Joycon Scooper From Hell

Joycon Scooper

Designing for movement means that you have a variety of devices at your disposal that use full 3D movement technologies such as gyroscopes and accelerometers.

For this project, we came to the decision in designing a demo showcasing the use of Joycon (Nintendo Switch). Unfortunately, after ideating a few games and drawing out our plans for mini-golf, we quickly realized the limitations of the Joycon Unity API. We could never quite figure out how full on positional 3D Joycon movement can be implemented in Unity, but we were able to use its sensors for rotation and tilts.

Upon that discovery, we immediately shifted our focus in developing a different tech demo that isn’t so much a game. This is the Scooper tech demo in which the Joycon are used to move around a shovel-like object in game to scoop out all the balls from a platform. To keeps things interesting, we put in a little more focus in the art direction of the game than initially planned.

Ideation Phase

We ideated a few games that we felt could be prototyped within the span of about a week. These ideas were mini-golf, football throwing, and ball kicking. We quickly felt turning the project in to a game was the best course of action for this piece of hardware considering the Joycon was made to be used by the video game industry. Ultimately, we settled on mini-golf and drew out a course to work on in the next phase. Here is our drawing:

The walls and simple course were decided early on to make this an accessible demo for anyone since our goal was to demonstrate the capabilities of the Joycon.

Prototype Phase

The first step towards developing our prototype was to follow the directions in connecting a Wii Remote to Unity for development since the Joycon can be used in a similar way. This however, was not enough. We had to do a little research and find an API online that will actually get our Joycon working with Unity. We ended up finding on and did some file merging with the Wii Remote API to start applying Joycon movement to in game objects.

Once we applied the Joycon functionality to the in game golf club we created, we realized that you can’t move it around in 3D Space. It will only rotate or tilt which made it hard to hit the ball. This is where we shift our strategy to instead create a prototype of a demo showing those functionalities. We turned the golf club in to a wide plank, we changed the course into a bucket under this plank, and then we added a lot of balls in the bucket with physics in place just as gravity and the level of bounce. The goal in our prototype is tilt around the plank while scooping out all of the balls from the bucket.

Since we opted to create something with a less interesting objective, we wanted to take another measure to capture the attention of the audience by adding music, visual effects, and backgrounds to our prototype. We went with a horror psychedelic atmosphere that brings a different mood to the demo.

Prototype Final Review:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Improvements:

Implications for Design

The usability trade-offs to using our device is that the only way to move the main object in the game is by rotating the Joycon switch controller with the wrist which is limiting. Which means that you cannot move the object with physical movements such as moving the controller in a circular motion or scooping motion. One of the affordances of the device is that it does give users precision by rotating the scooper at certain angles to get the balls out of the pit.

If we were to use another device such as the Xbox Kinect, then our design would have been a bit more different. It would be more different because instead of using the Joycon controller for the scooper, we would have to use our bodies since the Xbox Kinect uses motion from the body. It would also be less effective since the Xbox Kinect sometimes doesn’t register all of the movements from a user and so because of that there would be difficulty in playing the game. Our group would most likely make a new game that isn’t relevant to the scooper game.

A task that may benefit from incorporating a 3D environment is blue-printing a building and constructing a 3D model of the building for construction. How 3D interaction plays a part in this is that, a person would construct the 3D model of the building using mouse and keyboard then would put himself in the building through virtual reality to help give him the feeling of really being there. This can help them better sense what is it like being in a room with a certain layout, giving them a chance to modify arrangements of a room or building before it is actually built, saving them cost and time. In VR, the person could walk around, and get different point of views on things. Tasks such as object placement or creating new 3D objects would be inefficient to do in VR. Using the mouse provides a lot more precision than a controller, and is very quick and takes minimal effort. Tasks that require many object creations or placements in a 3D environment would be done a lot easier using a mouse than a VR controller.

Conclusion

As we developed our movement prototype, we cycled through various ideas, some worked and other didn’t. At first we were trying to develop a mini golf game that would use both the switch joycons full range of motion. Unfortunately because of time constraints we were not able to find a script that would allow us to utilize these full movements. Instead, the script we were able to find only utilized the switches rotating controls, the game could only record our movement if we were rotating the joycons, other movements were not being read as input. This forced us to compromise our initial idea and instead create the best game we could give our controller abilities and time constraints. Looking at our final product, I believe its strength lies in its easy to use controls and overall fun yet simplistic game design. As far as weaknesses go, I think our only weakness is attention to detail in both gameplay and visuals, but because of time constraints we weren’t able to get to that portion of our game. Overall I enjoyed the movement design sprint and the game we were able to create from it. I would love to go back and add those details, but I believe we built a very solid base that will be easy to improve if we ever decide to.

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