Emmanuel LATASTE - MAD - Mutually Assisted Destruction

Game Designer

Student Project - Alternative controller
Since November 2019

IMPORTANT
Due to the COVID-19 health crisis and the cancellation of Alt.Ctrl.GDC 2020 where this project was nominated the project may be presented again in the future.

MAD - Mutually Assisted Destruction is an alternative controller project. Two teams of two players face each others in an aerial combat set during the cold war.

We independently chose to register for the Alt.Ctrl.GDC 2020 which is an event dedicated to alternative controllers within the Game Developer Conference set each year in San Fransisco.
As a result we were nominated and invited to the 2020 edition and it's with great pleasure that we are constantly improving it today to showcase it in the best possible way at the next event!

You play the part of two aviators, a pilot and a copilot, dispatched to the area of operations and ready to defend your homeland. You take control of the latest in a new generation nuclear bombers. The objective of each crew is to take down the enemy’s bomber.

In the cockpit, each aviator has tasks and tools corresponding to his role, and needs to communicate with his crewmate. The pilot controls the plane’s movement, while the copilot tracks their enemy’s location.
To fire on target, the crew must cross reference each other’s long range radar result; however, each crewmate can only scan one axis of the map. But beware! Any intel you share can be intercepted by the other crew.

In this close quarters contest of aerial superiority, knowledge is power, and communication and coordination between crewmates is key.

First version of the game (December 2019)

We prepared our venue to Alt.Ctrl.GDC by making multiple iterations of our game. We started with a wooden prototype but we quickly switched to cardboard paper that allowed us to print our intermediary prototypes with an automated process using a laser printing machine.

Using the same process we cut the latest prototype, that you can see at the bottom of this page, in thin wood. This would allow us to transport it easily to San Francisco with little assembling effort on site.

The prototype was composed of 4 joy-to-key systems, One Arduino Mega, two screens and a computer running the game with Unity and the Uduino plugin.

The input are made using a simple jack connecting system that gives the information to the game of where the player is taking intel from. The mix of digital, analogic and human information are at the core of the experience we wanted our players to have.

This overall system and pipeline of production allowed us for fast iterations where we could easily modify the UX of our alternative controller from one week to another.