Some notes on the game rules from the stream about the new Love Live TCG ("Love Live! Official Card Game", LoveCa for short)! There's some similarities to SIC, but it generally seems like a more refined and faster-paced version of it.
Of course, this is not a complete rulebook, there's a lot of situations that didn't come up in the stream, but for those who want to follow the games the seiyuu played, here's an overview:
Your deck has 72 cards:
12 Energy cards, 48 Member cards, 12 Live Show card
You need to win 3 rounds to win the game
Also playable with a "half deck": 12 Energy / 24 Member / 6 Live Show - 2 rounds to win (the second stream game was just played to the first round)
You have two draw piles: Energy cards are a seperate pile, Member cards and Live Show cards are shuffled together in the "main pile"
The main area of the play space (I'll call it the "Stage") has three rows: There is a front row (for sideways cards) and a middle row (called the "Area", for upright cards) with three slots each, plus a back row where you will keep the Energy cards you draw
Other places on the mat: the discard pile called the "Waiting Room", and a stack where you keep Live Show cards after you win rounds as a point counter
A Member card has:
Energy cost, ticket in the top right - how much it costs to bring this Member onto the Stage
Penlight icons in the top left - if this Member is on Stage when attempting a Live Show, you can draw this many cards from your deck as Support
Hearts (top left, normal orientation, below Penlights) - the hearts this Member contributes to Live Shows when on Stage. These come in six types based on the attribute colours from SIF All Stars
Support Heart (top left, sideways, above Penlights) - the heart this Member contributes if pulled as a Support
Any number of Skills - we haven't seen them in action during the stream, but they seem to have similar triggers as SIC cards
A Live Show card has:
Requirement, the hearts on the note staff - you need this many hearts to successfully clear this Live Show
Score, top right - a difficulty rating for this Live Show card's requirement, used to decide rounds where both players clear a Live Show
Support Effect (bottom left) - comes into effect when drawn as a Support, can be an extra heart or increase score
Preparing the game:
Start with 6 cards on your hand, drawn from the main pile
Redraw as many as you want, shuffle unwanted cards back into the deck
Start with three Energy cards in your Energy row
Initial player order decided by Rock-Paper-Scissors, winner gets to choose
Rounds:
Each round has two phases: Main Phase and Live Phase
Use the Main Phase to bring Members onto your Stage, then bet on what Live Shows you can clear for the Live Phase
Perform a higher scoring Live Show than your opponent to win the round!
Main Phase:
Turn all your inactive Energy (sideways) to active position (upright)
Draw one Energy from your Energy pile into your Energy row. That means that every turn, you'll have one more Energy available naturally, to enter stronger and stronger Member cards
Also, draw one card from your main pile to your hand (if the draw pile runs out at any point, shuffle your Waiting Room and make that your new main pile)
Then, in any order and as many times as you like:
a) Enter a Member card into the Area from your hand using your drawn Energy - mark the amount of Energy cards needed inactive (by turning them sideways)
b) Use Activatable Skills (light blue) from Members you have entered
You may not want to use all of your Energy to enter Members, as there are some Skills that you can only activate by paying Energy
You can also do a Baton Pass: move a Member cards already in the Area (for at least one turn) to the Waiting Room. This allows you to enter a more expensive Member card, by reducing its Energy cost by the Energy cost of the removed Member
Once Player 1 is done with their Main Phase, Player 2 plays through their Main Phase, then go to the Live Phase
Live Phase:
Unlike the Main Phase, the Live Phase is played step by step between the two players
Step 1: Put as many cards from your hand as you want face-down in the front row of the Stage, and draw as many cards as you put down from the main pile. They don't have to be Live Show cards
Step 2: After both players put their cards down, they reveal them at the same time, and move all non-Live Show cards to their Waiting Room
(Members discarded this way have no effect - it's just a chance to discard and redraw cards in your hand, or to trick your opponent into thinking you're playing multiple Live cards)
Players who have Live cards in their front row after this go to Step 3, otherwise skip it
Live Phase, Step 3 - The Performance:
Attempt the Live Show you set up by fulfilling the Heart requirements of the leftover cards
First, for each Penlight on your Member cards in the Area, draw a Support card from your main pile. If they have Support Hearts or Effects, they can be used for the Performance
Match the Heart requirements on the Live Show cards with those on the Member cards in your Area and the Support cards you drew
If the required Hearts are colored and have symbols, only that type of Heart can match the requirement
Some Support Hearts say "ALL" - they are wildcards and can match any requirement
Some Live Show cards have grey, symbol-less Heart requirements - they can be matched with any kind of Heart
If you can meet all the Hearts requirement of all your Live Show cards in the front row, the Performance is successful!
Member cards in the Area are not discarded after the Live Phase, but any cards drawn as Support are moved to the Waiting Room
Scoring:
If only one player has successfully cleared their Live Shows, they automatically win the round
If both player cleared their Live Shows, sum up the scores of the Live cards, the player with the higher score wins the round
If the players were successful, but tied in score, both get a point - unless you are one away from winning. You must score your final point with a clean win, not a tie!
The winner(s) move(s) a Live Show card into their point counter stack. If they have reached the required amount of points, they have won the game!
Otherwise, a new round begins back at the Main Phase. If the last round was not a tie, the winner of the last round goes first this time.
If you notice something off in the stream compared to these rules, or don't understand something, let me know and I'll check it out!
Since as I said there is a lot of similarities to SIC, I think I can spin off a new version of the SIC Translation Site, and make it a LoveCa database - depending on how complete the card list on the official site will be. If you are interested in checking out or playing the TCG when it comes out in February, throw me a message, maybe we can make a little group and get some English info about the game out there together :)
Some notes on the game rules from the stream about the new Love Live TCG ("Love Live! Official Card Game", LoveCa for short)! There's some similarities to SIC, but it generally seems like a more refined and faster-paced version of it.
