Project Logs

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• Music Box - Mitchel

  Brian Wagner • 05/15/2019 at 12:12 • 0 comments

  Project Description 
  

  For my portion of the GamerGorl, I wanted to create a music box. I loved the idea of having tons of songs I like on one device, while also having a sense of control over how the song sounds. If I wanted the song in a different key, I could simply change the frequency of the notes being played to match the key I wanted to play in. If I wanted the song to be an octave lower, which I actually had to do with the Shire theme, I could shift the frequency an octave lower.

  Probably my favorite aspect of the project was the variety of the types of songs I could program into the GamerGorl. I had a classic 8-bit video game theme with the Mario theme, I was able to tackle 60s pop music with God Only Knows by the Beach Boys, I put a film score in my music box with the Shire theme from Lord of the Rings, and I included a 90s rock classic with Wonderwall by Oasis.

  Method - describe your experience writing your part of the project.  What were the easy parts and what did you have trouble with.

  Despite having played piano for about 10 years, I have never been particularly good at reading sheet music. This project has forced me to sit down and read and understand sheet music faster and easier than I ever have. There was originally a program that Mr. Wagner had shown me where it automatically transcribed the sheet music of a piece into frequencies and rhythm. Unfortunately, the rhythm and frequencies were off sometimes, and it ended up being easier to simply transcribe the music myself.

  On the programming side of things, I don’t think I was as comfortable with python as I would have liked to be when we started this project. However, with the help of Mr. Wagner and simply working through everything, I was able to get a better grasp on the language. This was especially helpful toward the end of the project when I began to encounter a lot of errors, and I was better equipped to find them out and fix them.

  Future improvements - What would you make better.  What do you want to change?

  The first and most obvious answer is add more songs. There are plenty of songs that I would have loved to add to my music box, but through time constraints or a lack of good sheet music to transcribe, I was only able to add the four songs. Once enough songs were added, I would love to add more menus to the program. One menu could be different genres that you could choose from, or maybe if enough songs were added from specific artists I could add an artists menu. The other improvement I would want to make given more time is have each note flash a corresponding LED.

   Pics or it didn’t happen - Paste at least 3 screenshots or photos here.

• Simon Game Report - Sam A

  Brian Wagner • 05/14/2019 at 15:13 • 0 comments

  Project Description 
  

  • My game is based off the real game of Simon.  Simon is a game of memory, and it’s supposed to push your limits on how much you can memorize and recall in a short amount of time.  The game consists of four colors (Blue, Red, Green, and Yellow) situated in a circular ring, but since I was dealing with a rectangular GamerGorl, I put one color on each side.  The game starts with one color that flashes, and you have to repeat back to the game which color flashed. Then, two colors will flash, and you have to repeat back to the game, in order, exactly which two colors flashed.  After each correct recall, a new color is added onto the end, and you continue to recall the sequence of colors.  Once you correctly recall the sequence of colors before a new color is added on, you receive a point. If you recall some of the colors correctly but make a mistake, you receive 0 points for the turn and your final score is based off how many points you had at the beginning of your failed turn.  When a color is flashing, the game will display the respective color’s name on the screen.  So, if red is flashing, it will say “Red” on the screen. Whenever the game wants input back for the user, the screen will read “...”.  To select whichever color you think is next in the sequence, you have to push the joystick in the direction of the color and press any button to confirm your selection.  At the end of the game you have to option to restart or return to the main menu. Also, the local high score of the game is saved.

  Method - describe your experience writing your part of the project.  What were the easy parts and what did you have trouble with.

  • The two hardest parts of coding the game were getting the lights to work properly and getting the color selection function working.  Don’t get me wrong, it is very easy to operate the LEDs to do almost whatever you want, but getting only a specific portion of the LED chain to light up was a bit difficult.  This was crucial in my game because only one side is supposed to light up and show particular color during the whole game, never do two sides flash at once.  Writing the code to produce a random color sequence wasn’t very hard either, but the process of the user needing to correctly recall the sequence was difficult.  But, overall I am very pleased with the finished product.

  Future improvements - What would you make better.  What do you want to change?

  • I would want to improve the on-screen interface of the game.  Most all of the game deals with the LEDs and buttons, but almost none of it deals with the screen itself.  I would want to add prompts on the screen that depict how to select your guess and maybe add some graphics to go along with it too.

  Pics or it didn’t happen - Paste at least 3 screenshots or photos here.

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