Final Project Proposal – By Skyler Liu

Project Title

Beduffled Snake 

Project Statement of Purpose

During my research, I have been influenced a lot by the project Anti-Drawing Machine, which allows either a disrupted or collaborative drawing by manipulating the rotation and position of an ordinary paper material. Its purpose is to explore the possible alternatives of how we engage with intelligent device today – instead of purely utilitarian and precise. Inspired by this idea, I want to design a unique snake game which avoids players using the inertial thinking method while playing. Snake is a classic game and remains many memories in our childhood, but it is losing voice in modern game development. It used to be popular because of its simple operation; it’s easy to be used by people who first touch digital games, but it is also the simple gaming style making it look less interesting to us now among numerous new challenging games. Thus, I want to help it by redesigning its gaming method for it.  It will challenge people’s general sense of control when playing games and requires one hundred percent of concentration and flexible thinking process. It is a game designed for everyone who wants to train their ability of mobile brain coordination and wants to gain a sense of achievement by challenging themselves. Differing from the traditional gaming method, this project intends to explore more alternatives of how players can get joy from games by challenging their inertial thinking about the game’s playing method. 

Project Plan

This project will be an interactive game built on both Processing and Arduino. The goal is to eat as many apples as possible while keeping the snake survive. 

Arduino will be connected with joysticks, in charge of the snake’s moving direction. And Processing will be used to display the interface of the game and code the game’s rules. 

The gaming method would include the length and speed change of the snake after eating the apple, and death punishment when the snake touches the frame or itself like a traditional snake game. But the direction control keys would all be the opposite to the normal setting. Every 20 seconds the direction keys would transfer to the normal style for 10 seconds. There would be both sound notification and visible count-down shown in the game interface before 5 seconds of the transformation. I also plan to add occasional events that would be triggered to switch the position of apple which hasn’t been eaten in the game. In addition, there will be a multiple-player gaming style. In this function, besides all the rules in the single-player style, the player would also lose the game if he/she hits one another. I will also make special design of the snake’s appearance and background animation, maybe even include some narrative plots for the game.

In the next three weeks, I am going to complete these tasks:

In the first week, I will complete the circuit and the basic code of the game in Processing.

The second week, combine Arduino and Processing together and further consummate the code.

Last week, user test; make final modifications.

Context and Significance

In my previous research and analysis, I defined interaction as the process of a device receiving signals from at least one other subjects, then going through intelligent thinking, finally reacting to the signals. In this way, my project which runs code with both Arduino and Processing as the response to joystick movements and involves at least one player certainly aligns with my definition of interaction. The uniqueness of it is that it challenges people’s sense of control while playing a game and challenges players’ inertial thinking style. And designing new gaming method for a classical work is also a kind of meaningful exploration. The new playing method I design for my project can lead people to think about what the meaning of a game and its gaming method should be, and if less strength of control in an interactive game certainly means a less interesting work.