Of course, this is not a complete rulebook, there's a lot of situations that didn't come up in the stream, but for those who want to follow the games the seiyuu played, here's an overview:
Your deck has 72 cards:
12 Energy cards, 48 Member cards, 12 Live Show card
You need to win 3 rounds to win the game
Also playable with a "half deck": 12 Energy / 24 Member / 6 Live Show - 2 rounds to win (the second stream game was just played to the first round)
You have two draw piles: Energy cards are a seperate pile, Member cards and Live Show cards are shuffled together in the "main pile"
The main area of the play space has three rows: There is a front row (for sideways cards) and a middle row (called the "Stage", for upright cards) with three slots each, plus a back row where you will keep the Energy cards you draw
Other places on the mat: the discard pile called the "Waiting Room", and a stack where you keep Live Show cards after you win rounds as a point counter
A Member card has:
Energy cost, ticket in the top right - how much it costs to bring this Member onto the Stage
Penlight icons in the top left - if this Member is on Stage when attempting a Live Show, you can draw this many cards from your deck as Support
Hearts (top left, normal orientation, below Penlights) - the hearts this Member contributes to Live Shows when on Stage. These come in six types based on the attribute colours from SIF All Stars
Support Heart (top left, sideways, above Penlights) - the heart this Member contributes if pulled as a Support
Any number of Skills - we haven't seen them in action during the stream, but they seem to have similar triggers as SIC cards
A Live Show card has:
Requirement, the hearts on the note staff - you need this many hearts to successfully clear this Live Show
Score, top right - a difficulty rating for this Live Show card's requirement, used to decide rounds where both players clear a Live Show
Support Effect (bottom left) - comes into effect when drawn as a Support, can be an extra heart or increase score
Preparing the game:
Start with 6 cards on your hand, drawn from the main pile
Redraw as many as you want, shuffle unwanted cards back into the deck
Start with three Energy cards in your Energy row
Initial player order decided by Rock-Paper-Scissors, winner gets to choose
Rounds:
Each round has two phases: Main Phase and Live Phase
Use the Main Phase to bring Members onto your Stage, then bet on what Live Shows you can clear for the Live Phase
Perform a higher scoring Live Show than your opponent to win the round!
Main Phase:
Turn all your inactive Energy (sideways) to active position (upright)
Draw one Energy from your Energy pile into your Energy row. That means that every turn, you'll have one more Energy available naturally, to enter stronger and stronger Member cards
Also, draw one card from your main pile to your hand (if the draw pile runs out at any point, shuffle your Waiting Room and make that your new main pile)
Then, in any order and as many times as you like:
a) Enter a Member card onto the Stage from your hand using your drawn Energy - mark the amount of Energy cards needed inactive (by turning them sideways)
b) Use Activatable Skills (light blue) from Members you have entered
You may not want to use all of your Energy to enter Members, as there are some Skills that you can only activate by paying Energy
You can also do a Baton Pass: move a Member cards already on the Stage (for at least one turn) to the Waiting Room. This allows you to enter a more expensive Member card, by reducing its Energy cost by the Energy cost of the removed Member
Once Player 1 is done with their Main Phase, Player 2 plays through their Main Phase, then go to the Live Phase
Live Phase:
Unlike the Main Phase, the Live Phase is played step by step between the two players
Step 1: Put as many cards from your hand as you want face-down in the front row of the Stage, and draw as many cards as you put down from the main pile. They don't have to be Live Show cards
Step 2: After both players put their cards down, they reveal them at the same time, and move all non-Live Show cards to their Waiting Room
(Members discarded this way have no effect - it's just a chance to discard and redraw cards in your hand, or to trick your opponent into thinking you're playing multiple Live cards)
Players who have Live cards in their front row after this go to Step 3, otherwise skip it
Live Phase, Step 3 - The Performance:
Attempt the Live Show you set up by fulfilling the Heart requirements of the leftover cards
First, for each Penlight on your Member cards on the Stage, draw a Support card from your main pile. If they have Support Hearts or Effects, they can be used for the Performance
Match the Heart requirements on the Live Show cards with those on the Member cards on the Stage and the Support cards you drew
If the required Hearts are colored and have symbols, only that type of Heart can match the requirement
Some Support Hearts say "ALL" - they are wildcards and can match any requirement
Some Live Show cards have grey, symbol-less Heart requirements - they can be matched with any kind of Heart
If you can meet all the Hearts requirement of all your Live Show cards in the front row, the Performance is successful!
Member cards on the Stage are not discarded after the Live Phase, but any cards drawn as Support are moved to the Waiting Room
Scoring:
If only one player has successfully cleared their Live Shows, they automatically win the round
If both player cleared their Live Shows, sum up the scores of the Live cards, the player with the higher score wins the round
If the players were successful, but tied in score, both get a point - unless you are one away from winning. You must score your final point with a clean win, not a tie!
The winner(s) move(s) a Live Show card into their point counter stack. If they have reached the required amount of points, they have won the game!
Otherwise, a new round begins back at the Main Phase. If the last round was not a tie, the winner of the last round goes first this time.
If you notice something off in the stream compared to these rules, or don't understand something, let me know and I'll check it out!
Since as I said there is a lot of similarities to SIC, I think I can spin off a new version of the SIC Translation Site, and make it a LoveCa database - depending on how complete the card list on the official site will be. If you are interested in checking out or playing the TCG when it comes out in February, throw me a message, maybe we can make a little group and get some English info about the game out there together :)
First look at Gyakuten Live! (Love Live x Ace Attorney) - Episode 4: The Expunged Turnabout
Mifune Kaoruko will defend Kawamoto Misato for a crime that occurred outside Tochiman Inn. They will be joined in the trial by Takami Mito, Takami Shima, and Miyashita Ai.
Download Gyakuten Live FREE here:
A Love Live! fangame with Ace Attorney-style gameplay
Got another very silly strategy using Scenic Flight infinite :^)
(Ch3 First Area Boss spoilers) https://mstdn.schoolidol.club/@Suyooo/112105617348341677
(Final Boss spoilers) https://mstdn.schoolidol.club/@Suyooo/112106092308952007
They are already selling data to midjourney, and it's very likely your work is already being used to train their models because you have to OPT OUT of this, not opt in. Very scummy of them to roll this out unannounced.
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This should be opt-in. Not opt-out. Opt-out relies on people seeing this specific update - and what about abandoned accounts, or people who only log in once every few weeks or months, so they don't see this until weeks after the training data for the AI has already jacked their shit?
People will absolutely have their stuff taken and scraped without their consent unless this system is entirely opt-in AND "opting in" 100% means any AI partner will completely avoid your posts. And I do not trust that this would be the case.
I think this is all the unit effects you can activate by summoning certain pairs and trios in the YohaNuma demo
+1 Attack: Kanan and Dia, Dia and Mari, You and Mari, Lailaps and Hanamaru
+1 Defense: Chika and Kanan, Chika and You, Riko and Lailaps.
