As a second part to our Makecode Arcade project, we had to set up and wire our own arcade controllers! I used a cardboard box, and painted the top of it white. Then, I added the words “Press Start” and some subtle tetris designs. The buttons I used are the 4 directions, A, B, and an exit to menu button. All of the wiring was done on the inside with a ground wire, and then separate wires that were all connected to the pi. For future reference, or for any makecode-pi project, below is an image of where each wire is connected to the pi.

Some challenges I encountered during the creation of my cardboard arcade controller:

• Having to make homemade gesso (artist’s primer) to paint on the cardboard; turns out it chips and I had to cover some areas in my scarce white paint and glue.
• Uploading my game to the pi’s micro SD card because my original SD card did not work.
• Wiring! I completed wiring in my prototype, but then I had to move everything over to my final product.

But this project was not just filled with negatives! I ended up with an amazing arcade box that works smoothly and the wiring is in the correct places. I am also very proud of the design, and I put a lot of thought into making it. Below are some photos of my completed design–inside and out. I was going to include a video, but it exceeds the website’s limit. I tried to cut it down, but it still somehow exceeded the limit.

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Based on the MAP test from NWEA, you must escape the MAP test by finding and answering all 5 questions in a large maze. The prompt behind our games was to be school related, and having just completed MAP testing I thought “Why not?” You are a student character, and you control the character with your up,down,left,right arrow keys. No question will be behind another question, meaning everyone should end up answering them in order from left to right in the maze. The highest score you can get is 5/5 or in MAP test numbers, 350. Then in receding order; 300, 250, 200, 150, 100.

Play in the link below or through the embedded game at the bottom of this post

https://makecode.com/_M7m3RYdgu5o0

One of my challenges when creating the game was that I didn’t know how to formulate the maze. I also thought that I would have to make 30 different question blocks for the player to walk on, but then I realized that I could use randomization for each question. What I ended up with was 6 possible questions for each of the 5 players will walk on (The question you get will be randomized between 1-6, but you will get 5 questions in total). I learned that for most of the challenges I encountered, I was only just overthinking the solution. Another example is when I wanted to have a wall pop up that blocks a player from stepping on the same question tile again. This was an overstep, and I realized all I had to do was switch the tile- although I did like the aesthetic more of the wall.

If I could remake the game tomorrow, I wouldn’t do anything different except make the maze aesthetic nicer. I do wish that there was a “grey” color preset so the game could have been more true to the MAP test, but that was not an option. I think that this was my best option regarding the school theme because although my other idea was a Harry Potter game, it was barely related to school.

This is my “escape the pie” game. I based this game off of a mini game within the game Go Vacation on the Wii console. The controls are the left and right arrows, and the goal is pretty straightforwards– dodge the pies. After dodging a whopping 50 pies, you will win the game!!

The game was generally straight forwards to make, especially after I found a tutorial on how to make coded alleyways for the pies. Before I found that tutorial, it was very hard to figure out the pie movement mechanisms. Nothing else was really as much of a challenge; although my “win” function was broken for awhile, but I fixed that.

I displayed the block code below; made with makecode arcade.

PLAY my game HERE.