For this week, the Simtopia team took their brainstorms and entered the prototyping phase. Two core experiences were created and playtested with not only fellow students at the ETC but also industry professionals that came to visit including Apple and Riot Games. In addition, the team geared up for quarter walkarounds and quarter sit-downs which is sort of like a quarter midway point in the semester prior to midterms at the ETC.
The Simtopia team playtested their prototype experiences with Apple during their company visit to the ETC to showcase to them interactions in virtual reality. Gaining feedback from industry professionals from those knowledgeable about scale and perspective was useful for Simtopia as we continue to iterate.
Additionally, the Simtopia team also playtested their prototypes with Riot Games. The feedback given from the team was quite useful and interesting to hear from a gaming perspective across their various disciplines. It was so much fun to see what they created!
Getting ready for quarter walkarounds and sitdowns was also quite important for Simtopia. From prototyping and playtesting these experiences to receive feedback, Simtopia wanted to have a rough idea nailed down for the experience that they would like to proceed towards to be in a direction to receive faculty feedback to help them with how to proceed for the rest of the semester. This was useful to present to their client, Maxis as well.
Simtopia needed to gather together their direction, design pillars, mood board and inspiration pieces, composition box, milestone list, and theming to present to the faculty.
Thought was put into theming the room to make the environment more immersive for guests especially when they visit the space during playtesting, company visits, or even the annual ETC festival at the end of the semester.
Simtopia team member, Sahar paints plumbobs to hang around the project room one evening in the paint room while team members Iris, Xuefan, and Sahar attend a laser cutting training session to create some designs for theming too.
As the team geared up for quarters next week – the members also aimed to nail their prototype down for faculty and client feedback at their quarter midway point. Guests responded favorably to the 3D modular building experience as shown in the video below (but also enjoyed the in-habitation and embodiment of creatures in the other prototype experience).
Thus, the challenge consisting for Simtopia involves how to combine these favorable outcomes while designing a fun immersive VR world building experience in the Vive Pro for an experience that should last roughly 10-15 minutes!
See you next week for more developments and see how quarters went for Simtopia!