Pieces are coming together. My game is 95% ready (art and movement tweaks, nothing that can’t take a few minutes for each). It’s exciting, and I may even have some hair left that’s not in my fists when I’m through. I kid of course, but since the deadline is this Thursday, with the Viz-A-Gogo exhibition opening a week from now, things are coming down to the end, and with that always comes some anxiety.
The stronger stepper motor came in early this week. It looks good and strong, just like the online sparkfun picture said. However one caveat is that I’ll need to solder short lengths of (probably 22 gauge–breadboard compatible?) wire to the wire ends of the stepper motor, since the ends are frayed by default. From what I can tell, another student, Sarah Spofford, is using the same or a very similar motor as I, so one question means answers for two students. Awesome when that works out.
Today, finish the plans; tomorrow, cut and glue them. I got the transfer between drawing my plans in Illustrator and importing them correctly into the AutoCAD woodshop template (on the correct layers for cutting), so that’s another interfacing issue of sorts solved.
Project’s being built, and the different pieces (game, dispenser, Makey Makey keyboard) are coming together. It’s likely that when I show this Thursday, the game sprites will still need work (I’m using holder images now that come with Game Maker but aren’t really polished for final work). Also, the pieces themselves can work on Mac or Windows, but the interfacing between the game and Arduino uses a DLL that (because it’s a DLL for one) require a Windows OS. I can still demo the operation with a mac, and manually set the dispenser wheel to dispense seeds (push a button to simulate the signal GM can send to the Arduino on Windows). Viz-A-Gogo will have a Windows computer, but for Thursday, a mac will work fine.
One thing on the keyboard–I’m leaning towards using apples for the 6 keys. For one, there are enough different color combinations with apples to be varied enough while still reading as, well, apples. They’re firm enough to resist a the bit of pushing, over and over, that the fruit “keys” will require. Plus the Makey Makey requires either enough metal or moisture to conduct the push signals, and apples certainly have plenty of moisture. It’s likely I’ll need to replace them between Thursday and when the show ends next weekend, but that’s just a matter of pulling the pins in the apples out and sticking them in another apple.
Physical Computing, Round 2 