estimated reading time: 2 min
Flappy Bird is one of the most interesting titles in video game history. Not because of the gameplay, which is pretty basic and wasn’t at all groundbreaking at the time of release in 2013, but because of the subsequent controversies. By 2014, it had become the most downloaded free game on both the iOS and Android app stores. But its creator, Dong Nguyen, ended up removing the game from those stores, because he felt that it was too addictive and that it was a detriment to society. Now Engineezy has brought it back in the form of a real-life Flappy Bird game.
It didn’t take Nguyen very long to create Flappy Bird—reportedly just a handful of days. But Engineezy’s real-life version is much, much more complicated and took a lot more time. It is a physical game, in which the player controls an actual, tangible bird that flies between endless pipes on a revolving mechanism. As the bird goes further and further without a collision, the score continues to increase. There are even sound effects!
To make that all happen, Engineezy had to come up with several subsystems: something to move the bird, something to move the pipes around and around, something to adjust the heights of the pipes, something to detect collisions, and something to keep score.
The pipes ride on a chain mechanism, similar to a chainsaw, driven by a stepper motor. Conductive traces on that mechanism’s track send power to each pipe carrier, so servo motors can raise and lower the pipes. Each has its own “EEZYmoove” control board with a dedicated microcontroller development board. It uses a rotary encoder to monitor the position of each pipe and can set a new height before the pipe enters the “game screen” area.
The bird moves up and down on another servo-driven mechanism, which Engineezy designed specifically to be a bit unwieldy to match how the bird flies in the Flappy Bird game. It has a spring and an extended arm to create “floppiness” in the motion. The bird and the pipes move across a printed “screen” with the familiar cloudy backdrop.
In the center of that screen is a split-flap display for showing the score. To determine the score, Engineezy had to find a way for the game to check if the bird passes a pipe or collides with it. He achieved that in a very fun and clever way: by making the bird physically fall of its mount in the event of a collision. Magnets lightly hold it in place and if it falls off, a pogo pin circuit breaks and signals to the controller that the game is over.
The final trick was sound effects and instead of playing audio files, Engineezy added actual chimes. As the bird passes a pipe, a striker taps the chimes and produces a great sound effect.
All that was left was for Engineezy to challenge a friend to a gaming contest. We’ll let you watch the video to see who won.
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