birdies-chirp

Category: Uncategorized

  • Week 7

    We keep preparing for halves while developing the games at the same time to prepare for our playthrough. 

    Leading up to the presentation, we met with our instructors to review our slides, discuss our progress, and prepare to communicate our design decisions. We focused on explaining how our technical experiments and playtesting findings shaped the direction of our project.

    During Halves, we shared our transition from point-cloud rendering to body tracking, as well as our shift from linear puzzles toward shorter, more interactive mini-games. We also discussed a key finding from our playtests: the Tilt Five player often dominated the experience, leaving the room players with little to do. This led us to explore mechanics involving simultaneous participation and real-time physical interaction.

    Feedback and Reflections

    Overall, we received positive feedback on our technical progress, problem-solving, and willingness to iterate. Reviewers appreciated our exploration of different approaches and the foundation we had established.

    However, several reviewers felt that our gameplay was still unclear and wanted to see more concrete demonstrations. Another recurring concern was the limited agency of the room players. We were encouraged to explore stronger two-way communication, clearer audiovisual feedback, and interactions that better highlight Tilt Five’s unique capabilities.

    Friday Playthrough

    During Friday’s playthrough, we demonstrated two prototype mechanics:

    Balancing: The virtual floor tilts based on the room players’ positions. The Tilt Five player communicates the floor’s movement while the room players adjust their positions to maintain balance.

    Hiding: A ghost periodically creates dangerous areas. The Tilt Five player guides the room players behind obstacles that exist in both the physical and virtual spaces.

    The feedback identified several issues with the current prototypes.

    For balancing, the constant instability and single-axis rotation made the interaction repetitive. Reviewers suggested allowing players to reach a stable state before introducing disruptions and giving room players more information and control over the balance.

    For hiding, the interest curve was relatively flat, with limited variation between rounds. Reviewers also suggested clearer wayfinding and more immediate feedback on individual player states.

    A common issue across both mechanics was the lack of meaningful two-way communication. Room players still relied heavily on the Tilt Five player’s instructions, with limited opportunities to make decisions or communicate useful information back.

    Next Steps

    For the next iteration, we will focus on improving the following areas:

    • Player agency: Give room players more meaningful decisions and opportunities to influence the game state.
    • Communication: Support continuous, two-way information exchange through clearer spatial references and feedback.
    • Gameplay pacing: Introduce more variation in challenges, including periods of stability and escalating disruptions.
    • Feedback: Improve audiovisual responses so players can immediately recognize changes in game state and individual outcomes.

    We will continue prototyping and playtesting these mechanics, aiming to deliver two playable mini-games for Playtest Day and three polished experiences for Fall Festival.

  • Week 6

    Preparing for halves, we made a slide structure. From our instructor meeting, we improved it by organizing it into 3 parts: Tech, Visual Design, and Game Design. We decided to talk about how each part has iterated and what we decided as our current direction.

    For design, we wish to utilize the room more, and work with our constraints, mostly for form, time, and number of people. Our advisors suggest that we shift to only having 3 people in the room, which would reduce the design constraints.

    We also got a new idea of using Code names’ rule, because it fits with our gridded format.

    During the meeting with our faculty consultant, Dave, we shared the difficulty we are currently experiencing:

    • Asymmetric across the platform; room people don’t have feedback
    • Experience need to be short and easy to understand for the festival

    Dave saw the markers for calibration and suggested also using track markers for potential game items, which is something we could explore based on needed mechanics. 

    Sharing our game ideas with Dave, he suggests we focus on building the feeling of discovery as the gameplay. For example, for a ghost-fighting game, the main moment can be finding the ghost, rather than repeated actions to fight. We can let our designs focus on small moments of discovery. He suggests thinking about Verbs for 2 parties

    • AR: Know Directions and location; guiding and helping find
    • Room: Finding shape, positions, learning and sharing physical information, physical interaction

    We also need to watch for turn-based experiences that go back and forth, and look for more overlapped experiences for both parties. For example, something involving reading would be slower, requiring the other party to wait. We need to design pacing of the things communicated

    In addition, he also talked about using Lightweight server to track skeleton data and open source tracking servers.

    Moving on, we keep developing game ideas focusing on these aspects.

  • Week 5

    Week 5

    This week, we finalized our team photo:

    During meeting we discussed:

    • Party game ideas
    • Tech
    • Concept art
    • 1-sentence project description

    For design, we did physical playtests on three games: passing a ball, ghost hunting, and bomb defusal.

    Even without tech, we hope to use a simple 2D camera, a screen, and paper to playtest some prototypes. These are the puzzle ideas we selected to do playtests.

