Changes to Final Outcome

With the game and controller completed ready for the game test tomorrow, we decided to explain the changes to our project that have differed from our original brief and specs. Overall the game and bike controller has gone according to plan and has more or less stuck to our original plans. A few changes in the types of sensors used for various aspects of the controller have changed, but the changes all still do what was intended. Our biggest change or lack of inclusion is force feedback. Originally we intended to place rumble packs under the seats and pedals, but due to time restraints this was held off as the focus was on the game and the controlling of it primarily.

The use of the Nintendo Wii remote as the handheld paper throwing control, we found that the Wii patch being used in Max/MSP supported the rumble pack inside the controller. With this integration we decided that rather than fit rumble packs to the bike itself we could use the handheld controller to provide force feedback due to the gamer always holding the controller whilst playing the game. This is where we ran into technical issues with the Wii remote.

The Wii remote is set up so that a paper is thrown using the remotes accelerometer and at a specific value a paper is released. This method proved to be successful in that when the controller is flicked the accelerated value will deploy a paper within flash. With this setup we thought we can use the values for the paper deployment and set them to trigger the Wii remote rumble pack so when a paper is thrown the controller will vibrate each time. We spent time setting up the patch so it would trigger the vibration when the correct paper throwing value was met. Unfortunately for reasons still unknown each time the accelerometer and rumble pack ran simultaneously the values would constantly change, which meant the accuracy and continuity of the in game paper throwing was failing, and became unusable whilst the vibration setting was connected.

The Flash Server also created problems in the area of force feedback in the sense that we could have set up features in Flash to communicated back to Max/MSP to trigger the vibration of the controller that would be independent of the accelerometer. However it is a stated fact from the creators of the Flash Server, that if Flash is working on any thing other than the server communication then the two way Flash to Max/MSP communication is lost and is only drawing data from Max to Flash but not back.

Force feedback is certainly a feature we wish we could have added and with more time would have. Technical issues were at fault and we couldn't risk jeopardising the games control functions for the sake of force feedback if the controls are in fact unusable.