Category: Team Status Reports

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.

This week we made progress on implementing game mechanics and created a GitHub for / started experimenting with Arduino code using the joystick library. There have been no significant design changes or schedule updates.

Significant Risks

The documentation of the Arduino joystick library is not quite through enough for us to be able to exactly predict how it will interact with Unity. We will need to do a bit of experimentation and iteration to make sure that the interfacing between the two parts goes smoothly. Now that we have the Arduinos, we have begun experimenting with the joystick library and next week we will try to nail down the integration with Unity.

We’ve set up a Github for the Unity project and begun work on basic game mechanics. We have also done some preliminary research into electronics selection for modules and put in some parts orders.

Significant Risks

The most significant risk we see to our progress at this time is the complexity of the connections between the modules and the game panel. For our game to be enjoyable, it’s critical that switching the modules is fast, seamless, and reliable. This risk is being managed by handling this aspect of the project early on. As a team, we are discussing various ways to make solid electrical connections between the modules and the game panel. We are also looking at different ways to communicate between the modules and the panel. We are leaning toward mostly passive designs to keep the modules simple and minimize latency. A contingency plan we have is to focus on the simpler modules first and make sure that the MVP of our game works with them before moving on to more complex modules.

Significant Changes

We have not made any noteworthy changes to our overall system design but have made some changes to our module electronics. For example, we’ve decided to use an encoder instead of a potentiometer for one of our modules because it allows the users to freely spin the dial/wheel. This was necessary because it more closely aligns with our game design and how we’d like to control the submarine. It also allows the users to switch the module without it maintaining its state, since encoders do not output absolute position but rather direction and velocity. This will be slightly more expensive but still well within our budget so cost is not a significant concern. This is not a significant enough change to update our schedule.