    Following the feedback from Quarters, we made the T5 player the main information sharer in these games. The basic format became: the T5 player tells the room players what to do, and the room players follow the instructions. However, this made the room players feel bored and aimless. They could only learn a limited amount of background information without being spoiled, so they mostly had to wait for instructions from the T5 player.

    As a result, the current dynamic feels more like the T5 player is the “real” player with most of the information, while the room players function more like characters being controlled by the T5 player. This makes the experience less engaging for the room players.

    Problems We Observed

    • Instructions are understood too quickly. When communication is clear, room players can quickly understand what they are supposed to do and then become bored.
    • The games feel too similar. Although the games have different themes, the room players are mostly doing the same thing: moving to specific positions based on the T5 player’s instructions. They often do not understand why they are doing it.
    • There is little feedback. Room players do not receive enough feedback or information from their actions, so their actions do not feel meaningful.
    • There is limited physical interaction. In the current prototypes, room players rarely interact with the physical environment in meaningful ways.

    New Direction

    Instead of making the T5 player the main source of information, we want to give room players more information and create an information gap between the two sides. The goal is to use this information asymmetry to encourage communication, rather than relying on increasingly complex interactions to engage both sides.

    We want room players to have a clearer goal: finding information in the physical space, and sharing that information to make progress. We still believe puzzle-based games are a good fit for this direction because they naturally create opportunities for players to observe, communicate, interpret information, and make decisions together.

    For now, we do not plan to change the overall experience structure. We will still have three separate, parallel party games, but we may redesign two of them to focus more strongly on information-based puzzles and asymmetric information.

    In terms of theming, we are still using birds and magical forests, because magic can explain a lot of mechanics naturally. 

    For tech, we are now working with the sync ups, trying to use multiple cameras for the body tracking.

    Finalized description for website and half-sheet:

    Birdie’s Chirp is a series of asymmetric co-op games where players in a room work with a Tilt5 player in a separate room, sharing information to solve challenges.

    The project explores cross-platform communication through different perspectives of the same space, a magical forest setting. The room players’ movements are tracked through synced Orbbec 3D cameras and reflected in the Tilt5’s virtual bird’s-eye view, allowing the Tilt5 player to see and cooperate with the players from a different perspective.

    The magical forest setting and cute character emphasize the Warmth of Cooperation and Vivid Interactivity at the heart of the experience.

  • Week 4

    Week 4

    Reshaping our experience, this week we focused on brainstorming party game ideas, as well as working with body tracking tech.

    Filling the sheet with ideas, we finally decided on our top 3:

    We also tried to work with the orbbec camera again to get body tracking working, but it was really weird and funky – for things the camera can’t see, characters’ limbs would keep glitching, and it also cannot distinguish from different people if they overlap once. We are requesting sync-up chords to use 2 cameras at the same time. If that couldn’t fix body tracking, we might have to work around it and just use players’ position and direction.

    While working with design ideas, we also thought of using vive trackers to track objects instead of just people, that could also be a possible way to distinguish between the players.

    On the other hand, we made a simple concept art of what we imagine the virtual scene is gonna be like. The gridded flowers are there because we will probably have grids in the room for the game, we want that to be reflected by the virtual thing as well.

  • Week 3

    Week 3

    Quarters

    This week, we prepared for quarters with paper prototypes, worked on our storyboard, and tried showing the room through Tilt Five. We also got valuable feedback on our art direction from our advisor.

    Goals for This Week

    • Get ready for quarters.
    • Work through the story with a storyboard.
    • Test the camera setup and what the Tilt Five player can see.
    • Explore logo ideas and get feedback on our art direction.

    Getting Ready for Quarters

    To prepare for quarters, we made paper prototypes and walked through the puzzles with two people, one acting as the Tilt Five side and the other as the room side. We used paper versions of the Tilt Five interface and the room handbook to step through the interaction.

    Narrative

    We also put together a storyboard for our rescue story.

    Tech Set Up

    We got one more camera and mounted both cameras on tripods in two corners of the room. This gave us a setup to test how the room could be shown to the Tilt Five player.

    The Room on Tilt Five

    We also tried displaying point-cloud data on Tilt Five. This shows the captured room as a collection of 3D points. The images below show our test on the computer and through the Tilt Five glasses. We’re requesting more cameras to get a clearer view.

    Art and Visuals

    We also come up with different ideas for posters logos. We also updated our reference image.

  • Week 2

    Week 2

    Connecting the Pieces

    This week, we spent more time on puzzle ideas and how the two rooms could interact. We also started looking at how the puzzles, story, and tech fit together. Some of our early ideas brought up questions we still need to work through.

