Results

All things considered, our project is awesome. We had trouble getting finishing touches done because people kept asking to play! Overall, we are very pleased that we were able to produce a completely working game, without any flicker, pixel crawl, or screen artifacts. We feel that we have met our goal by designing a game that is on par with Duck Hunt, given the restrictions of the microcontroller. The one thing that we would have liked to implement but were unable to was the background. There was simply not enough time between frames to include this and still have the game work properly.

In terms of accuracy, we found that the gun worked quite well. When we put the gun right up against the screen during testing, we found that if you’re not pointed directly at the duck, you’re not going to kill the duck. The accuracy of our sound is also quite good, considering the fact that we have no musical talent whatsoever. With the help of some gifted classmates, we were able to convert the sheet music from Far Above Cayuga’s Waters into the correct code for the music. We were pleased with the results.

A very important issue that comes up in our project is safety. Our number one concern throughout the creation of Duck Hunter was to ensure that we are not putting the user in harms way. There were two main areas we had to consider in terms of safety. The first was radiation. When we first began, we did not know how the Zapper gun worked. We were worried that it emitted some sort of beam at the television screen, and then determined if a duck was hit or not. If this were the case, then our users could be subjected to extremely dangerous rays! Fortunately, we found out that wasn’t the case. Because the light gun only detects light, we concluded it was perfectly safe to use.

The second safety issue is the threat of epileptic seizure. In order to toggle between options and screens in the beginning menus, it is necessary to flash the screen white in order to determine if a selection was made. One simple bug in our program could have caused it to rapidly jump in and out of one of these flash states at a rate of 60Hz! Medical studies show that this barrage of light stimulation can cause electrical abnormalities in the brain, sending the user into a seizure. In order to ensure that this does not happen under any circumstances, we have carefully checked and rechecked our code for bugs that could cause this. We are absolutely certain that there is nothing in our code that could cause this dangerous rapid flashing. Duck Hunter is 100% safe!