Progress this week is going as planned heading into next week. I was able to create the graphics and animations for the final game. This includes the incorporation the graphics for the paddle, table, and ball, animating and properly triggering the different types of swings, and setting the ball-paddle interactions that set the ball’s trajectory based on specific parameters of the hitter’s swing such as orientation and power. I’m at the point where two players can play each other using the keyboard as an input. Looking ahead, the biggest goal is to integrate the rPi and Jetson into the game through bluetooth. But some other things I’m expecting to do are refining the animations to look more smooth and realistic and fine-tuning swing thresholds to make gameplay more realistic.
The swing thresholds are something Will and I brainstormed this week. We were trying to figure out how to deal with paddle-ball interactions and how we would figure out the ball’s direction and velocity after a collision, which was difficult because of the inaccurate velocity calculations from signal processing modules Will found online. Another concern was with how the paddle movement would look when we integrated the rPi with the game and how laggy it could possibly look. Our solution was to restrict sampling to a specific time interval after the ball hit the table and measure the orientation, acceleration, and position data to determine what kind of swing the player was performing. It would then trigger an already animated swing corresponding to the determined swing type. We categorized swing data to swing types by creating thresholds for each piece of data and setting a threshold to a particular swing type.
I am optimistic that we are heading back on schedule because all I have to do next week is to try to integrate the rPi and Jetson data into the game and optimize certain aspects to make it more playable. Tomorrow, I am going to be working on creating a bluetooth connection between the Jetson and the game so that on Monday, Logan can just load in his CV code and we can start testing the game in its totality.