Asturret

[pilesofspam]

It's time to create another game for my kids' birthday parties. The oldest is turning 8 this year and so we're moving away from pirate ships and on to... Asturret!

Asturret is a combination of 'Asteroids' and 'Turret'. The name borders on absurd, so I'm happy to take suggestions (Jorgerosa has had some good ones in the past) Play occurs on a projector screen, with an asteroid field tumbling slowly toward you. Just like almost every game of asteroids ever, you've got to pick which ones to shoot out of the sky before they destroy your gunship. The biggest difference here is that you'll be riding on a home made electrically controlled gunship turret to do so. The field of view never changes, so the assumption is that you're riding on the bow blasting a hole in the asteroid field that you've mistakenly wandered into. Naturally the turret will be engineered too slow to get EVERY asteroid, so some decision making and luck is necessary. To make things a little more fun, there will be an occasional enemy warship in the distance taking pot shots at you!

I'll put updates here as development continues, deadline is, as usual, the end of July. Here's the requisite screenshot, although this is the basic idea of your background, it will evolve as well.

[Cube_]

Oh wow! Sounds awesome (Just like your other projects all do!)
Names.. names...
turroids? (No, don't use this, it is at least as absurd)

Sorry, can't think of any good names not based on the word cube >.<

[CuteAlien]

Sounds interesting as every year :-) Good luck!

[fmx]

Cool, another project for your lucky kiddo

I don't like the name "asturret" much, "turroids" isn't bad actually, or maybe something totally different like "astro blaster" or something

you could have random powerups and bonus pickups floating around, shooting them can give extra points or maybe even clear the whole field of approaching asteroids to make the game easier and more fun.

throw in some StarWars references too, if he's into that kind of stuff

[pilesofspam]

Thanks guys. Keep the names coming! Astro Blaster, unfortunately, is already taken. It was a 1981 Sega arcade game.

[Cube_]

Kill all humans... *Never mind, this isn't even the right category. also taken*
WMDATNA (We Must Destroy All The Nazi Asteroids) *Not as good of an idea as it was in my mind*
Cubical astrophysics *What is this, I don't even...*
AAAS (Advanced Astrophysical Asteroid Simulator) *Most "logical" one so far*
Arcane astro box *wait what?*
Unrelenting onslaught of sub-space objects *ok.. these are getting worse*
Spacial coordinate: DOOM *Err... this makes some sense at least*
Asteroid Disco *um.. wat?*

If you didn't figure it out, I am TERRIBLE at names, but that is my contribution. (If anything it might trigger some actual creativity in someone)

[hendu]

Name it "X-37B Blackstar", the US top-secret robotic shuttle.

It orbits earth, protecting it from oncoming asteroids with powerful lasers, unbeknownst to the people below...


NASA materials are in the public domain, so using the name should be fine.

[pilesofspam]

Name it "X-37B Blackstar", the US top-secret robotic shuttle.

It orbits earth, protecting it from oncoming asteroids with powerful lasers, unbeknownst to the people below...


NASA materials are in the public domain, so using the name should be fine.

That's pretty good! I've used a bunch of NASA public domain APOD pictures for original source in that collage above, so 'Hey NASA! Thanks!'. Also getting a kick out of the names.

[pilesofspam]

Birthday party is next Saturday, so the deadline's approaching fast. I have a downloadable windows version of the game available (link at bottom). The turret mechanics work! I cut out a 3/4" x 2' (for the metric speakers among us, about 19mm x 2/3 m) in diameter plywood disk and sandwiched it between some slightly larger 1/4" (6mm) plywood to make a giant pulley. This sits on a lazy susan bearing rated to hold about 800lb (350kg) (only cost about $11 thankfully). Yeah it's overkill, but they didn't expect it to be used this way either.

Here's a few pics of the turret as it's being constructed. Essentially, the seat and ridden platform is done, I still need to integrate a control panel, and the gun (which is a 4" PVC tube with a wiimote inside, tilted by a linear actuator.)



Here's the drive system, which is just a gearmotor I had laying around with a small 4L pulley on it. The whole thing is driven nice and slowly by a 4L belt.



Here's a PC version of the game. The actual party game will move a little more slowly, due to the fact that your turret moves pretty slowly. It's all about stressing to get to that next asteroid. A full game shouldn't last more than 3 minutes, so every body gets a turn (it's a party game!)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a04tcz73j5fcumw/ASTURRET.ZIP

More updates during the week!

Dave

[pilesofspam]

The party was a hit! The kids spent the first 1:30 engaged in the other activities we had planned, and then I opened the basement to this running. Everybody had a blast, and most of the parents took a ride on the turret as well. One of them said "Dave- the room is shaking. How did you do that?". I've got a lot of low frequency sound in the explosions (especially the end one) and I've got a subwoofer turned all the way up in the back corner. It's hard to determine location from low frequency (< 100 Hz) sound, so the illusion works pretty well.

The turret on the front end has a linear actuator hooked to a 4" PVC tube with the Wiimote tie-wrapped in the middle. I'm using the joystick switched to directly drive the linear actualtor (4 amps max) but I'm using an arduino an a Simple H motor controller in the back to control the turret. Why an arduino? Well, I had one laying around, and I wanted a 100mS delay in between direction changes so the turret has a chance to stop under its own friction rather than backdrive that motor. The motor is just a 15rpm 1/15hp usually used for something like extending the canopy of an RV. Instead I mounted a 1.75" pulley and built my own wooden 2' wide pulley.
Here's a video of Ben playing with the lights on (so you can see how all of this works). You can see a hacked up wiimote in there, looking at an IR target I have mounted on the screen. It just acts like a mouse, and I have a BlueTooth adapter back at the PC picking it all up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xGDUFwfsGA

Here's the first 30 seconds of the game captured by FRAPS (FRAPS free version has a 30 second limit)
http://youtu.be/GhiGYv4dySE

and here's the end of the game:
http://youtu.be/QSt7-DRm-6Q

Again, I have a faster 'Windows' version available for download above (requested by a bunch of kids at the party) and I'll have the source released on SourceForge over the weekend. I am still far from proficient at C++ (I do a lot of C, but really this is the only C++ thing I do all year), but I can say this is much less of a mess than my previous offerings.

Dave

PS- not to hijack my own thread, but I recompiled an old irrlicht project- 'Piratinhas' for my younger son's birthday party the next day. He had a great time sinking pirate ships from the comfort of an electric turret!

[CuteAlien]

Incredible! Your basement is like a holodeck in your hands :-)

[Cube_]

Absolutely magnificent, you sir are a genius! (Now, I can't wait until next year to see what you come up with I_I)