A "Twist" on the Talking Skeletons

[Zombie-F]

Last Halloween, I decided to do another new dialog between my two talking skeletons, much as I do every year.  This time, I wanted them to be more interactive with the crowd, asking them questions and waiting for an answer.  I wanted the dialog to go in different directions based on the audience's answers to the questions.  I used a prop-1 (code attached) and a uMP3 to reach that goal.

The skeleton's jaw movements were done in the typical Scary Terry Servo driver fashion.

When the trick or treaters entered the pirate's bar, the operator behind the bar presses a button (hidden on the underside of the bar) to start the dialog.  The dialog progresses until one of the skeletons asks a member of the audience to step forward and answer three questions (the old Monty Python routine).  The program then waits for another button press before progressing.

Once a person agrees to answer the questions, the operator presses the start button again and another sound file is played from the uMP3.  The dialog progresses until Skeleton #1 asks a question.  The program waits again for another button press.  If the person answers the question correctly. the operator presses the "Start" button again.  If they answer incorrectly, the operator presses a second button.  The next sound file played by the uMP3 depends on which button is pressed.

The same happens for question 2 and 3.  If any question is answered wrong, the dialog between the skeletons and crowd urges them to sing along with a song if they want their treat bag.  If the questions are answered right, the skeletons begrudgingly give up some of their loot.

Being that the third question is the "What is the air speed velocity of an unladen Swallow" gag, most of the time the crowd needed to sing... and shockingly enough, every group that had to sing, did sing along!  Only ONE group answered correctly!

Here is a video of the full routine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnos4Id6HUA

Here is a second video shot in the dark with a group of trick or treaters singing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjWYY1bUu7g

This was a fun project and it went over awesome with the kids!

[livinlowe]

Wow!!
This is a cool halloween project. Great job. Good coding as well!

[Zombie-F]

It took quite a while for me to code it right.  I did a lot of trial and error with that one.  I really wanted to see if I could complete the project without having to ask for too much help.

I did wind up with one slight bug that I never could solve.  Occasionally -- and not every time the code ran -- the orange spotlight I had on the treasure chest would fade on in the middle of the song at the end instead of after the song.  It was set to not turn on until after the uMP3 sent its done command for that last bit of dialog.  It wasn't a game breaker and I just let it slide.  It usually played through correctly, but now and again, that damned light would come on at the wrong time.

Nobody except me seemed to notice though.  :D