Project Title
Battleship!
Project Statement of Purpose
When I was doing preparatory research and analysis for my final project, I was inspired by this Interactive Mario Mushroom Block. The nostalgia it has led me to have a pre-emotion before I “used” it. The memories that I played Mario made it more interesting to see what would happen if I push upward the box in real life. So this time, for my final project, I also want to bring back one classic game and put it into real play. Then I saw the real battleship game video and I decided to make my own, which won’t be completely digital or completely physical. I want to make one that combines these two characters through the association between Arduino and Processing. My audience will be everyone no matter he played battleship or not. For the new, they will know how to play this game and they may also start to know its history. For battleship masters, it will call their nostalgia like the Mario project did to me before. It will be meaningful for them to play battleship again but in a new form. In all, the purpose of this project is to bring joy to everyone.
Project Plan
I have several plans now because it is hard to have a perfect plan since I am not starting yet. My original plan is to make those battleships visualized that you can see, touch and control their location on a trellis diagram. Everyone can form his own battleships through the placement of those real small battleships. However, it seems impossible because I am not sure about how I can send the information of those battleships to my computer. Sensor? I am not sure what kind of sensor I can use to achieve this. The distance sensors we learned before might cannot be that accurate. Now I am thinking about making those battleships into digital pixels but giving the players a “cannon” to fire: a Joystick module to control the direction, a big button to fire, and of course a small model of a cannon. To make my plan clearer, I will talk to my peers in the recitation to get more advice. Also, I will start to figure out the feasibility of my plans next week. I still go on hoping that I can achieve my original plan. If not, I will try to think of other ways. In all, my certain plan is that I will finish the physical part, or we can say the circuit next week. Then I will start to program and finish my initial final project two or three days before the user test to seek the advice of improvements form my friends and also fellows in the lab.
Context and Significance
Like what I mentioned before, my preparatory research and analysis impact me a lot. The memories I called back through the Mario project weighs much more than the project itself. Sometimes, the meaning of a certain object is not only limited to its appearance or function. The profound connotation it could have can make you have emotions and thoughts and this is what I want to achieve. It is also part of my definition of interaction: the “effect” matters. My final project aligns my definition that it will be a responsive process that includes more subjects to get a clear input, digest and produce clear output which will have effects on each other. My idea comes from an existing game but I will bring it more possibilities. It won’t be a completely digital game online or a completely physical game just like what shows in the Youtube video. It will be an interesting and competitive game that combines the digital part and the physical part, standing for Processing and Arduino. New players can feel the magic of this game and enjoy playing it. Those who have played before, including me, will have the chance to play it again and recall our “good old days” for those classic games. In all, I hope it will bring much fun to everyone because that is the essence of a game.