This started off as a public engagement project when I was part of UCL's iGEM team during summer 2017. I built 2 games to gamify the central dogma of molecular biology and this is what the installation looked like at the London Science Museum Late event - Cellulates, September 2017: https://vimeo.com/243147845 More details about the purpose of the project: www.flogh.me
transcription.html is a Dance Dance Revolution-like game where one learns about how transcription happens inside bacterial cells by pairing up DNA nucleotides to turn them into mRNA
translation.html is an arcade game for the translation process, where you need, as a tRNA, to catch the correct Amino Acids, make proteins and fend off the other ones
The whole project is built with p5.js libraries, sockets.io and express.
Currently, the 2 games also require an analog joystick and a dancepad to be played. I had one version of the Translation game that could be played with a mouse, but would need to find it - it's also a bit boring, as it's too easy.
You can get a joystick off Ebay for $2. A dancepad is a trickier one, as I built it myself and you can find a lot of resources online.
To run the current games you will need to download and include in your project the following libraries and packages:
node.js and npm
p5.js https://github.com/processing/p5.js/wiki
p5.dom.jsp5.sound.jsmatter.js
sockets.io https://socket.io/
Bootstrap 4
express https://github.com/expressjs/express
johhny-five https://github.com/rwaldron/johnny-five
You may find better ways to optimize performance or use better libraries. If so, let me know! Make pull requests and fork the project.
In a previous version, I used p5.serialcontrol for serial communication with the Arduino: https://github.com/vanevery/p5.serialcontrol/releases , but found johnny-five to be much faster. If planning to use the former, also include p5.serialcontrol.js
The 2 games can communicate with each other via the sockets, but the gameplay needs optimizing and some function need to be faster. Welcoming suggestions on that.
Soon (ETA January 2018), I'll upload my prototype for a live quorum sensing exercise through (hopefully), as webb app, for which I'd definitely appreciate any help/feedback.