Overview of Week9
- Discussed the whole experience flow
- Write down all the mini-game ideas we brainstormed
- Tried to implement magic box idea
- Worked on the desktop observation feature
Review of Halve playtest
After we had a spring break, we came back to work and talked about what went right and what went wrong during halves playtest. These are all the right and wrong things we found. We focused more on what went wrong during halve playtest and how can we improve!
Things went right:
- High five and clapping(Actively)
- Pass cube and pick up is useful
- Physics of the board works okay
- They talk more when they play balance board
Things went wrong:
- Players don’t know their hands are out of range(Board is a bit wide)
- Hard to pick up the board(maybe the collider is a bit small)
- Sound/Visual feedback(shadow?) is weak for picking up things
- Hands leave the board
- Passing is not stable
- Virtual hands are away from real hands (Offset fixing?)
- Give a sense of safety and successful to players at the beginning
- Not using the AR feature
- Players may don’t know what to do
- Clapping sound
Improvements:
- Make the collider of the board bigger
- Add handles (Why it has handles)
- Make the sound feedback clear
- Add hand shadow? Light effect?
- Objects within players’ sight have to be relevant to each other
Design a complete experience flow
Then, since we have already had several demos worked during halves. For the final experience of our project, we want to have a cohesive and smooth experience. Based on what we test and what we have now, we brainstormed more possibilities of mini-games. We are trying to amplify what went right and what went wrong.
We tried to combine the ideas we had and the demos we had in one experience. We planned to have two physical objects, the first one is a physical campfire and the second one is the magic box. We want players to feel that they are gathering together in the physical world and play games around the campfire. Also, in the magic box, players can grab different games from it. In the lobby, players can chat and do some simple activities like pouring water and pick up wood sticks and put them in the campfire. They can get food to cook on the campfire by playing games. The food is the reward of the game. They can eat food by putting their hand close to the headset. And after playing each game, players will come back to lobby.
Mini-game ideas
Since we only have one experience that can be a game, we need to design two more mini-games for our experience. We brainstormed a bunch of mini-game ideas. such as cooking ramen, construction game, gardening game and also bouncing ball game.
Feeding (Title: Yummly): Catching seeds, planting, pouring water, see the plant grow, then could grab fruits. Rewards will be cooking in the lobby.
Cooking ramen: Players catching ramen sources (noodles, green onions, egg, and sauce), pouring water, and cook ramen. We really like the stretch ramen idea, but if it’s hard to conduct in a limit time. They might tear the package to get ramen. The goal is to cook ramen safely by avoiding and catching bugs.)
Construction game (lego): In the midterm, we found that players were playing lego construction games with cubes, try to build up things. 2 players could build a construction together with big “stones”. With different colors and shapes. Each stone should be lifted and placed by two together. And there will be an easy level – harder level construction leads them to what they should build.
Fishing: 1. Two players use a rod to fish. The special rod needs to people Spin at the same time. 2. Two players hold a fishing net from both side, the middle in inside water. And the 2 players should wait for fishing to come and raise their hands together ( the net will close) to catch the fish.
Feeding other (title: Meal time): Players catch food (Eg: hamburger, apple pie, sushi, pasta, energy drink, etc) and feed another player. Leaderboard required to see the status.
3D Fruit Ninja (title: hand ninja): Just like the classic fruit ninja, players use their hands to cut down fruits which fall down from the sky. All the fruits come down at the same time and players compete to see who get the highest score during a certain time frame.
Bouncing ball: Two players play bouncing ball , bounce on real ground and catch by the other.
Rewards will be cooking in the lobby.
How to participate in playtest when working remotely?
Then, Playtest is important for our project. However, in this situation, we all work remotely, some group members can not experience what is in our world. Also, we only have two sets of devices for programmers. So we decided to have a desktop mode which can let our group members and faculty to join the experience and see what is happening in the world. It’s a way we want to make our operation better when we have to work remotely.
Magic Box!
Also, we continue working on the magic box idea and try to make our vision come true.