your study from any computer in the world)

They have a special deal for educational projects that you might qualify for.

If you want to go off-line for this, I'm setting up a temporary email address that you can use.  (I don't want to post my real address here.)
qwert-at-onepost.net

[f0dder]

You could grab a forum smiley pack somewhere and use those?