Draw 1 Card: Chika and Riko, Riko and You, Kanan and Mari, Lailaps and Ruby, Hanamaru and Ruby
+1 Energy: Chika and Hanamaru
+2 Shield every time you deal damage: Dia and Ruby
There's also a few big bonuses for summoning all members of a year (with Lailaps being the stand-in for Yohane):
+3 Defense: Lailaps and Hanamaru and Ruby, Chika and Riko and You
+3 Attack: Kanan and Mari and Dia
These seem to be the only trios - I tried Sunshine subunits (AZALEA) and the anime song trios (Be as one), and got nothing special.
Also there's a good chance I accidentally marked a pair as having no special effect, because I was distracted with GDQ and might have missed the popup :^)
Today, I offer you: a new database site with translations for all 2000+ cards from School Idol Collection, the Love Live! collectible card game. That also includes the How To Play and FAQ pages, and some extra little bits, like a tool to print out sleeves with the translations for the SIC cards you own.
If you have some SIC cards from buying merch but never tried the game, I made this for you! Consider this more of a "soft launch" though, since there's still a few things I want to add before I consider the site complete - like online play, so people who don't own a complete deck IRL can also experience this neat little game. If you'd be interested in that, please let me know!
For now though, you can still flip through the pages and look at all the card illustrations and skills :)
LL! Guess That Album is now one year old, so here's a new game mode! Colors have been really useful in all of those other rounds - so now, let's take them away...
If you guessed this album art, you can play today's round here, and let me know what you think about the new mode!
Can you tell which album this is? Daily Love Live! album art guessing game.
There's also some more smaller stuff in this update:
Light/Dark mode toggle
Rebalanced chances for the daily game mode picks
Fixed some bugs with the little thumbnails if you share your result
Some backend things to make it easier to reroll and less likely for me to break things
This will probably be the final game mode and big update for LLA - I think this is about everything I can do with the design space here, without making modes feel too similar to each other. There will still be special one-off rounds though, especially for days like April Fools :)
Thank you for playing LLA this past year - I hope you continue to enjoy it!
And with this mode finally done after like a dozen of failed attempts and iterations since the site went up, I'll move on to finishing up another project. I hope I can release at some point in the coming weeks, since it's been in the works for more than two years...?
WE ARE THE "HEROES"!! - NACHERRY - Fan Translation
(This is Chemi Lupinus!)
(Incoming emergency call from Cherry Island!)
(Looks like something bad is happening at Point X, over!)
(This is Nachaan Cosmos!)
(Ok buddy, let's get going!)
Let's go
Go where your heart leads you to, be ambitious
We'll be there, just for you, your strongest heroes (Yeah!)
Go, go! Heroes never die!
Go, go! Change my life! (Woo!)
Go, go! Are you ready, guys? Alright!
[Lupinus]
No matter where the sound of tears falling comes from
We won't turn a blind eye to that (We'll never fail to notice that)
Even more so if you're at a loss for what to do!
[Cosmos]
No matter how old or what gender you are
Yes! We'll come running at any time
If you call for us!
D-D-D-Directly to you, we'll come jumpin' jumpin'
When we're working as one, we can't be stopped
D-D-D-Dancing like cherries, shakin' shakin'
Even in a tough spot, we'll have a blast, yay yay yaaay
We'll come to your rescue, for sure
We're here!
Everyone, at any time, needs someone to be a hero for them
We'll be the ones to save your smile, you are not alone, stay with me (stay with me)
Go for it now! (Go for it now!) Go for it now! (Go for it now!)
Let's go all out! Fire!
Hurry up! (Hurry up!) Hurry up! (Hurry up!)
Who's the greatest duo? That's us! We are one!! (One!)
Go, go! Heroes never die!
Go, go! Change my life! (Woo!)
Go, go! Are you ready, guys? Alright!
[Cosmos]
Who is disturbing the peace of this town!?
We'll get you (and punish you), with a righteous "Bang Bang Bang"!
[Lupinus]
You can't just keep waiting, you have go out and search for what you are looking for
Step by step, your courage and resolve will grow stronger, and the world will change
D-D-D-Don't give up on yourself, keep laughin' laughin'
But there's no way out, S.O.S.!
D-D-D-Don't stop the music, keep movin' movin'
Don't worry, we're in top form, it'll be a piece of cake
We'll never lose, we'll always rise up, for sure
Assemble!
It's awesome that you're fighting on, even though you are scared
We've got your back, okay? So, we are always with you (so, we're with you)
Go for it now! (Go for it now!) Go for it now! (Go for it now!)
Let's go all out! Buster!
Hurry up! (Hurry up!) Hurry up! (Hurry up!)
Who's the greatest duo? That's us! We are one!! (One!)
Power on!! Punch and kick!! Like a star!!
Ooooh… Let's do it! Let's go! Fever!
We'll never give up on your future, for sure
Come on!
As long as you call for one, there will always be a hero for you
You are amazing, you are wonderful
So everything will be alright
Let's go
Go where your heart leads you to, be ambitious
We'll be there, just for you, your strongest heroes (Yeah!)
Go for it now! (Go for it now!) Go for it now! (Go for it now!)
Let's go all out! Passion!
Hurry up! (Hurry up!) Hurry up! (Hurry up!)
Who's the greatest duo? That's us! We are one!! (One!)
(Once again, we have protected the peace of Cherry Island!)
(But as long as there are those who need help, we will be here for them!)
(Because that's what we, NACHERRY, do! Wahaha!)
-> Romaji transliteration here!
-> More NACHERRY translations over here!
Hi! I'm back, and my BIG SIF setup is complete! That's not to say I'll never touch anything about it ever again, but it works great, and it also looks great now. Almost as if it's not just a pile of jank and bodges!
If you missed part 1 and part 2, the tl;dr is: I recreated an old SIF event where you stomp on big old floor buttons with eight other players to play songs together as a team. The other two posts talk about how the switches work, and various details about how it's all connected respectively, in case you are interested!
This post is another write-along of me working on stuff, and this time, it's about just finishing off the last few problems and to-dos - making a case for the electronics, and thinking about reliability and portability. Because of how many topics I want to cover, everything will only be covered relatively briefly. But if you want to know more about something specific, drop me an ask and I'll write more about that topic.
And just to have this important bit above the fold: I'm bringing the setup to Connichi on Saturday next weekend, in case you are there and want to play. More about that at the bottom of the post - but let's get started!
First off, an admission: I lied to you. Last time I said I made eight more floor switches. But that was not quite the truth:
It was eleven.
So multiply everything I said last time by 1.33 - 12 total switches, with 36 shelf liner layers, 24 of those copper taped and soldered, 144 holes cut into 12 rug pad layers, 192 snap caps pressed by hand, 48 cables crimped with bullet connectors by hand. Needless to say, I have been taking it easy to give my wrist a break...
