Reality enhanced digital boardgame
Koskenneva, Teemu (2020)
2020
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020120426248
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020120426248
Tiivistelmä
As the era of physical media is slowly coming to an end, oddities such as boardgames aided by audiovisual media, including VHS tapes and DVDs, have already disappeared from the market. The goal of this thesis was to design a modern version of these types of boardgames, however with the twist of having most of the game take place inside a video game, while the physical boardgame would act as a support for the game.
To make the boardgame more of a spectacle, instead of normal static game pieces, the pawns were represented by robots that replicated events from the video game as they happened. A Zumo robotic platform manufactured by Pololu was used for the pawns’ bodies, as they were equipped with tank treads and infrared sensors, both of which were used to follow the guide lines on the printed gameboard. To act as the Zumo’s brain a PSoC 5lp development board was chosen, for its ability to move the motors with pulse width modulation, to receive signals from the game through a Wi-Fi module, and to read and process data coming from them.
The game was made to be a simple demonstration of how a game could interact with the Zumo, by communicating through the MQTT light weight message protocol. Therefore, the game was designed to be a simple slow pace turn based strategy game that is easy to build upon in the future.
After some setbacks, the thesis had to be scaled down to a purely theoretical work, as facilities and resources were unavailable during the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of this the thesis was written keeping in mind that its contents could be replicated by using alternative devices and still be able to apply the basic concepts to them.
To compensate for the lack of a practical portion in the project, a lot of the time reserved for it was instead used to design future features and discuss their impact on the whole experience, making the thesis an adequate blueprint for a project with a lot of adaptability and a suggestion for the future.
To make the boardgame more of a spectacle, instead of normal static game pieces, the pawns were represented by robots that replicated events from the video game as they happened. A Zumo robotic platform manufactured by Pololu was used for the pawns’ bodies, as they were equipped with tank treads and infrared sensors, both of which were used to follow the guide lines on the printed gameboard. To act as the Zumo’s brain a PSoC 5lp development board was chosen, for its ability to move the motors with pulse width modulation, to receive signals from the game through a Wi-Fi module, and to read and process data coming from them.
The game was made to be a simple demonstration of how a game could interact with the Zumo, by communicating through the MQTT light weight message protocol. Therefore, the game was designed to be a simple slow pace turn based strategy game that is easy to build upon in the future.
After some setbacks, the thesis had to be scaled down to a purely theoretical work, as facilities and resources were unavailable during the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of this the thesis was written keeping in mind that its contents could be replicated by using alternative devices and still be able to apply the basic concepts to them.
To compensate for the lack of a practical portion in the project, a lot of the time reserved for it was instead used to design future features and discuss their impact on the whole experience, making the thesis an adequate blueprint for a project with a lot of adaptability and a suggestion for the future.