I'm glad to see that you put a lot of thought into this. This is a game with a lot of challenges to address.

Have you explored the idea of using light scattering to help with the solution-detection problem? If the solution piece contained a material that helped to scatter the light instead of a photoresistor (think something like crumpled cellophane), then your camera idea might work even without using a visible laser.

I do think you'll have to spend some time addressing ways to decrease the amount of precision required in this setup. Small errors amplify themselves over longer distances, so it will be important to increase the margin for error.

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I think a lot of your sensing problems could be solved by having the laser hit a translucent disk and illuminate it, allowing it to 'glow' and be seen by the sensor. We do this in the laser mazes in our Espionage adventures.

I've never played with a class 2 laser with a visible beam. And now, I really want to. :P

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The two concepts explored were relevant to the storyboard. It explores feasibility in terms of alignment and preciseness in the design and also looks into what laser is most appropriate for this puzzle. On the other hand, it seemed like you were slightly caught up in the details like the misalignment between the laser and the photo diode, and you missed the opportunity to look into other options and ideas. For example, could you use a wider beam? Could you use photo diode strips so that the receiver area increases? However, I think that the questions you asked are very important to know early on, for example, how bright the laser light will be at the end so that it is even visible, especially because your maze is long.

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You definitely tackled two questions and sought to explore if they were feasible in your scope. I don't think there were any other questions you should explore especially since they are just about feasibility. Definitely take a look at the Khet board game, the problems you mention in the sketch model are probably also problems that the board game had but it was always 100% consistent.

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Determining whether or not the laser can be reflected, detected, and seen are all critical to your game. I love that you also did calculations to show that scaling up the game will not mess up the results of your sketch model.

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My biggest concern about this model is that you addressed the problem of visibility when the game gets scaled up, but not the amplified precision problem, which is the more important of the two (and unfortunately the more difficult) I would hate to see you get stuck at a later stage because this problem can't be solved with your current time/budget/etc. constraints.

Other than that, I like this idea a lot. I look forward to seeing how it evolves through the development process.

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This model was executed well because it answered two key questions that you were curious about and that had to be answered early on. I think it is also a good sketch model because it raised further avenues of investigation with different photo diode or laser types for future iterations. Since a lot of the puzzle will consist of the users moving the mirrors around, it might have been nice to explore that mirror movement too and see how that affects the alignment. Also, have you explored moving the mirror itself within its housing (see 6dimwits) so that you don't have to worry about the automatic alignment as much, and you can just leave it up to the user to align it well?

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You did a great job!

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Amazing execution! Seems like you learned as much as you possibly could about this game tactic. Maybe it would be a good idea to consider Matt's suggestion of detecting the beam and then re-emitting it at every bend point.

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