The first question is probably "why?" - it's not like there's a 12-spot mode or something. That's true, I'll never use more than nine of the switches at the same time. The reason these extra three buttons exist is reliabilty: there can be three backup floor switches on standby, to swap in if something breaks.
The switches are probably fairly easy to fix if something goes wrong - just need to re-solder a connection or repair some copper tape, at most. But that will still be a problem when actually playing with the controller system, because it will always take some time, during which the game will not be playable. Having more switches on standby means you can swap out the faulty button to diagnose and repair it, while the game can go on!
But the main thing is that I will not be having the means to repair switches in most locations in the first place. I'm not going to bring my screwdrivers, soldering station, multimeter, extra copper tape, cable and everything else to wherever we're playing! And there's a good chance there's no power or space for a repair station, anyways.
That's why I went with three backup buttons, so the game can go on even longer even if I I'm unable to do repairs right away. We'll just keep playing, and I'll repair the broken switches when I'm back home. And technically, because all the buttons are modular and I can swap out the separate layers, the system doesn't become unusable until four of the same part break!
That should be more than enough reliability for almost any situation, especially since it probably won't be used for more than a couple hours at a time.
Next up: let's hide all of the work I did.
Having the wiring visible is a little ugly, so let's just put everything in a box. Building an enclosure also makes transporting and setting up everything a lot easier, since I can already connect everything inside the box ahead of time, and then just have to plug in and place the switches on the floor. And the easiest way to make a bespoke enclosure is 3D printing it!
What I'll need - besides the obvious "places to put all of the adapters and the phone" - is some way to access the sockets and board from outside so I can plug all the cables in. Also, even though SIF2 isn't that demanding, it's still a closed box, so I'll probably want to add a fan. But that sounds doable, most of these won't be any problem. I can draw a box with some holes.
I decided to go for OpenSCAD for this project instead of FreeCAD - while it would have been nice to have FreeCAD to plan cable routing and be able to set constraints and everything, I just didn't need all of these complicated features. Again, it's just a box with holes, and I can do that real fast in OpenSCAD.
To make sure I get the box right the first try, I implemented every component as a seperate module in OpenSCAD, so I could print them seperately - for example, I could easily test print only the part of the wall that would house the Ethernet socket, to make sure that it fits perfectly before printing the whole box - and then adjust their position easily without messing up the rest of the components.
For the adapters without screw holes, I used threaded inserts that you melt in the plastic. I've never used them before, but since self-tapped holes wear out after a few times of putting screws in and out, I wanted to try out a more reliable method. These ones will last probably forever, and hold the screws in real tight. They were surprisingly easy to use, I assumed they would be harder to get straight... With this, I can use pillars with threaded inserts and some clips to screw in to keep the adapters in place, no matter how much the box gets thrown around.
These threaded inserts can also be used to mount the arcade controller board and the fan. The fan even gets power right from the arcade board, which has 5V pins meant for LEDs - but they work just fine for anything else that needs power, too. I did add a resistor on the wire though, to turn down the fan speed and noise. Finally, to access the adapter sockets easily without having to open the box, I found panel mount extension cables for all the sockets that needed to be accessible outside - HDMI, Ethernet and USB-C (power delivery).
One difficulty was the sockets for the button cables. These are not some standardized kind of plug, after all, so I can't buy a panel mount cable like the others - I have to figure out how to mount these flush with the outside wall myself, and they have to stay in place, both when inserting and pulling out the cable.
In this case, I was able to use the middle shelf I already had, that mainly exists to hold the phone, since it's placed right above the cable holes. I hot glued the sockets for the cables to some small clips, which can be screwed into the shelf with screws. Finally, the shelf can be aligned with the holes in the wall when placing it in the box, all the sockets being inserted at once. There's even a bit of a taper on the button cable holes, so the sockets self-align with them!
All that's left then is just jamming all the cables in there somehow. The only real awkward cable was the USB-B-to-A cable for the arcade board connection - the one that came with it was two metres long, far too much to fit in there. So I just cut it up and soldered it back together, reducing the length down to just 20 cm. That way, all the cables actually fit in there quite nicely, and there's plenty of space left for the board connector cables, so the middle shelf can lock everything in place!
And here's the finished box! That's a good box, right?
As one little last addition, I worked on some decorations. A plain white box would look a little boring, after all, so I added some accents and icons on the front and top. While it would have been super easy to do by printing the lid in one go and changing to a pink filament for just the decoration layers, I thought I'd be smart and not buy an entire spool of filament just for that. Instead, I printed everything seperately in white filament, and then painted it all with pink acrylic paint instead.
That made the decoration only cost half - but it was such a pain. Between all the coats of paint needed to get a result that didn't look completely awful, having to glue on all of the little dots on the lid by hand, and then the clear coat, which kept getting tiny bits of dust getting stuck in it which are painfully noticable on a white background... I should have paid the extra price for the filament, it would have been less work and looked much better. Hindsight is 20/20. At least it looks okay from "standing on the floor switches" distance, I guess.
To close up the box securely, I also ended up adding some magnets I had around, glued into holes in the lid and the box walls. This way, to set up the game, I don't need any tools - all the cabling in the bottom department can be done far ahead of time, and then, at the location, I just open up the magnetic lid to place my phone into it, plug the floor switch cables into the sockets, connect the output cable on the back of the box, and it's good to go!
This was an important step for the project - instead of a nest of wires openly sitting next to the TV, it looks nice and properly finished now. It probably could have been done way easier by just grabbing a shoe box, punching some holes into it and just having extensions cables hang out, but I wanted to try doing it "right", and I think the result is absolutely worth it.
One more note: I tried to reduce printed waste by just printing small parts to test and only doing the full box print once I was sure everything would work - but all those test prints shown above are still waste of course. This is sadly something that cannot be avoided, but I can at least make sure to reduce the impact it has.
The test prints are not getting thrown into the trash, but will eventually make their way to the Recyclingfabrik. If you've never heard of them, they're a company based here in Germany that makes 100% recycled 3D printer filament! That way, my useless prints won't get burned or end up in a landfill, but can instead be reused in the future. (Also, they make some really cool filament colours, I highly recommend checking them out!)
Alright, now that we made a really good box, it's time to get back to something questionably janky.
With everything in the box running off of the phone battery, the system already is completely portable! Imagine being able to set up a quick BIG SIF game wherever you are, at cons or something… but in order to do that, there's still one massive component missing, and that's a screen to play on. Obviously, playing the game on a 15cm phone screen while standing on buttons up to two metres away is not a good time. You need something bigger!
The coolest thing would be to buy a battery powered projector. That would give you a giant picture and be easy to set up anywhere - I'll probably get one sooner or later, but I'm not pulling the trigger on that purchase just yet. It'll be a lot pricier than the rest of this project, and choosing an outdoor projector seems hard, anyways… (I've been looking for comparisions of images from projectors with different Lumen amounts in different light conditions, but that doesn't seem to exist. Maybe some of you know something similar?)
There's also portable monitors. These are mainly meant as a simple second screen for laptops when working, but they would be a good fit for this situation as well, since they only need a USB connection for power. Something like that could work if I could find a screen that is large enough, and it would also be quite easy to carry around with the setup, as these are usually pretty thin. But again, good ones are usually in the "costs more than this entire project in total" range.
But the thing is, technically all we need is a screen and a battery. I think if we bodge things a little, we can use another device that has a screen and a battery, and is made for being portable: your laptop.
Let me introduce you to scrcpy, which is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread. If you want your Android screen on your PC screen, it is hands down the best way to do it. All you need is an USB cable - no app needed, no massive latency due to WiFi, and no need to send all your video data through some provider's remote server. scrcpy has almost no delay, you can use your PC keyboard and mouse, and you can even play phone audio on your PC with the newer versions. It's incredible, and I use it almost every day.
So, plug the USB cable into the phone, and you can have SIF2 on the laptop screen! A luxurious 40cm screen, and speakers included, no emulators needed! But wait... now that the phone is directly connected to the laptop, I can't connect the other adapters in the box. It doesn't make sense to have the video on the laptop if I can't use the floor switches. Those are the entire point of the project! So, I can't use an USB connection.
But remember that Ethernet adapter I added? The main use for it was to be able to wire up to get a good and stable internet connection when the wireless one is too weak. But by using a special Ethernet crossover cable, two devices can communicate without needing a router or switch, and can create their own network just between them! scrcpy doesn't work just over USB, a network connection works, too - and I can set up that connection with just that cable.
The video stream to the laptop is back up, and the board can still be connected! And now, we have a solution for a portable screen - it shows the game, it has it's own battery, and it's easy to transport! This approach is obviously not perfect - it's pretty janky, and "almost no delay" is still a delay - but for a quick spontaneous game of BIG SIF, this is a fine way to play.
The final hurdle to take is the internet connection the game needs. This is still a massive weak point in the portability, because, as every con-goer knows, it's basically impossible to use mobile internet at cons, as it is immediately overloaded by the amount of people there (or at least German con-goers know, idk if other countries are as bad).
Unless you are have a provider that uses the higher tier mobile networks, it's either extremely slow or just unavailable. If the connection is laggy, that should still be enough to play, as you'd only have to fetch song info at the start of a Live - but SIF2 makes it difficult, due to how the game handles assets, specifically, the music files.
Every time the game loads a new song, it needs to download a file from the servers. That's the reason why, if you scroll through the song list quickly or hit the Random button a lot, the preview music doesn't play for a while: The game has to load all the server files for all the songs you stopped on...
The song files are on your phone, but they are not complete. There's parts missing, and that file that has to be downloaded contains those missing parts. Without being able to download these server parts, the game would not be able to reassemble any song files, and could not play any music.
And this is why a stable internet connection is so important for this project. We'd have no music at all without one, because every file must download it's missing parts from the servers! If only there was a way to keep the missing parts files, and store them on the phone so we wouldn't have to download them every time...
Trying to avoid too much technical details, here's the idea in a nutshell: I made an app that runs in the background while SIF2 is open, and whenever the game contacts the asset server, we trick it into instead requesting the missing parts file from that app. The app will handle the download instead, but in addition to delivering the file to the game, it will also save it on the phone. And if the same file is requested again, we just take it from storage instead of downloading it from the server again!
The code for it is surprisingly simple, but the difference it makes is massive - it's noticable even with a stable and fast WiFi connection, because the delay between selecting a song and the preview starting is completely gone! So I'll probably keep using this app even when playing normally, but most importantly, this is going to work wonders on mobile connections! Maybe, that's enough to play the game even with things slow down... I won't know for sure until we get there.
And hey, while I already made an app, I also added a bunch of buttons to make setting up easier without having to use the shell. Everything that's needed to do a BIG SIF, on a single screen!
Anyways, we've come to the end! That's all for this project for now! Thank you for reading all the way to here!
If you're planning to make a BIG SIF setup for yourself and have any questions, or are just interested in more details on anything I've talked about, feel free to drop me a ask/message and I'd be happy to answer! If you want to come play with me on this setup though, that'll probably be a little harder for most people reading this due to distance, sadly :) But you could try checking my Mastodon, where I might be talking about any cons I'll be bringing it to!
Just to mention it again, I'll be bringing everything to Connichi in Wiesbaden next Saturday (September 2nd)! I won't have a proper setup location, but if you have a group who's up to play, keep an eye out for the GenYoha!Kanan cosplayer - assuming I finish the cosplay in time, otherwise, look for a nesoberi-laden Lanzhu. If we can find a place where we don't annoy others, and the mobile internet connection plays nicely, maybe we can play a few rounds - so, see you there, possibly?
And as the last last last topic, here's some final thoughts - on things I'd like to change, or that you can consider changing if you make something like this yourself!
One obvious part of the project you could change is how the buttons work. I like the copper tape approach - it seems robust, is easy to build and fix in case of problem, and works reliably. But as long as you can make something that can close an electrical circuit, anything could work! One obvious choice would be contact sensor, but personally, I feel that's just a big point of failure, but maybe there's some cool approaches out there I didn't think of...
One thing that I want to try though is replacing the rug pad with some light foam, about 1cm thick or so. As it is right now, the switches are lacking some kind of physical response, you don't feel much of a press. Maybe the foam would allow the button to have a "travel", being able to feel the switch depress and bottom out could be nice.
And regarding the caching app for the sever files, maybe I should just go all the way with that idea? Because ideally, I'd extend this concept to not just the missing part files, but generally all server communication. The app would just replay responses from when I logged in earlier instead, and have infinite plays without a connection! But I'm not sure whether I want to go down the private server rabbit hole...
The big thing I'd love to do though is improve the menuing. SIF2 is just not meant to be played with buttons - it's made for a touchscreen! And the keyboard solution I have right now works, but it's not a great solution. The floor switches will still be functional on the menus and mess around there, and the keys will also be usable on the screens they're not meant for. It's definitely not something I can just pass to someone and say "here, have fun".
But what would the better approach be? The base requirement for any better interface would be to be able to track which screen the game is on, which is already a major problem. One thing I was able to come up with was making a helper app record certain regions of the screen, and doing image comparison - as in, "if this button is visible, the app must be on that screen". But that would be a whole different project, probably worth a full post in itself...
Okay, I'm stopping for real now. Too many ideas, not enough time, as always. byeee
I'm creating a GDQ break channel as a coding exercise and I couldn't help but notice your Mega Man one is incredible. I was wondering what, if any, tools you used to work with sprites and 2D animation in general. I'm new to PIXI and animation as code in general so any tips would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Hey, thank you so much! I didn't know much about PIXI before either, so when I started the Mega Man channel, it was mainly just reading the code of the other channels that do something similar to what I did, and seeing how it works there. For me, that channel was Corvimae's T-Rex Runner channel, it's a fairly simple one with a bunch of examples of working with 2D sprites in PIXI!
(For others seeing this post: Here's a link to the channels on the break screens on Games Done Quick streams - they are open-source, and anyone can make their own. If you're up for a small coding project and have a neat idea, and want to contribute to the GDQ stream layout, I highly recommend it, it's a lot of fun!)
For sprite animations using frames, one tool that really helped me is Texture Packer. It allows you to take all your seperate sprite files and put them all together into one atlas, so you can access them via references like mySpritesheetVar.textures.coin instead of having to manage all of the texture objects and offsets yourself.
That makes sprite animations a lot easier: To create something like the walk cycle, I just loaded all of the frames as seperate layers in GIMP (or whatever image editor you prefer) and aligned all the layers so they lined up like they should when the animation plays. From there, you can export each layer as a seperate file, with all the empty space still around them. These can then be added to Texture Packer, which will take care of trimming off all of that transparency, but it will also make sure everything is aligned just like you set it once the atlas is loaded!
You'll have to manually define the animations in the JSON file after exporting it (which is just an array of the file names of the seperate frames). But after that, you can simply assign the animation to any AnimatedSprite object by using a reference like mySpritesheetVar.animations.walkCycle and PIXI will take care of everything. (Don't forget to call the play() method to actually start the animation - that had me confused at first.)
As for animations involving sprite movement, in most cases, you should be able to keep it simple, and just move objects by a constant amount each frame. It's easy to set up, ensures that everything always lines up correctly, and there's often no need for more complicated approaches (especially for a retro-styled channel, where most things move in straight lines anyway).
Most of the objects in the MM channel do something like this, such as the shots moving at a constant speed. There's also no need for proper collision detection for objects like them - taking pickups as an example, I just compare their X coordinate against a constant value to see whether it is close enough to the left side of the screen to be collected (which also helps to make sure the items can never be jumped over).
But since the channels are based on games, one tip I can give is to try out a little bit of physics-based animation - if the movement of your sprite works the same as the one from the original game, you can get good-looking results fairly quickly! Jumps, for example, can be done by setting an upwards vertical speed for the sprite and then applying gravity to it every frame, to get a really nice jump arc.
For this kind of movement, since you are trying to replicate a game, there's a lot of similarities to code you would write for games. The main difference is that there's no player input, the jumping is instead controlled by donations and timers. So, looking up platformer physics tutorials might help with implementing these animations - to see how the physics behind the movement work, and how you can apply them to the sprites here!
If any questions come up about how something in the MM channel works, feel free to drop me a chat! Looking forward to seeing your channel :)
Hello again. In case you missed the first part of this project, I'm trying to recreate an old SIF(1) attraction where nine players jump around on floor buttons to play the game cooperatively. Last time, I went into how those buttons work, how they connect to the game, and completed the first switch.
Just need to do that eight more times.
This is another post with a bunch of text I'm writing down as I work on the project, in case you want to see where it's going or want to build something similar yourself. The TL;DR is that all floor switches are done now, I had to change the button mapping app, and found a nice solution for selecting songs and starting Lives - and then there's a video of me trying (emphasis on trying) to play BIG SIF solo.
This is the part of a project where there's nothing to do but boring, repetitive work. There is more interesting stuff to do, but you can't get to it before you just spend several hours doing the same thing over and over again, and it's hard to get excited to do it. So, even though this was probably the most time-consuming step of the project with 25+ hours, it can be summarized in one sentence: there are now eight more functioning switches.
This involved cutting out a total of 24 more shelf liner circles, clipping holes into 8 more rug pad spacers and 8 of the shelf liners, inserting 128 snap caps, crimping 16 connectors, and placing all the copper tape and soldering it together. One small change I made is that I added a little bit of copper tape to move all the connectors a bit to the side, so you don't step right on it when going for a press, and also gave it a generous glob of hot glue to serve as strain relief.
Also, I had to purchase more anti-slip rug pad after all - turns out most of the one I owned was too flat to work properly. Oops. With the new rug pad, I noticed this beady style of rug pad is more stretchy on one axis than the other, so these layers are not rotationally symmetrical. To help with that, I cut out the corner where the connectors are glued on - not only does this make that spot a little flatter, but it also makes it easy to tell which orientation the pads must be placed when assembling the switches to align everything correctly.
Since I don't own any proper presses, all of the snap caps and crimp connectors had to be done by hand. That - combined with all the liner cutting, rug pad trimming, and soldering - has not been a fun time for my wrist :)
It might be a good idea to invest into snap cap and crimp presses instead of pliers, it's probably cheaper than replacing my wrist down the road... and for the soldering, I'll probably just go with copper tape with conductive adhesive next time as mentioned before, to avoid that problem altogether.
Speaking of crimp connectors: add 36 more to the count for those connecting cables, and 18 more for the other ends on the controller board. The latter one just involved replacing the little button connectors the board comes with, which would usually make it easier to wire up arcade panels.
As for the cables, those are speaker wire. It's probably extremely overkill for a simple signal wire. I originally wanted to use dirt-cheap doorbell wire which would have been more than enough to carry the signal even over long runs, but there were two reasons I didn't go with it.
One reason is that doorbell wire is solid wire. But if people might step on the wire, or I want to roll up and transport the parts of this project, stranded wire is far more durable, so I wanted to make sure to use it for the extra reliability. The other reason is that it was on sale :) I decided on buying a 25m roll and having each cable be 2m long - which is probably somewhat overkill again, but for things like cable length, I'd rather go too long than too short.
But hey, we've got over the mountain that is the boring and repetitive part of the project, and now we can ride down the hill to the finish!
Wait, no, that would have been too easy. Of course there's problems.
