WEEK 8
Jehan – Producer
This week was spent refining our design and playtesting. The team has made great progress in our builds and prototypes– we are getting faster and more efficient with our prototypes. To date, our experience can be broken down into two major portions: an exciting battling portion of our game where the user can control their own bot’s movement and weapon, then attack a basic Combat robot AI… and a “Showcase” portion, in which the user can get a better sense of the inner-working of their combat robot. We had the chance to playtest an early version of the showcase for the first time with our target demographic last weekend, and it was received well.
Much of the later portion of the week was spent preparing for halves, a mid-semester review of our work and findings geared towards ETC faculty. We’ve put together a presentation outlining our overall game structure, iterative process, past and future milestones, and our plan for our delivery. Our client, Bill, will be attending our presentation on Monday of next week, and will give us his feedback on our progress.
I can’t believe we’re at the end of week 8, time is flying! We’re all looking forward to getting done with Halves… especially since we’ve worked through the entire weekend.
Trisha – Designer:
From the last week’s paper playtest for the resource management system, we had the following important findings:
- Self-discovery: Kids enjoyed figuring out a solution on their and were excited when they discovered why the solution worked.
- Considering the weight limitation and solving a problem got frustrating for the kids.
- When solving the problem together, we found lesser participation from the shy/quiet kid and the most loud one would be dominant.
We have decided to split the problem-solving and weight limitations into two different phases.
Phase 1: Find which bot would not get flipped and learn why
Phase 2: Even though your solution is correct, flipping too many times causes damage to internal components. Upgrade to a stronger armor making sure that the bot does not weigh more than 15 lbs.
This week, we performed rapid iterations on our prototype and integrated sound for our playtest sessions.
Playtest sessions: 14th, 17th and 19th of October
Playtesters Gender: 6 Males + 6 Females
Playtester Age: 10-16 years
Iterations:
- Virtual on Physical
Problem:
Players did not realise that the virtual components were rendered onto the physical world.
Changes:
We made the arena transparent.
Results:
Players started pointing that after a while, it felt like the bot existed in the same space as them.
- Arena too Big
Problem:
Originally, it felt like the arena was much above the ground. Players would stand in the middle and rotate in the same spot to find their bot.
Changes:
Lowering the arena further was not an option as the ARKit wouldn’t allow going below 0 along the y-axis. So we changed the height of the arena. The arena size (1,1,1) was reduced to half (0.5,0.3,0.5) and the height was further reduced to 0.3.
Result:
Because of the change in length and breadth of the arena, players were not standing inside of it anymore and stopped rotating around in space struggling to find their bot.
A much larger change in height made it feel like the arena was a lot lower than before.
- To get used to the control system before the battle, players were asked to drive the bot around in an empty arena.
Problem:
Players were bored and weren’t developing any skills due to mindless driving.
Changes:
Added cubes to the arena that changed color.
Result:
Players started driving much more intentionally (turn and proceed towards a cube to turn it green)
Next week, we are planning to focus and test the UI for the showcase part of our game.
Kang – Art:
Week 8.
Guanghao – Programming:
We are working hard to make the prototype which includes the whole game flow. We first anchor the world in AR and select the bot we want. We then enter the battle with the one we chose. For the first battle, there will be a movement test which you need trigger all sandbags before you encounter with a boss enemy.
Nicole – UIUX:
Week 8.