I implemented a new control scheme in Quadrapus Sumo using the palm orientation as the player’s means of indicating what direction they generally want to go in. The player’s fingers still map one-to-one to the quadrapuses legs. Indicating the desired direction does not by itself initiate motion by itself; one still has to use their fingers—that is their quadrapus’ legs—to move, which I like. I’d like to achieve something using the Leap Motion controller that can’t be done with a conventional controller.

To make it clear to the user that their palm orientation has this effect, I need to communicate that visually and with regularity. Initially, I was going to just show an arrow below the hand. I was implementing this while streaming on twitch and someone in the stream suggested a banana or some other desired object (e.g., spider, potato) being held on a stick in front of the quadrapus, so I went with that since it seemed more fun. The benefit of this is that the visual feedback is immediate and regular even if the motion of the quadrapus is not.

I’ll be streaming an “Ask a #gamedev” session today on twitch, so if you’re interested in game development, robots, Unity3D, Leap Motion, or physics, feel free to pop in and ask me a question.