This week, we focused on pushing the gameplay forward and speeding up creating the art asset because we will have 3 members going to GDC next week. We also play-tested with 7 middle school students, and based on the feedback, we found bugs and completed adding details to the first stage of this game.

Moreover, we settled on using this AI text-to-voice tool to generate the voiceover: https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/

The things we’ve improved in this week:

1.Environment

1. finalizing the grass and flowers.
2. Finished fixing the tree LOD in-game.

2. User experience: 

1. replaced the controllers with wings and decided to remove the talons. 
2. added the takeoff tutorial. 
3. making the catching fish part clearer by adding UI
4. added the sound effects: foret ambient, lake sound, mom’s honk, and flapping sound.

3. Gameplay:

1. If users get lost, the mom will stay still, honk, and wait for the users. Moreover, the users will see an arrow pointing in Mom’s direction.
2. Adjusted the mom eagle’s speed, making it easier for users to follow.

Environment:

We found a tutorial about how to render a video in Unity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg-ydfLEPak

And here’s one of the angles in the forest that we think is nice to render.

And the next step, we are going to add more trees to make it more like a forest, and add more rocks that we created before.

The rendered video will be complet by the end of next week, and we will put it into the game at Week 11.

User experience

Based on the feedback we got, replacing the controllers with wings and adding the talons will help the experience to be more immersive. However, after searching for the references online and playtesting with middle school students, we found out that eagles are not able to see their talons while flying. Therefore, we settled down on only adding the wings.

Also, after playtesting with both younger students and adults, we realized that the ways they “flap the wings” are very different. Younger children are tend to swing harder by moving their arms, while adults are usually more careful. However, the controllers can only detect the movement while you swing harder, we decided to make a tutorial for users when they need to take off from the nest.

Catching fish is one of our most important mechanics in this game, and this is the part that get people excited.

Previously, we only have the voiceover telling them “your goal is to catch 2 fishes”. It is problematic since some of the players might miss this part, and it is hard for people to always stay focused on listening to the VO. So we added UI to let them know how many fishes they need to catch.

Gameplay

We found out that since the mom eagle is flying fast, it is very easy for people to get lost. But making mom eagle flying in a constant speed is very unnatural. Therefore, whenever the users are too far away from mom, the mom eagle will honk, and there will be an arrow pointing to mom’s direction. Moreover, we adjust the mom eagle’s speed again to make it easier for the players to follow.