Bamzooki

Bamzooki (styled as BAMZOOKi) was a British children's television game show for CBBC. Teams competed in knockout tournaments consisting of a series of augmented reality contests using their own virtual mobile creatures, known as "Zooks." The Zooks were created by the contestants using a computer-generated toolkit developed by Gameware Development.[1] The toolkit was free to download from the CBBC website for the public to use.

Bamzooki
Also known asBamzooki: Street Rules
GenreChildren's Game show
Presented by
Voices ofRichie Webb
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of series4
No. of episodes56
Production
Running time30 minutes
Release
Original network
Original release8 March 2004 (2004-03-08) –
3 February 2010 (2010-02-03)

The original series premiered in March 2004 on the CBBC channel, and was presented by Jake Humphrey. It initially ran until 2006, airing over forty episodes over three seasons. A new thirteen-part revival series set on a street, Bamzooki: Street Rules, premiered in November 2009 with new presenters—Barney Harwood and Gemma Hunt—, a revamped toolkit with improved graphics and physics, new contests, new "House Zooks," a new format, and a "Zook Doctor."

History

Bamzooki: Street Rules

Following the show's initial run, a new series entitled "Bamzooki: Street Rules" was broadcast between 2009 and 2010. The premise of Street Rules involved the competition being considered by the government as if it were an illegal combat sport, facing attempted crackdowns. There were four teams in each episode, each with one Zook. They took part in a street race at the beginning of each show, and the winning team picked an opponent for the next game, a best of three, one-on-one round. The two losing Zooks took part in another challenge called "Pressure Pusher," with the loser being destroyed. The final three Zooks competed in a time-trial challenge, with the losing zook being destroyed. The final two competed in a rooftop assault course, with the going to the next stage, along with the three losers.[2]

A total of nine house Zooks competed in the game, including Mimi (who serves as the mascot in this series as well as in the Boulder Dash and Zook chicken games), The Beast, Peachy, Derek, Predator, Centi, Punka, Punkalicious, and Mean Green.

Technology

A Zook is an autonomous creature designed by users and contestants in the gameshow. Created using 3D primitives, Zooks move autonomously based on IK points that the designer assigns to them.

Using nature as inspiration, contestants design Zooks to compete against other Zooks in a variety of competitions. The tool kit for designing Zooks is offered for download on the show's website. Also, more recently, two new Zook-Kit features have been released that allow users to simulate the TV contests and then replay their Zooks' performances from multiple angles.

Gameware's Creature Labs team uses artificial life programming techniques to provide the Zooks' autonomous movement and behaviour and integrates this with the BBC's virtual studio system to enable real-time visualisations in a studio setting.

The toolkit, the Bamzooki Zook Kit, enables users to build virtual creatures, called Zooks, and test them in a real-time, physically simulated environment. Kids used this software to build Zooks, which were submitted to the BBC. Teams were selected and invited into the studio to enter their Zooks in various contests. The new series "Bamzooki: Street Rules," which aired in November 2009, features fully interactive contests, where the participants direct their Zooks by shouting instructions, as well as contests set on the streets and rooftops. 36 teams were selected to take part in the championships, which included nine heats, a semi-final, and a final.

The software, as well as the manual, were freely available from the BBC website.Although designed to be easy enough to be used by children, it is highly flexible and versatile. Zooks are constructed from the ground up using basic component parts that the user shapes and sticks together. Users are not restricted to particular body designs or topologies, although the control system uses a standard Braitenberg architecture.

The BBC's Virtual Studio technology was used to enable real-time composition of the 3D-rendered graphics with live camera feeds. Each studio camera has a dedicated render PC to render the virtual scene from that camera's perspective. To know what a studio camera's perspective is, each camera is fitted with a second "Free-D" camera that points towards the ceiling. On the ceiling are reflective, circular bar codes. The 3-D camera data is fed to a computer system that identifies the targets on the ceiling and calculates the camera's position and orientation 50 times a second. Series 4 adopted Vinten tracking peds instead of FREE-D as an alternative approach.

The contest runs in real time on a networked PC. All the clients receive contest scene information and render their scenes from their studio camera's point of view. A bank of chroma key boxes then composites the virtual and the live feed together to provide a real-time composite. This video stream can be sent to the studio camera monitors so that camera operators can view the composite and hence follow the action in real time.

The toolkit (a modified version of the Bonsai artificial life program) has at times been utilized by adults for their own purposes, including research.[3]

Community

A popular aim in Bamzooki was to get a Zook into the galleries or leagues, as they are often the most viewed and downloaded Zooks. To get into the leagues, you have to make a maxed-out zook on a specific event; these events are sprint, block push, hurdles, high jump, and lap. Every month, the CBBC Bamzooki site releases a new gallery based on a topic like "space zooks" or "spooky zooks." For every gallery, there are 16 spaces, and the Zook moderators choose the best-looking zooks to take those places.[4][5]

A relatively new league is the Ultimate Zook Leaderboard, where scores from all the trials are aggregated into one score, which zooks are then compared on.

Episodes
SeriesStart dateEnd dateEpisodes
18 March 20042 April 200420
28 March 20051 April 200513
326 February 200626 March 200610
411 November 20093 February 201013

References
  1. "Gameware Studio Diary". Gameware Development. Archived from the original on 17 May 2011. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  2. "Weaver's Week 2010-02-07". UKGameshows.com. 7 February 2010. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  3. Rea, Heather J (2015). "CBBC BAMZOOKi ™ as a Tool for Engineering Design Research". Academia.edu. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  4. "BAMZOOKi - Leagues". CBBC. Archived from the original on 23 December 2008.
  5. "BAMZOOKi - Galleries". CBBC. Archived from the original on 23 December 2008.
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