Final Project Essay by Shina Chang

Title:

Dancing Digits

Project Statement:

While researching fun and interactive games I found that small and portable is an attractive attribute when it comes to toys and games. For example, the TechDeck was a very popular toy made specifically for the fingers, so taking the concept I want to make a smaller version of popular dancing game Dance Dance Revolution  (DDR) by Konami. This is a full-body engaging game that is great to play alone or with a group of friends. So combining the appeal of a smaller version of a game similar to Dance Dance Revolution will be the optimal type of game to carry around. This game would be advertised towards students who seek a new and unique way to spend their leisure time. 

Project Plan:

The plan for this project is to form the code to respond musically, in other words, there will be a lot of timing between Arduino and processing. Because we are working with music everything must work at the proper times or else it will take away from the playing experience. To start off we will work with the stage and its capacitive sensors and then the code to make sure that they are working properly. and then inserting music will be our next challenge. I hope to have a song choice of at lest 1 or 2 songs but by the user testing date the project will most likely only have one. We will have to laser cut out the stage we plan to use for our mini version of DDR.

The stage will be small enough to be transported around easily while it has enough space for someone to place their hand on it mimicking a person’s legs with their fingers. the stage will consist of four directional arrows one pointing forward, backward, right, and left. The starting position for the user’s fingers will be the center of the stage. The stage will have lights that make the game more visually attractive. 

Context and Significance:

After doing research on projects like TechDeck and DDR I realized I want to incorporate the attractive features of both projects into this project. From TechDecks the idea of creating a finger=friendly version of a skateboard to make it more portable is brilliant and then the whole aspect of an at-home musical entertainment system like DDR is very profound. So to combine these two game attributes into one will create a unique game that is memorable on its own. This game will be similar to DDR in the sense that our project takes into account the hands accessibility. It is difficult to “step back” with fingers propped vertically like human legs, so only the hard version of a song will incorporate the use of the backward pointing arrow. 

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