Teeter Feeder

Course: Building Virtual Worlds

Goal: Build a fun-focused virtual world in one week.

Pitch: Test your balance in Teeter Feeder! Work together with a friend to feed monsters as quickly as possible. Hurry! But try not to fall...your high score depends on it.

Team: Daryl Choa (Producer + Artist), Zhiguo Lai (Programmer), Linyao Li (Sound Designer), Xinyu Wang (Artist), and Joey Yeo (Programmer).

Responsibilities: Prototyping and fabrication of controllers.

Platform: Phidgets.

Project Summary: In Teeter Feeder, two players collaborate to feed monsters by knocking food into their mouths with a plate. Players control plate movements by balancing on wooden see-saws.

For this project, I worked on designing the controller interface. I prototyped miniature see-saws out of cardboard for the programmers to use while coding the game mechanics. I then refined the design through testing of materials.

The original idea had been to build a wooden see-saw for two people to stand on either end. After looking at materials available and testing out material strength, I realized that it would not be feasible to build a safe structure that would hold two people. Instead, I built two individual standing wooden see-saws. I used a PVC pipe as the rotation point of the see-saws.

While testing the structure, we realized the game would be more collaborative if the players were physically interacting with each other. Instead of building two separate see-saws that were next to each other, we decided to keep the PVC pipe as one long piece, with one see-saw placed in front of the other. This would force Player 2 (in the back) to rely upon Player 1 (in the front) for balance. Player 1 used a chair for balance.