It’s official: we have a cast!
After a few weeks of discussions with the school of drama, we have two Purnell students who have agreed to sign on with us for the semester. Their names are Ramsey Pack and Zach Herman, and both are are enthusiastic to participate (as they are lovers of video games). We brought them in on Monday to meet the team and get an understanding of the environment, and then on Friday we had our first rehearsal.
We have also made progress in preparing for the next few phases of playtesting: We have modeled more of the environment, prepared measurements for building a physical brown box test, and set up the Vive trackers. Recognizing that the four of us are still new to VR, we decided to get advice from the guy who wrote the book (or at least the chapter) on VR playtesting. We took a field trip to meet Shawn Patton over at Schell Games, and talked to him about his process in testing one of their newest games, I Expect You to Die, and get his feedback on our designs. One thing that was pointed out to us is that if we are going to create a situation in which no one can pick up anything and the characters don’t acknowledge the player, we need to set up that rule rather early.
In anticipation of changes to the script that will be coming round the bend next week, we made updates to the character designs. More importantly, we met with a costume designer from the school of drama to get his take on making sure we adhere to historical accuracy. He gave us tips on research process, tenets of 1940s fashion, and good design. Once the new script arrives, we will do a read-through for additional required character capabilities, and then lock in design.
