Snake on a Split Flap
Do you remember Snake? Some of us played on Nokias in ‘97, others still play on iPhone 12s. The individual modules on our Split Flap Display are like an old TV screen. This similarity provides a new way to play an old pixelated game with analog technology. In our first “One Day Build” episode, we program “Snake” to run on a Split Flap Display.
Snake on a Split Flap
Do you remember Snake? Some of us played on Nokias in ‘97, others still play on iPhone 12s. The individual modules on our Split Flap Display are like an old TV screen. This similarity provides a new way to play an old pixelated game with analog technology. In our first “One Day Build” episode, we program “Snake” to run on a Split Flap Display.
The Integration
We found some preliminary code for Snake but ran into movement bugs such as timing, turning, and latency so we wrote the code from scratch. Split Flaps contain rows and columns of individual modules like pixels, but they cannot change the number, letter, or color as fast as a digital screen. Starting the head of the Snake on the “comma” flap and extending the tail fixed our timing issue. The comma is the closest flap to the white flap in each module. The turning issue required integrating our NES controller with our new Python code – it worked. This time without any latency.
#/media/File:Cgasnake.png)
The Rules
We had to brush up on the rules of Snake to polish off our code. Can we go through walls? What happens when you eat an apple? With these in mind, we tweaked them to work on the Split Flap, rather than a computer screen.
The 2:1 aspect ratio of the board gives the snake a faster vertical than horizontal speed so we compensated each to flow at the same pace. The player still needs to avoid the walls to stay alive, but we kept our longer starting tail to further reduce the difficulty of the game.
