Snowball Blaster - The Game

The Christmas Light video game - Snowball Blaster! Hop in Santa's electric training sled and grab the game controller for an adventure in snowball dodging. Press the left button to move left and the right to move right. Make it past all the snowballs for a big light show! (nobody has made it yet!) Game is easy enough for kids and challenging for adults... and quite addictive.

Snowball Blaster has 128 channels of Light-o-rama controlled by a PC. The game logic is running on a Basic Stamp which accepts inputs from the player switches and controls the Red Arrows with sold state relays. The BS also sends logic level triggers to the LOR system for Game start and Crash. The snowballs, scoreboard (and the rest of the light show live in the LOR program.) There are separate LOR programs for Attract, Crash and Game play. The BS knows when the snowballs reach the bottom, and compares that to where it knows the Arrow is to detect crashes.

The game is designed around the limitation of having very few positions to light up. The timing of when they light up is more versatile, so that's where the game lives. It's easy to learn, starts easy and gets harder pretty quick. The audio is broadcast on FM so people watching in cars get a good show too.

FAQ -

Electric Bill - about 1/2 cent per game... depending on how far you get
26000 LEDs and incandescent bulbs, and one motorized kiddie ride.
Audio does not blast through the neighborhood, I edited in the music track for the video so it would sound better. Audio plays at a modest level on the driveway so players can hear it. Sometimes cars blast it a bit loud on their radios however.
Game controller is a Basic Stamp BS2 with breadboard

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• christmas
• lights
• holiday
• music
• synchronized
• guitar
• hero
• arcade
• video
• game
• ride
• electronics
• computer
• microcontroller
• Basic
• stamp

[kumbaric]

The music is now available on iTunes! Search for "Crazy La Paint" by Paul Wilkie!

[syxxgage]

Wow. This is amazing. Do you record all players so we eventually see it beat?

[kumbaric]

That's a good idea! I hadn't thought of that. I should add a log to the software to record how far people get. So far the high score has been logged manually. Hmmm... maybe you could enter your initials on the house!

[Mrsplashdamage]

Thumbs up so people can see!

Song is "crazy la paint" by Paul Wilkie it's on iTunes

[crystalrunez]

I love this accordion music. Where is it from?

[bbtdgfan890]

This is just awesome.

[ITZAYI]

I just realized this is by my old elementary school.

[demonfanatic47]

lol i luv it! u always do the best holiday decor!! keep it up! :)

[DragonJedi0]

Who does the voice of Froffy?

[robertotodd]

That's Coool :)

[Stife9000]

o.o 0o0-OMFG