This week I’ve been working on adding enemies to the game. I’ve added behaviors and animations for sardine-type enemies that follow and attack + damage the submarine, and die when hit. Next week I will continue adding the rudimentary versions of enemies to the game as well as begin some work on more UI elements. Continue reading “Angela’s Status Report 3/8”
Alan’s Status Report 3/8
I tried printing out the current iteration of the module design. The 3D printing came out fine, but I need to make changes to the actual design. Currently there is not enough margin between the module piece and module holder for it to fit easily. I would attach a picture, but I do not have the 3d printed pieces on me at the moment.
I also wrote more code for the arduino. This can be seen on our github (https://github.com/amabraha/c3-aquamods-arduino). Most of the changes were refactoring toward generalizing the skeleton john wrote for our use case of interchangeable modules. I’ve also made progress toward our interrupt handler that will keep track of the state of the various rotary encoders that are used by the modules.
I also spent a lot of time doing work on the design report. I think that ended up being most of my Friday.
For next week, I am going to make updates to the CAD designs and print another iteration of the modules so we can see what we need to improve next. I also want to incorporate some of Gloria’s advice for the controller panels and get started on laser printing those. Lastly, I will continue working on the arduino code and integration.
Team Status Report 3/8
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.
John’s Status Report for 3/8
Arduino-Unity Interface
I spent time integrating our Arduino code with Unity. I was able to successfully simulate the Arduino as a game controller. The game now reacts to us interacting with the buttons/potentiometers/encoders. I spent some time trying out the new electronic components that arrived. I made sure that the encoders are sending good signals and that the other components (buttons and potentiometer) work as well.
I also spent time working on the Arduino codebase and optimizing our design.
Design Report
I spent a significant amount of time this week working on the design report.
Progress and Next Week’s Deliverables
My progress slowed a bit due to midterms and time spent writing the design report, but I am still on track. By next week I hope to have some semi-permanent circuits (i.e. soldered protoboard instead of just breadboards) but that also depends on our panel/module design progress.