Magical Sword - Bop It Inspired

Our design process journey begins with an idea to recreate the Elemental Flame Sword from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a famous Nintendo Switch game. Our original design plans consisted of using two IMU sensors (one in the tip and one in the handle) to detect specific motions such as swing left, swing right, stab, and fireball. Additionally, we planned to use two vibration motors in the handle, 256 NeoPixel LEDs & a 0.96” OLED for visual FX, a DFPlayer & Speaker for audio FX, metal contacts for a “sheathing action”, two buttons for physical inputs, and a toggle switch to control power. As our design developed, many changes were made in order to save time, simplify complex the design, and deliver a working product. In the end, our design discarded many components initially planned which would both hinder and help with future issues. Our final design removed the use of the vibration motors, sheathing action, and IMU in the handle. Additionally, we reduced our actions to only “Swing”, “Thrust”, and “Fireball”. These actions all take the IMU sensor data from the tip of the sword along with the buttons to detect successful completion.

The original Enclosure design also changed significantly over time. We began thinking we would have two buttons on either side of the handle and a toggle button to control power. Additionally, we thought we would have metal contacts on the top of the guard that would connected with a sheath for a “Sheathing action”. However, there were many problems with this initial design, so we ended up with two buttons on the same face of the handle for user inputs, a toggle switch instead of a button to control power, and we completely discarded the idea of implementing a sheathing function which would be really difficult to manufacture for a sword of such immense size. Additionally, we believed that the handle would contain our PCB & Power Supply (batteries), but there was not nearly enough space if we wanted to keep the handle to a realistic scale, so the PCB was shifted to the hilt which was stretched out to accommodate the PCB and components. The gameplay is very similar to the classic bop-it game. The game will indicate an action to perform to the user via the OLED screen and an Audio cue. The User is then required to complete the action within a given time limit in order to be considered a SUCCESS. If the user fails to complete the correct action in the time frame, then the user loses a life (of which they start with three). However, as the user completes actions successfully, the level increases, requiring more actions to move onto the next level while providing less time for each action. This continues indefinitely until the User loses all three lives.