Week 12 Update
This week I worked on completing a rough proof of concept for the driving/bidding/shopping game. This meant getting the functionality and physical inputs to work and not conflict with each other. My goal is to have all three interactions be simultaneous, without awkward pauses. This will create the most frantic and overwhelming experience.
Development Updates
I cobbled together a scrollable list of placeholder items that will eventually house the shopping part of the game. At first the scrollable list and the text input were fighting for focus – you had to click in and out of them, which was not ideal for the game. I eventually found a fix that keeps the focus in the textbox and just fakes the focus for the scrollable items. That will allow me to keep all the inputs separate for each part of the game and avoid conflicts.
Here’s a demo of the game while driving, scrolling items and typing numbers all at once-ish:
Physical Devices
Another bonus this week was finally receiving all my input devices from Amazon/eBay. Here are some notes on getting those set up:
USB Volume Knob
The knob worked right away when I plugged it in, which meant that it also controlled the volume up and down while using it in the game - definitely more frantic but not a great experience. I found a video in Mandarin (with English subtitles) that showed how to reconfigure the knob using a blank text file 🤯. I eventually got it working with the game by mapping the knob turns and clicks to F1, F2 and F3 keys (again, to avoid conflicts with other inputs and the text field). The knob will be used to scroll and click the shopping list.
10-Key Number Pad
This also worked as expected right away, as it’s a keyboard. Godot easily distinguishes between number pad keys and the top row numbers, so this will be easy to integrate. The 10-key will be used to enter bids for new mowing jobs, in a text/messenger like format.
USB Steering Wheel and Pedals
The most satisfying piece of equipment in this setup, the Logitech WingMan Formula GP is a USB steering wheel and pedal controller from around 1999 – 2000. It was also cheap enough on eBay that I could risk it not working with modern computers. To my surprise, the computer recognized it right away, but nothing was mapped to it. A short search led to Enjoyable, a homespun app for mapping controllers to other keys/mouse events:
27 years later, the wheel and pedals still work! They will drive the lawnmower and add another dimension of frustration with the foot controls.
Test Setup
Here’s a photo of the setup after getting it all working. My desk is too thick to clamp the wheel to it, so I’ll need to make some kind of jig or find a new table.
Up Next
- Creating the behind the scenes mechanics (i.e. the guts of the game).
- Creating lo-fi assets for each section of the game.