Students from the University of Portsmouth have created interactive games for BBC Big Screens.

An interactive game of “keepy uppy” on a big screen will be one of the crowd-pleasing highlights at Glastonbury Festival this weekend – created by students from the University of Portsmouth.

One of the many games developed for interactive use on big screens, this one involves members of the public using any parts of their bodies to try and keep a bouncing football from hitting the ground.

They can see themselves on screen, super-imposed onto a football pitch and have to move around in order to save the ball. Each time the ball is successfully saved, the higher it bounces.

It uses an advanced form of motion detection from a camera attached to the big screen and anyone in sight range of the camera can take part.   
 
The game is being screened at over 20 live sites around the country in cities with “big screens” such as Manchester, Norwich, Edinburgh, London, Belfast and of course in the students’ university city of Portsmouth. The screens, which are around 25 metres square, are part of a unique collaboration between the BBC, local authorities and Olympic organisers to screen Olympic events in 2012. 

Portsmouth students have also designed a football quiz and a tennis-themed quiz in time for Wimbledon season.

Dave Battock, Producer of BBC Big Screens based in Gunwharf Quays, said: “I have been amazed and pleased by the skills, inventiveness and professional attitude of the students which has resulted in some great interactive and entertaining games.  It’s a great beginning to what we hope will be a developing and fruitful ongoing relationship between us and the University.”

Five students from different courses collaborated on the “keepy uppy” game as part of their final-year undergraduate project which took nine months to complete. Glen Smith, David Amato, Kristian Rejek, Calum Wallace and Steve Skipsey, are studying courses in the School of Creative Technologies, including Computer Games Technology, Enterprise in Computer Games, Computer Animation and Digital Media. Over 90 students were involved in the project in total. 

Students involved in designing the quizzes were Daniel Tonks, Ben Stuchbury, Daniel Evangelopoulos, Pan Yue and Paul Oates. 

For more information about BBC Big Screens, click here.