Post date: Oct 10, 2017 5:55:59 PM
For the final project put all of our ideas together and created the final game board. We connected the battery to the buzzer and every time you touched the board it would go off meaning you would lose your turn. The object of the game was to collect as many chips as possible in a minute. One part that I wish we had more time to fix would be making it easier to collect and drop off the magnets. I also would have likes to design a timer. One thing I am glad we did wad use magnets instead of felt and Velcro, the magnets allowed us to come up with the idea of using buzzers. I hope we are able to play the game in the future.
I am very proud of the “Buzzy Wands” Game project my partner (Claire) and I created. When we started, we were going to make a version of an online game we both played called slither.io. However, this game evolved a lot. We went from creating a hungry-hippos like game with velcro and felt, as well as a box with slots to put in “snakes”. Eventually, we adapted this to a flat board with different corners. We played each of these critically, and realized that they both weren’t the right fit. With the help of Mr. D, we used circuits and wires to create an operation-like game in which the goal of it was to collect the most dots. One of the hardest parts of this project was the constant failure we had, but all of the failure helped us to create our final project. The most exciting part was when the buzzers worked for the first time, and it was so cool how we created this from the start.
This was the wand from our final project. We made two of these, and they both have buzzers, batteries and wires on them. When they touch the boundary of the middle bridge, it closes the circuit and the buzzer goes off, indicating the end of the turn. They are covered in silver electrical tape, so the anywhere there is tape and the stick touches the boundary, it buzzes.
This is our final game board. Here you can see the magnetic chips used for collection. To play, the two players take turns collecting as many dots as they can from the other side without the buzzer going off. Whoever's dots are all gone after a turn is the loser. The dots are magnetic and connect to the tips of the sticks. The middle barrier is seen here, this is where (read above for more information) the wand tries not to touch.
We made the choice to go in a complete different direction because the felt and Velcro was not working. We were not able to collect the dots and put them back down with out ripping the felt and destroying the game board. We decided to use magnets and collect those instead. We attempt this and it worked a lot better. We continued to generate ideas a decided to use copper tape around the rim of the cardboard and the stick. If the stick hits the top of the cardboard slot a light sensor would go off, if this sensor goes off we were thinking you would loose points or one of your dots.
We decided to use felt at the bottom of our box because it sticks to Velcro and it makes the game easier, to save material we tapped it to the bottom of our cardboard prototype box, then it was reusable.
This is what the box looked like with the velcro dots on top of the felt. One issue we faced when playing the game was collecting the dots with out the felt coming up.
This one of the designs we tried for our prototype box, we mainly focused on the collection of the dots. It was hard for the sticks to collect the dots and keep them on. In the first picture shows we made this bar on the top as a place to store the chips. This way was not successful.
This picture shows our second attempt at making an easier way to collect the dots, it was on the bottom of the slot and you would connect the chips you collected to the bottom of your slot, this was not successful either.
This pictures shows our third attempt at making an easier way to collect the dots, it was a box connected to the side of your slot. It was one of the best and most efficient
way to collect the dots. This was our favorite option.
This is the stick we are currently using to collect the dots, the top of the stick is Velcro and it sticks to the chips and collects them. We are still coming up with a way to collect the dots.
This is the slot in our box, we cut this out using tools from the fab lab, we figured out this hole was too big, we went back and made it 1/2 of an inch instead of a 1 full inch. We did this because we wanted the rods to go fully through the hole, but be held firmly, as opposed to them being able to move in and out.
This is Chloe laser cutting out a piece of our game board, it was helpful to see measurements that were perfect and were computer printed. This was the first attempt, but we realized we needed to make the dimensions longer and not etch the cardboard so it would be stronger and cut quicker. However, it is hard to hot glue one side onto a box and stabilize it.
This is Chloe using the Velcro chips we made to make another more organized prototype box. We put these there so the pieces would stick better, and so the box would be more organized. This also shows our old box and our new box, in which we upgraded to make an improved version of our prototype.
This is Kennedy, she is Claire's visitor, she was helpful in giving us the idea to use pennies as our "game chips" we are going to felt over penny's now.
This is our paper prototype, we used an amazon box and cut out the slots. The stick is supposed to be a "snake" it slides through the cut out pieces of the box. We laser cut the circles around the stick so it would would prevent the stick from sliding completely into the box.
These is another example of the "snake", we used string, cardboard circles, and wooden sticks to create the snake, we tried many materials such as yarn, tape, and glue but for the paper prototype we used these materials
This was our paper prototype, we used tape and paper to resemble the "snakes" and "game chips" you would slide the "snake" into the cut our card board and use paper as the "game chips" you would collect the game chips to score points.
This is a diagram of our ideas, we used google draw to write out measurements and details. It is a easy resource because you can go back and edit the details, it also automatically saves.
This drawing goes into more detail about the individual parts of the game board, by creating this drawing we could understand measurements and generate an idea about the size of this project. We also wrote out the materials we need...
-wood
-plastic
-velcro
-felt
This paper had many different views of the game board
This is our first drawing showing the first idea we had, it is a sloppy copy
The idea that i have for this project is to make a slither.io board game in real life. We will have four wooden sticks maneuvering wooden rods wrapped in wire and decorated to look like snakes. This is a survival game where parts of the snakes stick to felt dots (velcro) and each other, which eliminates players. The goal of the game is to collect as many felt dots as possible until time runs out, while also staying alive. As we further the development into this, we will come up with more rules around the way.
This is a sketch of what he hope the snakes will look like. The circle at the bottom holds the snake in place and so the rod cannot escape the stick. We have yet to decide the length of these sticks, and we will probably decide this after creating a prototype to see how long the box is, and how far we need the snakes to reach.
This is a screen clipping of the circles we are going to print to hold the sticks in place!
These are our first copy of our rules: