How Much to Build a Bridge? (3 levels)

[Shadow8472]

Cross Post from Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SNIS/comments/wjsr3q/how_much_to_build_a_bridge_set/

I'm dreaming of doing something a little more than a LAN party. I do believe the GPL2 license would allow me to put on a show?

Level 1: Fall Festival Fundraiser for my church's school

• Construction Budget: Scavenging equipment or begging parents for money. I'd consider myself lucky if I get away for <$1,000.
• Quality: A guided imagination can see the bridge for the folding tables/chairs, old, mismatched monitors, and cheap-o computers.
• Players: Minimum 4 (3 computers, 2 Pi's, and maybe a tablet)
• Special Effects: N/A

Level 2: Portable Set for Rent/Fair/Convention

• Construction Budget: No clue. I'll guess $5,000-$10,000.
• Quality: The U.S.S. Obscurity offers full Immersion on a budget. Navigation/weapons are on joysticks, other stations have custom control panels.
• Players: Up to a full crew
• Special Effects: Surround sound, extra lights, uniforms for rent/purchase, captain's tablet for secret missions, and custom officer training videos

Level 3: I've got a studio and I'm not afraid to use it! (I'm dreaming much larger than life here)

• Construction Budget: Depends on prior and continued success.
• Quality: Captain on Deck! The world of SNIS is brought to life like never before. Either elephants are small or you are aboard the U.S.S. Michal Collins.
• Special Effects: vibrating deck plates, motion capture aliens to hail, exploding control panels, repair minigames, and a mechanism to tilt the whole bridge. Don't forget hidden cameras to make a cheesy space comedy/drama afterwords.

Level 3 is just a dream and likely will forever remain such. However, I am seriously considering 1 and intend to decide if I want to pursue 2 if it goes well.

[smcameron]

Well, how much it costs depends on how good you are at scavenging, and getting help from other people, I guess.

The cheapest way is to use OPC (Other People's Computers).

Assuming you don't have a bunch of Linux nerd friends, the cheapest way to do that is to get a handful of USB thumb drives, install linux and SNIS on each of these thumb drives, then get your friends to boot up their windows computers off the thumb drives. You'll also need some CAT5 cable and a network switch (you don't want to try run everything over wireless, one or two stations on wireless might be ok, but not all of them.) Assuming you and your friends already have enough computers, this shouldn't be more than, I don't know... $150-$200 should cover it easily, I'd think. Hmm, maybe the biggest expense is you want a big screen, which means a dark room and a projector, or a really big TV.

It is also possible to run snis_client on WSL (windows system for linux), however, last I tried it, you could not get hardware graphics acceleration to work, (WSL2 may change this, but I haven't tried it) so the graphics heavy screens weren't fast enough to be acceptable. Might be ok for SCIENCE, COMMS, ENGINEERING / DAMAGE CONTROL though. Similarly Raspberry Pi 4 are kind of slow, so they're only good for those stations as well.

IF you want to get fancy (your level 2, I guess), and build dedicated consoles for some or all stations with cool toggle switches, lights, and buttons, knobs, and whatnot, I have sort of started down that path, at least designing, using Arduinos to monitor switch/button/potentiometer states and turn LEDs on/off, communicating with snis_client via USB serial, however, none of these consoles have actually been built, so there is also some software work that would need to be done as well (partially there, but not well tested.) More details about that here: https://spacenerdsinspace.com/snis-consoles/notes.html This all kind of got derailed by COVID. The parts for all this is not too bad (last I checked, pre-COVID, might be worse now), speakers, amps, keyboards for Raspberry Pi sound can be had cheaply from aliexpress, capacitors, resistors, headers, switches, potentiometers, etc. from futurlec.com (slow, but cheap), knobs from taydaelectronics.com The Raspberry Pis and monitors will be the most expensive parts. As for building the physical consoles with the buttons, switches, etc. there are no designs for the physical enclosures etc. so all that work remains to be done. This video might be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51ljGNx3px4

For level 3, I don't know how to price that out at all. I guess it comes down to plywood, 2x4s, paint, foam, and a laser cutter mostly, I'd guess, and depends on just how crazy you want to go. There are some star wars nerds doing interesting things, one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAVey6wy-O4

[smcameron]

You can certainly play it solo, flipping between stations as needed, but of course much of the fun of this type of game is not even in the game, but in the people playing it.

[kwadroke]

You might look at these guys: http://bridgesim.arkgeeks.com/ I don't know if that's a business or nerd club, or what.

That's my website :) Not a business, sort of a nerd club. Mostly just getting the word out about BridgeSims at local Conventions and finding others to play with.

[smcameron]

Ha, yeah, I knew it was your website, just didn't know exactly what kind of an organization it was supposed to be. Edit: And in case it isn't obvious, "nerd club" is not meant to be derogatory in any way. From 2010-2014, every Friday night, me and my best friend would go to the hackerspace in Houston, TX/RX Labs, to hang out, and we affectionately referred to it as "nerd club."

[smcameron]

Also, tonight, I went to the hackerspace where I am now, in Richmond, VA, called HackRVA. A couple of years ago, I was working with a guy there and we were going to build some boards, a la what's described here: https://spacenerdsinspace.com/snis-consoles/notes.html and then COVID came along and squashed everthing ... well I saw this guy tonight, and brought it up again, and am trying to start this up again.

[kwadroke]

Ha, yeah, I knew it was your website, just didn't know exactly what kind of an organization it was supposed to be. Edit: And in case it isn't obvious, "nerd club" is not meant to be derogatory in any way. From 2010-2014, every Friday night, me and my best friend would go to the hackerspace in Houston, TX/RX Labs, to hang out, and we affectionately referred to it as "nerd club."

I didn't view it as derogatory. It does have the word "Geek" in the Name & Domain after all.

[smcameron]

I do believe the GPL2 license would allow me to put on a show?

It is certainly allowed. You can put SNIS in a show, film, play, exhibition, arcade, whatever, no problem.