Curse Breakers! User Testing & Progress – Introduction to Interactive Media

Hello everyone!

As you might have seen in my previous posts, I am working on making a Jujutsu Kaisen- inspired video game for my final project! The object of the game is to shoot curses (ghosts) and collect Sukuna’s fingers. Collect 5 fingers without losing lives to win! (You lose lives by colliding with the ghosts).

Progress so far:
I’ve completely finished the Arduino code, and the processing code is almost done. The controller is functional, but it’s not stable yet, I’m planning on soldering the controller wires very soon! The user testing demo shows what it currently looks like.. The only thing left in the processing code is making the ghosts disappear when they’re shot, and making the fingers appear in intervals after you hit certain scores.

The first thing I worked on in processing was making the character move with the slider and preparing the code for the different game screens. After that, I worked on the serial communication code for the buttons, and made sure everything was communicating smoothly between processing and Arduino.

Here’s the Arduino code:

int bluepin = 5;
int yellowpin = 3;
int sliderpin = A1;

void setup() {
  pinMode(bluepin , INPUT);
  pinMode(yellowpin , INPUT);
  pinMode(sliderpin , INPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Serial.println("0,0,0");
}

void loop() {
  int bluebutton = digitalRead(bluepin);
  int yellowbutton = digitalRead(yellowpin);
  int slider = analogRead(sliderpin);

  while (Serial.available()) {
    int fromP = Serial.parseInt();

    if (Serial.read() == '\n') {
    Serial.print(slider);
    Serial.print(",");
    Serial.print(yellowbutton);
    Serial.print(",");
    Serial.println(bluebutton);
  }

  }
 
}

After that, I made an Arraylist for the “bullets” that the character shoots and modified the code to shoot the bullets (circles) at fixed intervals.

As for the avatar, instead of using a sprite sheet since I only have 2 images to switch between, I decided to make an if statement to switch between the two images when the attack button is pressed. These are the two images Im using for the sprite:

I made these using https://www.avatarsinpixels.com and added more details to the avatar with procreate to make it look more like the actual character from the anime.

Also, the curses disappear on contact with either a bullet or Yuji, the former adds points to the score while the latter subtracts 1 life from Yuji.

As for the game, it currently looks like this:

Main Screen:(there are no instructions for the slider so ill add that in soon)