Here’s a short screen record of the game. Basically, you can control the front head sphere of the controller and move up, down, left, and right. Using a button on a belly, the player can shoot the poop toward cleaning supplies and it would record the score. When you get hit by the suppliers the bear loses its life. If it loses all lives, you can see the ending page. I need to edit some codes and still work in progress. There were several struggles while working on codes;
Details
I had an idea of making a simple platformer game using a joystick controller. At first, I was thinking of using buttons as the controller but it seemed uncomfortable to hold the breadboard itself and press buttons because of the size and shape of the breadboard. The joystick is made of 2 potentiometers so it was interesting to play around and it had 2 axes to control. I had a problem controlling the accuracy of the joystick and limited the number to certain ranges to avoid commands overlapping.
After that, I kept brainstorming about the case part of the controller. My midterm game is about a dirty teddy bear’, which hates to clean itself and runs away from cleaning supplies. I wanted to make the outside part of the controller a dirty teddy bear and the player can hold it in 2 hands to control it.
How to connect the joystick efficiently and aesthetically on a doll was the most tricky part to figure out. First I thought it would be easy to add the joystick on a whole head part but in that case, there’s not enough space between connected spheres. Instead, I cut out the circular foam and added each side to the joystick. Also had to connect it with the breadboard so it takes much more volume than I expected. I covered the breadboard with a foam sheet which is cut out as a body part that can insulate the shape with thick and soft volume and also can protect the breadboard as air bubble wraps in the packages.
