Magical Musical Machinations (or MMM) was one of two of my summer internship projects in 2020 for CISD (Computational and Information Sciences Directorate) as a partner of the AEOP internship program. Completed with another intern, MMM was to be used as a PR outreach tool at school STEM days, to give kids a fun and interactive way to see what 'kids their age' can do at CISD.

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MMM takes the traditional idea of an escape room and interweaves music into it. Each room centers around a different minigame in which the player needs to use a musical instrument to progress the room (with the exception of the Hub room). Once all 4 minigames are complete, a cutscene plays opening the door, and the player completes the game.

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Beyond a VR headset, MMM also utilizes a custom controller, with the production process featured in the last 4 slides of the picture gallery above. The custom controller interfaces with the PC it is plugged into (and Unity engine) through a Makey-Makey board attached at the side of the controller. The controller has 8 buttons (one musical octave with no sharps or flats), which are made of conductive PLA filament. Pressing a button on the controller closes the circuit between the output point for the Makey-Makey board at the copper wristband, and the input point that sends out keyboard inputs.

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The work done in MMM is published as a junior publication in the September 2021 issue of The ITEA Journal of Test and Evaluation, and can be found on page 142 of the pdf available for download at the top of this page.​