Connect Four - Given up :-) by jth

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

When we made our TicTacToeGame in the fablab ( http://hci.rwth-aachen.de/fablab ) of the RWTH-Aachen, we where aware of the limited gameplay. A game, which works a little bit better is known as "Connect Four". Using integrated circuits as multiplexer, it would be possible to light up a bigger matrix than 3 by 3, which makes a four win scenario possible.
Using the standard arduino cube example, you can make a bigger one with a four-gamefields width, heigth and depth with 3 leds in each gamefield for the different players (using the three "cheap" colors red, green and yellow, this makes six player possible with one or two colors and all three colors for active-gamefield). Working with two 4 to 16 multiplexer, you can add some status displays in the bottom, like some kind of highscore and the actual game options (e.g. actual count of player, three or four wins, gravity on or off (if you can place your "stone" everywhere or only on top of other "stones"), if winning combinations disappears and some kind of timeout for the player).
The controller for the player has three buttons for the x-, y-, and z-axis, which are colormapped to improve the mapping for the player. These colors are also lighten as axis in the same color in the gamefield, with the intersection point between the different axis as active gamefield. This can be accepted with a fourth button or moved along the axis with the according buttons.
The different buttons have different series resistor and are connected with a analog input of the arduino for the read-out.
Small Update (after some years :-)
The controller for the player was first reduced to be just a pcb, and later replaced to integrated buttons on the side and top of the "gamefield".
The brain of the game was then replaced by the Big_Mainboard_A, produced with the pcb-mill in the fablab, and later updated to the B-version: The first attempt, where an analogue readout is needed for each button, was way to slow, for the second attempt each button is multiplexed like the leds, which accelerates readout and simplified the logic.
But it with programming and connecting all the lines it becomes clear, that a little more thinking through beforehand would have been better: The multiplexed leds are, of course, just 1/16 as bright as normal, and expanding the I/O outputs of the micro controller with, for example, I2C output expanders to adress each led for themselve would be far better.
The best way would be to use modern intelligent leds, where you just need to connect VCC, GND and two serial ports for each rgb led with the next one.
Can't therefore say it's work in progress anymore, just a (at leat possible to blink) cube which collects dusts on the shelf :-)