Newsletter for project Heidegger Week 12 in PDF Format

This week

Project Heidegger made continued, steady strides this week in all three of our mini-teams–Playtesting, Data, and Origin–and we’re gearing up to represent our effort at Softs in the most assured manner possible. Although this week saw no major victories or travails, we steadfastly forge ahead, toward our milestones, and we strive to elevate each other from amid these post-Halves/post-GDC gulleys of exhaustion. Thus far, we are succeeding!

In Detail

We conducted two more lucrative rounds of playtesting this week, and Martin and Nathan have settled into using our custom Dead Space 3 level and Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel as bases from which to draw their subject player analyses. Further, the inclusion of the online Bartle Types survey at the close of each session has lent invaluable–and almost uniformly affirming–perspective on the veracity of their observational data. Amusingly, Jiyoung volunteered to participate as a playtester this week, and her animated posture when playing, coupled with her shrieks of terror when confronted by necromorphs, should provide extraordinary mirth to whomever on our team processes the video of her session. And surprisingly, given Jiyoung’s purported inexperience, she was able to coordinate and strategize successfully enough with her partner to so very nearly clear the most vicious of our level’s choke points. Bravo, Jiyoung! Additionally, Martin authored a comprehensive summary of our playtesting findings to this point for submission to Ben. On the Data front, Vera has been working to composite the three simultaneously recorded camera feeds (front, side, and gameplay capture) of each of our playtesting subjects into a single, frame, and then manually tabulate the significant metrics from each session that Martin and Nathan are unable to in real time when administering the playtests; Shaveen and Vera have also been assisting with this task, and we aim to have 12 fully processed videos completed by Monday of next week. Shaveen has further been refining the database and parser scripts he created last week so that they can be used harmoniously with the algorithms to which Star has devoted his time. Though Star had previously been solely investigating the usefulness of Hadoop and Mahout, their complexity has turned him toward Apriori, an Eclipse-based frequent item set mining algorithm. We’ve been attempting to run a sample batch of processed data through one algorithm for the past couple of weeks, but the elaborate nature of these algorithms–which Star has never before used but has,most impressively, learned solely for the sake of this project–has prevented us from doing so: next week, however, we are on target for conducting this test. In working as a liaison for the Data Team, Emmanuel installed both Hadoop and Mahout on a computer that will be utilized singularly for algorithm exploration, as we intend to use one or both of these libraries in conjunction with Apriori; previously, Star had to reboot his computer and run Unix when experimenting with Hadoop or Mahout, and Emmanuel’s logistical contribution here will streamline Star’s process. Further, Emmanuel, for his Origin Team responsibilities, finished designing the radar chart for use in our module, and set up the web server which will allow that chart to be updated dynamically. Anabelle, in addition to assisting Vera wtih video processing, worked with Ben to secure a final graphical design for the aforementioned radar chart.

Next Week

Next Monday, we’ll consult again with Zachery Anderson, who we met with very early in the semester, so the Data Team can receive feedback on their pipeline and the type of data that we’ve been collecting. As mentioned, we’ll also be running a preliminary batch of data through one algorithm to test outcome results. Emmanuel, Shaveen, and Anabelle will also be working together to create team promotional videos in preparation for our Soft Opening, which is the week after next.