(For context, this post probably requires the reading of my entry on Assignment 3 for CTIN544)
To expand on my previous assignment, I made the “head squishing” demo into a fully symmetrical two-player game, wherein each player has a pair of finger-based sensors.
The associated game is loosely based on the arcade game “Silent Scope,” wherein each player had a sniper rifle peripheral, and had to look through a scope to find the adversary in a crowd. In this game, each player similarly must scan a scene of people to find the opponent, but instead of using a sniper rifle as weaponry, they use their fingers.
Each player sees a scene with a building, grassy field, and a wall. Scattered about each scene are a few people. One of these people is the opponent, visibly trying to squish the player’s head. Players must find this person and squish them before being squished themselves. The difficulty comes in that the visible “window” into the scene is very small, so the player must use the keyboard to navigate the screen. Player One uses WASD, and Player Two uses the arrow keys. The first player to find the opponent, line the figure up with the onscreen arrows, and squish the opponent wins.
This program uses more sophisticated keyboard input, circuitry (multiple inputs), and graphics processing (including buffering) than the previous version. Most importantly, however, it is a better and more fun game. In the previous version, the multiplayer aspect was admittedly tacked-on, as the movement of the stick figure across the screen was not ludically meaningful and could have been automated without taking away from the experience. This game allows both players to enjoy the fun and novel part of the game, the finger-hardware. The race between players to find the opponent causes tension and excitement, and increases the satisfaction of winning. The only negative of the new version is that Processing can only handle one keyboard input at once, so players have to tap the directionals instead of holding them to ensure fair play.