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Aariz Abdul

5 Day Game Jam that required gameplay using an Alternative Controller.

Unity, C#, Miro, Makey Makey Toolkit, Nintendo Switch, Bop It! toy

Overview

Role & Impact

  • The challenge of this five day design game jam was to create a game that utilizes a alternative control (breaks the norms of traditional play)

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  • Within a team of five, we were able to construct a Unity

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  • Game that made convetional use of a Bop It! toy

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  • Pizza Delivery simulator with unique controls

  • Within this team, I programmed the functionality of the world & controller

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  • Remapped makey makey controls to operate functions of a car in-game, by connecting it to the different components of the Bop it!

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  • Inserted a Nintendo Switch Joycon into the back of the remote to take advantage of the remote's gyroscope capabilities 

(Gameplay Screenshot)​

(Controller Build Process)

Controller Functionality

Gameplay Programming

AI Car Navigation

  • Created a nav mesh surface that allowed NPC cars to drive around the world.

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  • When a car would enter the player's box collider, it would cause a rigid body impulse force to explode the car.

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  • Any damaging obstacle like a building or a rock will also result in the player to explode.

  • Breakdown of how the Switch Joycon and Makey Makey toolkit are implemented into the Bop It! to create this alternative controller

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  • Both external hardware's had to be connected to the pc running Unity for this controller to work

Obstacles 

  • Within the city streets, there are various hazards the player can encounter.

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  • This includes civilians roaming the area, pilon cones sitting around, or rocks and potholes.

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  • Civilians are coroutine based events that once a player enters their collision space, the NPC will run directly in front of the car and it prevents the player from driving forward until they use their horn to scare off the person.

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  • Pilons and rocks will have collision systems that either shake or explode the car.

Phone System

(Player progression diagram)​

What I learned

  • The player uses a cellphone to either navigate them on the map to the next order, alert them when a pizza is ready for pickup, or spam them with unskippable ads to distract their delivery.

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  • The map uses a nav mesh surface as well as Vector math to locate the drop off point.

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  • The notifier system to pick up a pizza is activated a couple seconds after a delivery is made.

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  • The ad system has a 1/10 chance every 10 seconds to play an ad for 5 seconds.

  • Overall, this was a positive learning opportunity to integrate physical tech into a digital game​

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  • Creating gameplay elements around the physical limitations of our alternative controller served as an insightful design challenge

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  • Working within a team of five with a physical element required us to actively work together in person, debugging the controls could only be done by one person at a time

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