Make Your Own Arduboy Game – Questions & Button Input

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This is Part 4 in a series on learning how to program your own Arduboy game. If you have skipped the previous parts, please read over Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Stopping Robots From Washing Their Hair

Remember in the previous part of this tutorial, I told you about the back of the shampoo bottles? The instructions say:

1. Lather
2. Rinse
3. Repeat

The problem with this is that if you gave these instructions to a robot, it will repeat these steps forever. We need to implement some way to stop the robot from doing that. In computer programming, we can use conditional statements. Conditional statements are basically questions that we ask the computer and if the answer is true, then follow different instructions

1. Lather
2. Rinse
3. If you need to wash your hair again, then Repeat

The first kind of conditional statements you’ll come into contact with are if statements. Like the example above, you can basically ask the computer if something is true, then do something. A robot following the above instructions won’t wash their hair forever since it will eventually be washed.

Buttons

We can also use if statements to test buttons, too! That’s how video games know if you’re pushing buttons. Moving a character may look like this:

1. If the Right Button is pressed, move character right
2. If the Left Button is pressed, move character left
3. Print character picture to screen
4. Repeat

Format

The format for if statements in C/C++ is:

if(something is true) {
    DoSomething();
}

Only if the something is true, then DoSomething(); command will run.

To check if the A Button is pressed, we need to use the arduboy.pressed(A_BUTTON) function. Putting it in the correct format, it will look like this:

if( arduboy.pressed(A_BUTTON) == true ) {
    DoSomething();
}

Notice that we use a double equal sign == instead of just a single equal sign =. You’ll mostly see this inside of conditional statements. Don’t let it scare you! A single equal sign = means that you are assigning a value. A double equal sign == is checking the value. I’ll talk more about this later!

Above, we checked to see if the A Button was being pressed, but we can also check if the A Button is not being pressed!

if( arduboy.pressed(A_BUTTON) == false ) {
    DoSomething();
}

Cool, right?!

Modifying The Code

Let’s go grab that code from Part 3 and modify it:

//Jonathan Holmes (crait)
//October 18th, 2016
//Printing Text
//Include the Arduboy Library
#include <Arduboy.h>
//Initialize the arduboy object
Arduboy arduboy;
//Initialize our counter variable
int counter;
//The setup() function runs once when you turn your Arduboy on
void setup() {
  //Start the Arduboy properly and display the Arduboy logo
  arduboy.begin();
  //Get rid of the Arduboy logo and clear the screen
  arduboy.clear();
  //Assign our counter variable to be equal to 0
  counter = 0;
}
//The loop() function repeats forever after setup() is done
void loop() {
  //Clear whatever is printed on the screen
  arduboy.clear();
  //Move the cursor back to the top-left of the screen
  arduboy.setCursor(0, 0);
  //Increase counter's value by 1
  counter = counter + 1;
  //Print out the value of counter
  arduboy.print(counter);
  //Refresh the screen to show whatever's printed to it
  arduboy.display();
}

Remember that counter is our variable that increases forever in our previous code. What we’re going to do is change this code to increase or decrease counter depending on if you’re holding the Up Button or Down Button.

We need to find the line that increases counter and remove it. After we clear the screen with arduboy.clear();, let’s add the following code:

if( arduboy.pressed(UP_BUTTON) == true ) {
    //Increase counter
}
if( arduboy.pressed(DOWN_BUTTON) == true ) {
    //Decrease counter
}

Our code to increase counter was counter = counter + 1; . Using that code, we can decrease it by switching the plus sign for minus sign. To decrease counter, our code will be counter = counter - 1; . Try to plug those in and when you’re done, check to see if it is the same as the completed code, below.

Testing Numbers & Variables

I was going to end the tutorial now, but let’s extend it a little more and tell you about testing numbers!

I told you before that inside of an if statement, you can check to see if something is true or false. But, you can also check the values of variables or numbers.

if( counter == 36 ) {
  arduboy.setCursor(30, 30);
  arduboy.print("Yay!");
}

What do you think would happen if you ran the above code? if counter is equal to 36, then the Arduboy will set the cursor and print out “Yay!” to the screen. Notice that you can put multiple lines of code inside of the ifstatements.

Add that right after the other if statements that check for the Up and Down Buttons.

The Completed Code

:smiley:

//Jonathan Holmes (crait)
//October 21st, 2016
//Button Test
//Include the Arduboy Library
#include <Arduboy.h>
//Initialize the arduboy object
Arduboy arduboy;
//Initialize our counter variable
int counter;
//The setup() function runs once when you turn your Arduboy on
void setup() {
  //Start the Arduboy properly and display the Arduboy logo
  arduboy.begin();
  //Get rid of the Arduboy logo and clear the screen
  arduboy.clear();
  //Assign our counter variable to be equal to 0
  counter = 0;
}
//The loop() function repeats forever after setup() is done
void loop() {
  //Clear whatever is printed on the screen
  arduboy.clear();
  //Check if the UP_BUTTON is being pressed
  if( arduboy.pressed(UP_BUTTON) == true ) {
    //Increase counter by 1
    counter = counter + 1;
  }
  //Check if the DOWN_BUTTON is being pressed
  if( arduboy.pressed(DOWN_BUTTON) == true ) {
    //Decrease counter
    counter = counter - 1;
  }
  //Check if counter is equal to 36
  if( counter == 36 ) {
    
    arduboy.setCursor(30, 30);
    arduboy.print("Yay!");
  }
  //Move the cursor back to the top-left of the screen
  arduboy.setCursor(0, 0);
  //Print out the value of counter
  arduboy.print(counter);
  //Refresh the screen to show whatever's printed to it
  arduboy.display();
}

Running The Code

Run the code and see what happens when you push the Up and Down Button!

What’s Next?

You realize you already have all the skills to make a fun game, right? In the next part of this tutorial series, I’ll be walking you through the steps of making a game with all the skills that we’ve covered so far! :smiley:

This tutorial is copied and abridged from the original by Jonathan Holmes.

Credits

I wrote this tutorial in order to give back to the programming community that taught me to get into it about 10 years ago. If you’d like to follow me on Twitter, please do so at http://www.twitter.com/crait8 . I’d greatly appreciate that. :smile: