R-FID_HTER

This project turned out to be a complete blast! As seen by the visible lack of previous blog posts I have been heavily tied up in the development of this project. After brainstorming and implementing a constant stream of new features with the rest of the team we managed to pull an all-nighter and really get this project into a rather polished and playable state.

In the end to create this into a multiplayer fighter game we required two sets of the Arduino kits. Since the previous blog post we had merged with another group which had gained us two extra team members and another Arduino kit with all of the necessary peripherals! How convenient!

Each of the controllers have an accelerometer, a button, an RFID reader and a custom built housing made solely out of cable-ties. Lots of problems arose when using two Arduino sets, which made it impossible to easily deploy the game to other machines; because of this only powerful Windows machines could be used. (Sorry Macs!)

On top the RFID reader had a custom slot built out of folded paper, which allowed the RFID cards to be slotted into the controller without damaging the electrics between the Arduino boards.

The RFID Cards themselves are being used in this project to store unique character and level data for the game. 6 of the 10 cards are for characters (Plum-Pow, Sum-Chin, Broc-Lee, Robo-Chop, Great-Scot & Fang Fui), and the rest are for the different stages/levels (Below the Canopy, Laguna Beach, China Town & Outer Space).

Initially the cards had the numbers 1-10 written on them in order, but to identify them we needed to label them properly. In the end we decided to go all out and print out front/back designs for the cards; something we wouldnt have been able to do without the larger team! With these printed labels applied it actually made it easier for the cards to slide in and out of the controller slots.

So in the final week before presenting each of worked on our individual sections which were to be pulled together a few days before the final day. As always this does not quite turn out as expected and we hit a few milestones. Regardless we managed to get around these milestones and spent an entire day/evening/night/morning putting together all of the assets into one product.

So lets move onto the process of the game setup workflow! Initially the Flash SWF has to connect to the Arduino server, which allows the data to flow smoothly between the Controllers and the Game. After connection has been established Player One and Player Two both have to ‘calibrate’ the controllers. This allows the players to hold the controller whatever direction they feel is comfortable, as the accelerometer is used for the movement input.After the initial set up has been completed the players get taken into the game setup. Within this the players can use the RFID cards to use preset characters and game levels. Firstly one of the players must insert a level card, which then appears onscreen for the user to confirm.

The player then has to remove the level card and both players can then choose their characters. Each character has a different set of statistics and visual look; which impacts the overall gameplay of the game. These characters are then displayed onscreen for the players to confirm, after each player presses the button on the controller to confirm they are taken to the game start. Upon the game start is where all the fun begins! Throughout the game there is a pre-recorded announcer voice to help the user through the menus, and recorded voices for each of the characters. When the game begins there is a countdown, which gets the players warmed up and prepped for the button-bashing to commence shortly after.

Inside the game logic you have the usual interface. Two characters facing each other, health bars for the two characters and a game timer. All of which are hooked up to TweenMax functions which animate the elements in comic ways to let the user know more about the information around them. After about 60 seconds of sliding and bashing, one of the players will be defeated. This takes the game to the last screen of the game menus which announces a winner, and then allows the players to skip back to the level select screen; skipping the Arduino connection and calibration.

After the presentation for the game, we managed to keep a few willing participants behind to compete in a short tournament. After learning that “Sum-Chin” was insanely powerful, we banned his card and played through; in the end Adam Groves was the overall winner! You can see some raw footage from my iPhone below:

(Apologies for the blurryness at the start of the video, I managed to get the iPhone to focus when the match starts!)

So first game of the year is down, and it wasn’t even in the Gameplay module! I really enjoyed working in a team once again, over the years I have really learnt who are the key players in the course. After a year in industry doing video editing it has been a real fresh breath of air to be able to do something a bit different. I did alot of the graphics for the game this time around, but still managed to scratch up on a bit of my AS3 programming skills in terms of working on the game logic. The majority of time was spent making the characters move smoothly with the accelerometer, if that wasn’t right the whole thing would feel a bit naff.

In the future you may see an online playable version of this game, keyboard controls have been added but character/level selection hasn’t been programmed in yet.

Watch this space I guess!