Ankle Chomper

Ankle Chomper

An alt-ctrl game where you play as a feral kid with one goal: chomp those ankles.

Everyone’s tall, but vulnerable. Weave through a forest of sky-high, lanky legs in search of the perfect ankle to bite. But watch your step—if you’re not quick, you might get stomped.

To bite in-game, chomp a fleshy ankle controller IRL. Bib available for messy chompers. 

Conventional Controls: A/D for left/right foot (tank controls), Spacebar to CHOMP

Downloadable Build required for alt-control setup.

Alt-Control Setup

Materials

• Arduino Uno
• Casting/Molding Silicone Kit (we used Amazon.com: JDiction Silicone Mold Making Kit, 2.32lb(37oz) Super Elastic Liquid Silicone Rubber Fast Cure Soft Mold Making for Casting Resin, Candle, Soap Molds : Health & Household)
• Someone's foot to model
• Piezoelectric Analog Ceramic Vibration Sensor (something like this)
• Wires
• Hot Glue
• Electrical Tape
• USB DDR Pad

Setup

1. Acquire a silicone foot (we used a molding/casting kit from amazon and molded around Jacob's foot)
2. Wire up the Piezoelectric sensor to the Arduino's A0 port (e.g following Detect a Knock | Arduino Documentation)
3. Hot glue the Piezoelectric sensor's solder points and wrap the edges with electric tape to prevent cutting through the silicone
4. Cut open the top of the foot with any craft knife and insert the Piezoelectric sensor. Make sure it's not too shallow, or bites can deform/break the sensor
5. Plug in the DDR pad and configure the desired buttons to press A/D using a controller to keyboard utility like Joy2Key (Windows) or Enjoyable (Mac)
6. Connect the arduino to the computer & upload the arduino sketch from the Github repository below 
7. Run any standalone build and connect to the serial port the arduino is on using the main menu dropdown
8. Ready!

Github Repository: DoubleBrackets/Ankle-Chomper: An alt-control game about (literally) biting ankles really hard

Details

Ankle Chomper was developed over 2 weeks for an alt-control class. The original idea came from a friend who said "I really like biting things; you guys should make a game where you have to bite something IRL".

The idea of a random kid biting people's legs had pretty good imagery, so the game developed around that. The weird/goofy scheme also inspired the movement controls of having the player run in place to move each individual foot, tank-control style.

Most of the development effort was spent on figuring out how to cast Jacob's foot in silicone while inserting a sensor inside to detect. There were two tries, but we ended up casting a foot by itself and cutting it open to insert the piezoelectric sensor.

The original foot pedals went through a few iterations, before we decided to use a USB DDR pad as it worked the best and time was limited.

The game software was developed in about a week as a simple arcade-style game following the premise. 

Credits

Arthur - Software, 3D Modeling

Jacob - Hardware controller, Foot Model

Nicole - Hardware controller, Art, 3D Modeling

Qihang He - Hardware Controller