    What We Worked On

    Explored puzzle ideas and different ways the two rooms could communicate.

    Talked about how to connect the puzzles with our story.

    Worked on a three-minute elevator pitch for our quarters presentati

    Trying Out Puzzle Ideas

    We’re continuing with the same setup: one player on Tilt Five and several players in a separate room. This week, we explored pose sequences, color and animal puzzles, and a treasure-map puzzle where the Tilt Five player would use directional buttons to guide the room players.

    One thing our instructor pointed out is that our story, puzzles, and tech still feel separate. The story works with the overall setup, but we haven’t figured out how the puzzles should look or how they belong in that world. That also makes it harder to explain the whole experience to someone else.

    We also noticed a problem with the directional puzzle: one person in the room could do it on their own, leaving the others with nothing to do. We may need to rethink that kind of puzzle so everyone has a reason to take part.

    Who Are We Designing For

    We also talked about who we want to design for. Having kids at the festival doesn’t automatically mean we need to make every puzzle easier. We can choose the audience we want to focus on.

    The same goes for group size. Trying to make every puzzle work for anywhere from one to four room players is putting a lot of limits on us this early. One option is to design for four players and use a sign-up sheet at the festival. We haven’t settled on that yet, but it gives us more room to explore.

    Communication Between 2 Rooms

    Tilt 5 to Room

    The Tilt 5 person completes all their interactions with virtual objects in game on the Tilt 5

    Core InteractionTilt 5 sends:Room gets feedback:Tech Difficulty:
    Trigger speakers in the room“Dog Buttions”: basicsSimple words: Yes, No, Wait…Low
    “Dog Buttions”: directionalLeft, Right, Front, Back…Low
    Trigger lights in the roomTurn on specific lightsSee specific lights and the things they point toMedium
    Communicate with PCs in the roomCreate image with shapes, send imageSee the image with shapes on a computer screenMedium

    Room to Tilt 5

    Mostly based on the camera view; can also include input (arduino/adaptive controllers)

    Core InteractionRoom sends:Tilt 5 gets feedback:Tech Difficulty:
    Body Language/Physical PerformanceBody Language to the cameraStatic poses, charades, & their sequence informationLow
    Show colors/objects to the cameracolors /objects  & their sequence informationLow
    Button InputPush/Hold specific buttonsTrigger effects in gameMedium

    Tech

    For the tech side, our main focus is getting the Orbbec camera mounted stably on the ceiling. We also need to test the camera and make sure its captures are clear and usable for the TiltFive player. This will help us understand how well the room can be observed from the T5 side and what kinds of interactions we can build around the camera

    Art

    This week, we’re gathering references for our art mood board and brainstorming a few poster and logo ideas. We’re also exploring how the puzzles could look so they fit into the world of the mama bird, her babies, and the witch. Alongside that, we’re setting up the website and discussing its theme, colors, and overall style. We’re still trying out different ideas to see what feels right for our project.

  • Week 1

    Week 1

    Finding Our Direction

    For our first week, we spent some time getting to know each other and figuring out what we wanted to make. We met with our advisors, talked through some early ideas, and joined the playtest workshop.

    Goals For This Week

    • Meet with our advisors, Vivian and Scott.
    • Explore the initial design and its technical needs.
    • Organize the equipment we would need.
    • Participate in the playtest workshop and develop our ideas.

    Exploring Our Direction

    Our advisors were pretty open about what we could do. They suggested having one player use Tilt Five while the others play in a separate escape room. We decided to go with this format and explore it as a co-op game.

    The idea is that each side has different information, so everyone needs to work together to solve the puzzles. We also want to explore nonverbal communication as a big part of the experience

    Brainstorming

    We brought our early ideas to the playtest workshop and put them together on a concept board. It was a chance to talk through what we had so far and think more about the experience we wanted to create.

    Design and References

    Here are some of the reference we have found for our project

    Right now, we’re thinking about having the Tilt Five player press virtual buttons to trigger sounds or lights in the room. The players in the room would communicate back through body language and their actions in front of a camera.

    We’re still figuring out the details, especially how these interactions will fit into the actual puzzles.

    Tech

    We spent the week waiting for our Tilt Five equipment and an Orbbec camera. We also put together a list of what we’d need for the setup, including at least one Bluetooth speaker.

    We could add things like Arduino later, depending on what the puzzles need.

    Art

    We haven’t settled on the theme or story yet, but a magical forest is one direction we’re thinking about. For now, it’s still an early idea.