There was something that I completely missed in my test from the first post. I only had one floor switch, so I didn't try an actual song, which would have uncovered a big issue with using Key Mapper: it doesn't support pressing multiple buttons at once.
If one player holds down a switch for a hold note, and another player taps their switch, the hold immediately ends. And of course, I didn't notice that problem until I actually had multiple floor switches completed.
After a few hours of searching and experimenting, I could only find one other app that worked. It is called Mantis, and it sucks. It contains ads, requires a weird and completely intransparent set up procedure through a wireless ADB debugging session, you must map the inputs of the arcade controller board to an Xbox controller layout before you can use them or they'll just be ignored, there's an unremovable menu button on your screen at all times, the map can't be programmatically disabled to stop the buttons from inputting for a moment, and I've found it's maybe a little unreliable? It just suddenly stopped while the game was running once.
But as I said, it's the only one that I've found that works. So, I'll have to live with it. At least it supports the holds that Key Mapper doesn't do. So, you can play the game fine now. We can get back to finishing up the setup.
But before that, have you noticed though some of the mapped tap locations for the buttons are slightly off from the center of the spots in the game? I intentionally moved them a little, so they still hit the tap spots during Lives, but miss certain menu buttons! For example, the tap locations for spots 4 and 6 are moved down, so they don't hit the menu buttons while the game is paused. Otherwise, the player on floor switch 6 could accidentally use up my loveca if they kept stomping on the button after their stamina ran out and continued…
Here's everything connected together! The nine completed switches, all linked up to the board, and all that's left to do is set up Mantis and the HDMI output on the phone, plug in the single USB-C cable, and it's ready to play!
But before we plug everything into the phone, I really quickly want to note something about the adapter: The adapter required for this project was not just about needing a way to go from USB-A to USB-C - after all, that could have been solved even easier by just replacing the USB-B-to-A cable of the board with a USB-B-to-C cable and connecting it directly to the phone.
As you might have been able to tell from the cover picture from the first post, playing BIG SIF on the phone screen is kind of... not optimal. So, the adapter had to have both an USB-A port and an HDMI port, so you could show the game on a TV or projector!
The adapter I ended up picking not only had those two ports, but also two more USB-A sockets and an USB-C socket. The USB-C port is for power delivery - everything runs off of the phone battery if it is not used, but this allows you to use a powerbank to extend the battery, or just plug in a wall charger so you don't have to worry about it at all.
And the other USB-A ports come in really handy, as well. One of them can be used for an Ethernet adapter, which can vastly improve the stability of the required internet connection, if available.
As for the other USB-A... one problem I hadn't considered at all is the game menus. As in, song selection and actually getting into the game. Of course, you could always just walk over to the phone, and try to find the correct tap spot on the screen that is turned off, then walk back to the switches - but there's a better approach thanks to that last USB port, with a wireless keyboard I had around already:
This one in particular is a wireless keyboard and touchpad combo, which gets recognized as a generic keyboard and mouse on any device you can plug it into - including Android. So now, you can use the touchpad on that to move around a cursor and do the menuing that way, without having to run back and forth!
It's still a little awkward to control the pointer via the touchpad, but there's more that you can do: the keyboard part is not actually needed for this project, since we don't need to type any text... and Key Mapper is sitting idle now that we replaced it with Mantis, so how about we pass the keyboard to it?
The keyboard won't have to deal with multiple simultaneous presses, so by setting up keys from it in Key Mapper, we can get an entire keyboard worth of buttons to map even more taps to! That way, instead of having to move the cursor across the screen, you can select and start songs by just pressing a few keys in order. And Mantis still handles the floor switches, so holding down the buttons still works fine, no matter how many are pressed.
Also, yes, I am planning to run regular Lives when playing on this. You might be wondering - "Why? There's a Rehearsal mode now, wouldn't that be better for something like this?" And the answer is yes, it absolutely would be, since I don't have to care about LP or running out of HP during a Live then!
But the Rehearsal mode has a static background (see video below) instead of the cool Live Monitor, so I'll be happy to sacrifice my LP candies for the cool effects :) I'm not going to ever use all of them, anyways.
And as for the HP problem, I could just add some healers... and if anyone ever wants to see how badly a Master chart would go, I can still start a Rehearsal by clicking on that button using the touch pad.
~~~ a quick little bit of an aside
Speaking of Rehearsal though, even if I'm not using that mode - can I just say how much I appreciate SIF2's gameplay direction? It just feels like the game is far more about "having fun just playing songs" than SIF1. There's changes like the ability to restart songs right from the pause menu if you're aiming for an FC, not losing LP if you fail, all songs being unlocked from the start - but also, obviously, the addition of the Rehearsal mode, where you can play any song without using LP and with infinite HP.
One key result of this kind of design is that the game is far less punishing for making a mistake, and I think it invites people to challenge themselves to higher difficulties. There's no need to play it safe anymore: If you're curious about whether you could pass a Master chart, you can just play it, without having to worry about failing and wasting resources anymore.
If the chart ends up being too hard, you don't lose any LP or other resources. You can choose to either run it back as many times as you want, or to play another song, neither option carrying any penalty. That makes the harder difficulties so much more approachable, and I think it's a fantastic change.
~~~ back to your regularly scheduled programming
With the system fully set up, it can finally be played! The problem being, I don't have nine players here, just one. I tried a couple times, but it went about as well as you'd expect, even on Normal - it's kind of hard to consistenly find and hit the floor switches while staring at the screen. But it does work! All the buttons work great (as long as I can hit them)! And even with me stepping on the connectors and cables and kicking the switches around by accident, they don't immediately break.
So with that, the project is technically done! All the switches are functional, you can play BIG SIF as intended, and I can bring the controller system anywhere. That's a massive milestone done, of course - but overall, this project still very much in the "janky mess of cables" state. So there's still some stuff to do...
On the next part of Making BIG SIF2: making it nice, making it good. Probably at least a box to put everything in, maybe something to improve reliability, maybe make the interface something better than just a keyboard with labels on it? Let's see how far I can take this
If you have been following the SIF series for a while, you might have seen "Hop Hop With Everyone ♪ Big SIF" (jp. "Minna de Pyonpyon ♪ Deka Sukufesu") before. It was an attraction made by Klab for the original SIF, which appeared a few times at the SIF Festival locations and Sunshine City.
And as the name implies, it's big SIF. You play as a team of nine, one for each of the nine spots, and have to tap a big button with your feet or jump on it to hit the notes on your spot:
However, it has not been seen since 2019. I guess there's a certain virus to blame, and with the original SIF kind of not existing anymore and Klab being gone, we don't really know what is happening to it.
