{"id":266,"date":"2025-11-15T02:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T02:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/?p=266"},"modified":"2025-11-15T02:05:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T02:05:53","slug":"week-11-the-experience-flow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/week-11-the-experience-flow\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 11 – The Experience Flow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One thing that continues to bother us is simple: we still don\u2019t fully know what kind of experience we want to provide.<\/strong>
We have our target audience \u2014 middle school students learning Greek mythology<\/em>.
We have our characters \u2014 Poseidon and Athena<\/em>.
We have our technology \u2014 a three-way conversation system<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what kind of experience is actually entertaining<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone who has worked with LLMs knows how unpredictable they can be. A one-turn conversation can be amazing; a ten-minute conversation with a middle schooler can go absolutely anywhere. No one can predict the outcome \u2014 not even us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of this unpredictability, our core principle hasn\u2019t changed:
different players should receive the same intended experience.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To achieve that, we need strong design and strong control.<\/strong>
This week, we finally started shaping a clear, well-designed journey<\/strong> that lets us map out what we want players to feel<\/em>, not just what we want them to do<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This ties directly into one of the biggest features we implemented: GeneratedDiscussion<\/strong>.
It allows us to trigger custom AI behaviors based on things like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • round number<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • waiting time<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • topic triggers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s a powerful tool, basically letting us pre-design \u201cbeats\u201d in the experience based on predicted user behavior and what we\u2019ve observed in playtests. It gives us structure inside the chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Art and Animation Progress<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    We also made major progress on the art side. The animation system is now underway, and we\u2019ll be showing much more next week. This is the first time the gods are starting to \u201cmove,\u201d which helps the experience feel more like a performance than a static conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Playtesting With the Real Audience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    To bring all of this together, we ran a playtest with our actual target audience \u2014 middle school students.<\/strong>
    And honestly, the reactions were spectacular.
    Seeing their curiosity, confusion, excitement, and occasional chaos gave us confidence we\u2019re moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Looking Ahead<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Next week, we enter our final sprint<\/strong>, aiming to deliver the full experience, from beginning to end, hardware to software. The goal is a complete, playable version that captures everything we\u2019ve been trying to build over the past ten weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    One thing that continues to bother us is simple: we still don\u2019t fully know what kind of experience we want to provide.We have our target audience \u2014 middle school students learning Greek mythology.We have our characters \u2014 Poseidon and Athena.We have our technology \u2014 a three-way conversation system. But what kind of experience is actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dev-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/echotrio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}