Over the past few weeks, my class and I have been working on an arcade controller. When I first heard of the assignment I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to do the project and overwhelmed because it sounded so complicated, luckily Mr. Dembo showed my class step by step and helped me along the way. The last project we did was a game made on makecode.org on a topic we did in our favorite class. I did an art game and it was based on our art unit called ¨9 squares about me¨ and I made a maze of three different sprites that were objects that we needed to make our 9 squares about me (Paper, Scissors, Pencil). After we finished the game unit we moved onto the arcade unit. My classmates and I got a box of buttons, wires, electrical tape, cardboard, and other neat things to make our controller and then we had to wire the buttons to our PI. This part was tricky for me. After I got the hang of the wiring, I grabbed a shoebox and attached my buttons. Later, I realized I put the buttons in the wrong spot, therefore, I had to start over. I am super grateful I started over because the new box I made looks 100x better! This last week I spent a lot of time trying to make my box perfect. I made sure the buttons were in the correct spot and then I wired them and I painted little designs on the top of the box for effect! After I finished my box I decided to touch up my game a little bit to make my project perfect, there were some issues in my art game that I was not happy with, such as the sprites and how they moved together and they would get separated due to the fact they weren’t the same size so I changed it so when the sprite hit a certain block it would change character. (I had 3 different sprite characters, Scissors, Paper, and a pencil). Although I am still having problems with getting the Pi connected to my tv I’m hoping I can get that resolved. When I played my game I was amazed at how cool it was to play a game that I designed and published along with the controller that was handmade by me.

Here is my finished project! Now you are able to tell which way is which on the buttons.
Here is what it looks like on the inside of my box!
Here is my first attempt on my arcade controller box! As you can see the button holes are making a square shape. When making an arcade controller the buttons should be in a diamond shape so it is clear which way is up, down, left, right.