It is now 2023. SIF 2 has released, but it is not big.
Time to fix that.
What follows is me writing along while I am working on this project. If you want to find out how this works or how you could make one yourself, read on, otherwise, the TL;DR is I have one working switch out of nine so far (the one that has a cable sticking out of it) and there's a little video of it working at the bottom of the post :)
In June 2022, I ran a little contest about trying to play SIF with things you shouldn't play SIF with, inspired by the legendary sausage/soldier game video. There were guinea pigs and dogs, apples and garlic, a tatacon and a shower head, and it was a lot of fun.
In the lead-up to the contest, BIG SIF obviously came up as a related topic, along with some thoughts about how one could build it themselves. I think big buttons are just a really cool way to play games in general. Big buttons are fun. I've made a pop'n' controller setup with 5 Donkey Konga bongo controllers before so you could really slap them down, and that was neat, too.
I actually did some brainstorming about how to approach a DIY BIG SIF around that time, but I ended up never pulling the trigger to start working on it. I did remember about those plans around the start of this year though, since conventions and such were starting to come back. (Obviously ignoring D*komi, which is more of a safety hazard than a convention at this point.)
Maybe BIG SIF could be something to bring to these, as a mini-event? Even if not, I can play it locally with others - and you could play it with just three people too, it doesn't need to be nine players...
I'm just making excuses, really. The truth is simply I think it looks cool and I want to try making one.
There's obviously a lot of details to deal with, but what I like to do is focus on the most important questions first. In this case, to make the project possible, I need to find out:
- How do I build a foot switch?
- How do I control the game with external switches?
Anything else - like how to connect everything, making things look nice or easier to use - can come later, because those parts are not vital. Those two questions are what I need to answer to make sure the project is possible in the first place.
I'm obviously not the first one with the idea of making a DIY BIG SIF, obviously, so in case you want to see another - one I found was made by members of the Rikkyo University Love Live! Club (which sounds extremely cool), with some pictures shown here.
The foot switch method I ended up choosing is really simple: it works by having strips of copper tape touch. Put it on two surfaces facing each other, put an air gap between them so they don't have contact, but can bend and touch each other when there's a weight on the button. This way, you don't need to deal with any sensors, it's just a simple electric circuit.
In fact, now that I am writing this down and looking at the photos again, I think that's also the method the Rikkyo club's BIG SIF used? I think I can see copper tape stuck onto what seems like acrylic plates, and some light foam between to keep them seperated when there's no weight on them.
(Again, I'm not the first to have any of these ideas. Also, their controller probably works with SIF 2, too, so I'm not the first one on that, either. I just want to feel fancy and write about the setup I'm building)
Though, in order to make the entire controller thing easier to transport, I didn't want to go with a solid material like that. There was one thing I found that seemed like it would fit the bill: making switches out of shelf liner. That's what makes up the two surfaces, and anti-slip rug pads can be cut to create the air gap.
That was the perfect approach: it results in an extremely flat button, the materials are light and flexible so I could just roll the switches up for transport, they're easy to clean after use, and also, I had more than enough at home that I could use for the project!
I basically already had everything I needed - copper tape, shelf liner and rug pads. Of course, the fact that it keeps the project cheap is a nice bonus, but the main thing that makes me happy about it is that I really like recycling old stuff that's not in use anymore.
I went with the same tape layouting approach as the original shelf liner mat switch: each surface has the tape arranged in parallel, with one of them rotated 90 degrees so they form a grid, and the rug pad has holes in the locations where they cross over each other. The width of the copper tape I had just perfectly worked out, which was pure luck and 0% planning.
There was a different problem though - my tape required a lot of soldering. The copper tape didn't have conductive adhesive, so I couldn't just stick tape on top of tape and have it connect electrically, it needed a seperate connection. If you want to make one of these yourself, get copper tape with conductive adhesive. It will save you so much work, oh god.
Doing the solder job also revealed another problem that I probably should have seen coming a mile away - the shelf liner melts in the places where I take too much time. (If you ever play on my setup, make sure to check the bottom of the switch to see how badly I messed up on the one you're using! (Actually, please don't.))
Instead of trying to get good at soldering, I just added another piece to the stack: another layer of shelf liner that is just decorative and can hide my mistakes. This one I had to purchase, but that's alright because I found some colored shelf liner that matches the three SIF attributes!! That's worth it, right!??
Some snap caps on the bottom shelf liner and the decorative top will be holding everything together, so I can take it apart again to repair or clean the switches easily after use. In general, the buttons built like this should be fairly resilient - there's nothing to break apart through excessive force, and I can replace single layers of each switch in case something does end up failing. The main thing I'm worried about is the solder joints, and how they'll hold up when I roll up the switches or otherwise transport them.
And with that, we have our first foot switch. Wow! I only did a little bit of multimeter poking to confirm it works at this point. Note that the sensitivity of the pad can also be somewhat calibrated by simply making the holes in the rug pad bigger or smaller.
I think I overdid it a little - even if the switch is nice and sensitive enough to even register the smallest of tippy toe taps, it sometimes gets stuck in the pressed state for a bit when releasing after standing on it. And that's really bad, since hold notes in the game will require perfect timing on the releases as well.
So, I'll probably redo that layer, and just make the holes one row smaller to have the perfect sensitivity.
Now, it's time to get the controller side of the project going, to see whether I can actually play a game with it.
The easy choice here was to simply get a board made for DIY arcade controller panels. These are meant to be easily connected to buttons and joysticks you purchase seperately, and are recognized by any device you plug them into as a normal gamepad.
But in practice, they don't care about what you wire to them, as long as it acts as a button - like the floor switch I just built! I get an easy way to convert them into input, without any need to write custom code, or to deal with debouncing the signal or anything. It just works!
The next step was to connect the board to my phone. That's because another thing I want to do is run the game as intended, no modified app or emulation or anything. I just really want to not deal with all those Android emulators and any lag that could possibly cause, or in case any hosts have reservations about using emulated games (and also emulators are just a pain on Linux in the first place).
But even with that as a limitation, this part was surprisingly painless! The board just connects through a USB-A to USB-C adapter, it's recognized as a generic gamepad as mentioned above, and the Key Mapper app for Android simply lets you map all of the inputs to taps on the screen. That's all that's needed!
So far, only one button is finished, but it is connected and it works - which means I can already play the most important part of the game...
... the timing calibration.
On the next part of Making BIG SIF2: doing the same thing, but eight more times. Also maybe I'll write about something else too, just so the post is not just a picture of eight more circles.
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
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