Group: Vladimir, Dariga
Project Idea
A rhythm game where you are given instructions on which notes to play from a song. You must use our physical controller to play these sounds. You must keep up the tempo and always play the correct notes. We plan to prepare one to three songs for the player, which they will be able to select. Also, we can add a ‘freestyle’ mode where the song is generated at every moment.
Arduino: We have a cardboard box with the top open. We also have a ball or other smooth object which we place inside the box. We intend to use 2 ultrasonic sensors to track the ball’s position inside the box. So, for this project, one ultrasonic sensor should track the X position and the other should track the Y position. We have tested the use of two ultrasonic sensors to get (X, Y) coordinates for future use and this works for our project purposes. The distances to the ball from 2 ultrasonic sensors will be sent to p5js which will use these distances to map to (X, Y) coordinates and then associate with the screen regions for the game.
This functionality of Arduino & p5js to map the coordinates has been already implemented and tested:
p5js: The canvas is divided to include multiple coloured regions that will correspond to a particular sound. Placement of the physical ball within the particular region will trigger a sound to play. One way to define the regions is by a 3×3 grid:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Here, cell 5 could not play a sound, but the others would.
We haven’t decided yet on the particular sounds to play, with the preliminary idea for sounds to represent pre-defined notes.
On the screen, we also show the instructions (sequence of notes) the player has to play. We can also colour-code the notes to make them easier to remember. When the player misses enough notes they lose. Without missed notes, the player completes their music experience and may restart the game. We intend to use a physical speaker to play sounds, though we are open to using p5js as well.
We will work further on the music part of the game as we progress with the final project.