This week we wrote the design report.
We successfully simulated a game controller in Unity using the Arduino. We also received the rest of our electronic components and confirmed that they work as expected. We also made significant progress with game programming.
Design Changes
We have to make a slight design change with regard to pin assignments. Since only digital pins can be used for interrupts, we need an additional digital data pin. This is because we want to be able to use interrupts for reading encoder updates. We were originally planning on using one analog GPIO pin and one digital GPIO pin, and treating the analog pin as digital when we needed two digital pins for the encoder. We will now have two dedicated digital GPIO data pins and one analog data pin. This is not a significant change because we have the available pins that we need and our pogo pins have a spare pin available.
Significant Risks
The only risk we can think of at this time is the latency being higher than expected, but we will test this as soon as possible.
A was written by: Alan
B was written by: Angela
C was written by: John
Part A: Consideration of Global Factors
In general, the game we are designing is meant to be played at home with your friends physically next to you and hence lives in a very local space. But the general concepts that our project pushes toward have broader themes. In a more global context, our project contributes to the idea of more physical-oriented alternative controllers. Video games are a phenomenon that exist globally but many people are used to the same controller designs. Our project spreads more awareness of the possibility of controllers that can be uniquely created to enhance the experience of a specific game.
Part B: Consideration of cultural factors
Our product has a cultural aspect in encouraging players to play a cooperative game in person. The game is accessible to a wide age range considering that the modules have very simple controls such as buttons and sliders, so that young children and elderly people can both easily play the game.
Part C: Consideration of environmental factors
Our solution uses a microcontroller and the users’ personal computer, which use less energy than a large arcade machine. This efficiency is good for the environment since current power production often uses fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources.
Our design also uses easily repairable, open-sourced design, so users do not need to purchase a complete new set if something breaks. This reduces E-waste.