This week was all about moving forward with your game and getting your controller design down.

I decided that, since my game mechanism is very similar to flappy bird, my controller was just going to be one giant button and that’s it – tactile satisfaction meets simplicity. In green of course, to compliment my dragon.

I designed a box that would basically just house the button, and since it’s panel mounted I made a 1″ opening on the top to fit the button but give it some room just in case. I also decided to put the name of the game (dragon flight) on the front panel of the box to give it some branding and just add a little extra to the whole thing. I planned the box by just knowing the measurements of the button and eyeballing how much I would need, but I still need to build the circuit and make sure everything fits.

After that, I sat down and started wiring my button. Making it work was the easy part. I used the Arduino example code for the digital button, wired up my thang and BOOM, working like it was supposed to. It wasn’t lighting up though.

I bought this at Tinkersphere which means, of course, no documentation with it. I could hear Benedetta’s voice in my head going off but too late for that. I read the minimum details they had online, googled, googled and googled some more. Joe Mango even saw me drowning in cables and came over to help me (he’s been my guiding light one too many times now).
We fiddled around with the cables, moved things around, watched videos online, looked at pictures and finally, got the button working. Now though, it wouldn’t turn off… but baby steps, right?

After that, Craig came to both our aids and pulled up some documentation on the old Pcomp class site about using transistors to control a higher load and after following that, we got the button actually working!

On to the game now. After creating most of my sprites, I realized I still needed even more. So I created white and grey clouds as well as a sprite for when the dragon dies (sad).
I imported everything into Unity and started working from there, with the help of my handy notes that I always copiously take in class. I was also lucky enough to find a game tutorial online about flappy bird, and since the mechanics of my game are extremely similar, I started to follow it and get my game started.

For now, I’ve gotten the dragon movement down, and the background. I now need to add the parallax background and all the power ups!