Progress
Over the break, I made quite a few changes to the hardware component. While i had originally planned to attach 4 wires to individual guitar strings and use a wired conductive guitar pick to create a controller in which strumming each string triggers a different in-game action, this failed to work as all the strings were connected to a metal saddle, which made all the strings one conductive body and therefore could not be utilized for individual actions. I ultimately decided to turn the guitar’s metal frets into the buttons of the controller. I covered three separate frets with copper tape for enhanced visibility and connected them to wires, doing the same for the metal saddle; when the player presses any string against the taped frets, a circuit is completed and a signal is sent from arduino to p5js to trigger 3 actions — start, jump, and attack — depending on which fret is pressed.
The overall structure of the p5 game is now complete. The only work left to do is to finish the visuals of the game, as some of the power-ups and enemies are displayed as basic black placeholders. A system also has to be set up to keep track of high scores over the course of multiple games.
User Testing
At first, it was confusing for users to figure out how to operate the guitar controller, as I haven’t created any signage to attach to the frets and indicate their functions. It took them a few seconds of fiddling before getting to the actual gameplay. The gameplay also wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it was; users were confused as to how to increase their score (which is by collecting power-ups to build up attack charge and attack enemies). I will have to work on the visual components of the guitar controller (adding small labels, etc.) and adding an instruction menu before the game starts.