Week 4 was a long and exciting week for team Lights Out. In addition to our usual 2 playtests (more on those here), we had some industry and faculty visits and even found time to do an escape room as a team (for inspiration, of course).

We had the opportunity to chat with visitors from Blizzard and Riot about our project in the middle of this week. Many of them were excited by the concept of something nonvisual and found our playtests so far interesting, but largely recommended that we find more of a direction. Also this week, we got a chance to meet with both Jesse and Dave. Jesse gave similar feedback – about finding an emotional target and being able to convey that at 1/4s next week. Dave, who we met later in the week, was one of the first to hear about our emotional target after we had a chance to discuss it. He also got to playtest our first multiplayer prototype. He gave us a lot of feedback about improving that prototype, saying that it felt like an escape-the-room experience but very low fidelity. This type of experience seems like the direction that we want to continue with future prototypes.

From art:

This week, we finished off all of our branding materials. This includes the team photo, which you can check out in the media page of our site, that the team had fun with coming up with and was rather funny to watch come together in Photoshop. For the other branding materials, we chose the final description for the half sheet, and took all of the feedback from the workshop and tried to meet more of the concerns that people had with the materials.

We also had a little bit to actually build this week for the playtest that occurred Friday. For that playtest we needed to create a “reactor” that 2 people had to stick their hands into, without 1 person being able to reach both ends.

From tech:

This week we did some research and google-oriented programming and we found a way to make Unity play 5.1 sounds. From now on we should be able to play directional sound cues at desired times as controlled by Unity. Other than that, we also got some demo codes from the research lab of Tesla Touch. So, if we come up with any good ideas about how to use the technology in our experience, we will be able to do that.

Since playing surround sound with Unity can be a tricky question, just to share with whoever might be reading, the solution can be found in the following link:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/1067337/playing-pre-mixed-51-audio-1.html

From design:

This week I worked on coming up with different ideas for navigation and spatial awareness. First, people could learn to be aware of where things are based on a definite point they can come back to and redirect to different places. The test could’ve been better prepared. But generally, once people were able to go back to the reference point, they found their way.

The other test (medusa nuclear reactor) was to test how cooperating with another partner would be compared to a single player. Above all the findings, we found out that multiplayer is much more appreciated than we expected. That was a very clear indication for us to pursue a multiplayer experience.

We also came up with a list of emotions that we want to achieve through our experience. Our target has a very similar feeling to that of an escape room. However, more and different kinds of experiences will be tested before 1/2s.

Next week we will finish off September by meeting with all faculty for 1/4s and having two more playtests, looking at music and emotion as well as having more multiplayer experiences.