SPECIAL Projects
Welcome to my special projects page! This is where you can find some of the larger and more interdisciplinary work I've created. These are projects I feel merit a special separated section on my website because they are some of my favorite things I've designed.
Puzzlr is a unique and stimulating puzzle game involving laser-cut vinyl pieces, a Makey-Makey board, and Isadora. The project itself was engineered with a research-through-design framework focused on understanding how microcontrollers could be leveraged to efficiently create a digital/physical puzzle game. I went through several rounds of development in order to gain a deeper understanding of microcontrollers and interactive media.
The game works by creating six points of contact for the six puzzle pieces on the board. Each point of contact has an open circuit that connects to ground and the chosen Makey-Makey input pin. When the piece is placed onto the board, the input is activated via a small metal sheet that meets the contact point and completes the circuit. The piece then displays on the game interface for three seconds to help you identify if you've placed it in the right spot. The game is completed when all pieces have been placed correctly onto the board!
Click here to see the full documentation.
Wood Prototype
Circuit Prototyping
Laser Cut Schematic
Circuit Schematic
Circuit Close-up
Laying things out
Final Circuit Setup
Final Laser-Cut PIeces
SUBMARINE GAME
This project was a unique adaptation/improvement on an older project from 2022. The original concept was a two-player game where one person is looking through the periscope of a submarine while the other player controls the movement of the submarine. Player two cannot see anything except for a flat simple map, and player 1 can only see through the periscope.
The second phase of this game was a planned refurbishment to add a new level, update some environment assets, develop some new mechanics, and create a unique and immersive control panel for player two. This was a collaborative project with 2 of the original creators Mila Gajic and Thomas Elsworth; my contribution would be learning Arduino and creating the large control panel.
I'm incredibly proud of this project because I taught myself Arduino in about a month and a half and was able to create a robust control system with buttons and a joystick. The system was built uing an Arduino Leonardo and coding the boar to read as a controller. The Unreal RawInput plugin reads the joystick as axis inputs and the button as a simple on/off input. The panel also features some simple led lights and 3D printed decorative switches.
