Suppose you are looking for all the basic elements to make a great Halloween-themed shooter game. Zombies? Check. A huge "laser"? Check. Crossbow shooting fork? We have already provided you with protection. Take a look at "Fork The Zombies", it was set up by [piles.of.spam] to entertain the children nearby this Halloween.

The game is played on a large screen. It shows a large group of angry zombies marching towards the player. They must shoot as many as possible before reaching the screen. The weapon provided was a crossbow; when the trigger was pulled, the fork was fired, hoping to stab one of the ghouls. The game is written using an open source engine called Urho3D, which is responsible for all core 3D and physics work, allowing users to focus on designing gameplay and visual effects.

In order to bring more physics to the game, [piles.of.spam] made a real crossbow for players to use. Its handle is cut from a piece of waste wood, using a band saw to make a general shape, using a CNC machine to make an exquisite cut, and it is equipped with a laser pointer, ESP32 and a trigger based on a micro switch. The laser shines on the game screen, and the ESP32 sends data packets via WiFi when the trigger is pulled.

Use clever tricks to track the position of the lens: aim the webcam at the screen, with a red color filter on the front. In this way, it can only see the red laser dot moving on the screen. The generated image is processed using the Python OpenCV library, which provides a function to convert the relative movement of the pointer on the screen into an absolute position along the playing field.

The computing hardware consists of a pair of Jetson Nano boards. These boards use quad-core ARM A57 CPUs and powerful graphics hardware to generate the visual effects of the game. The end result is impressive, especially considering that all of these were designed and built in just three weeks. Obviously, its target audience is very popular, as tourists line up to try to shoot hungry zombies.

The laser pointer is an obvious tool for creating shooting games: we have seen games with a single circular target, a set of shapes set around you, and even a metal can that falls and stands up again. However, if you need to protect yourself in a real zombie apocalypse, a slingshot that shoots a knife may be more useful.

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