Summary of the Week
This week, we made tons of changes based on playtest feedback. It surely takes a lot of overtime work but the result is worth it. From the art & design team, we added a small group of birds near the player so that the player won’t feel alone during the game. We also removed the blue glossy migration path indicator and replaced it with a more translucent-colored, non-emission, trail line. We were inspired by the air trail or wind flow particle effect that is widely used in stylized games. We weakened the sense of guiding line because we found that the player can guide themselves by looking at bird flocks. On the other hand, when the player loses the bird flocks in the downtown area, they would feel more disoriented and uncomfortable, which is the targeting emotion that we would like to enhance.
Programming
During this week, the programmers’ attention has been directed towards the enhancement of the control system as well as the integration of new audio and visual elements. After conducting a playtest session with Dave during the advisor meeting, he suggested incorporating control over the bird’s altitude. Despite unlimiting the degree of control to a minimal extent, this modification noticeably alters the player’s perception by introducing control over multiple dimensions of movement. This feature also empowers the player to avoid obstacles by flying above or beneath them while maintaining the overall path. The programmers have also been continuously improving the music and artwork in the new version, iterating through multiple revisions to finalize the game.
Art
For this week our artist worked on creating and iteration of our game logo.
We also create an intro video at the beginning of our VR experience in order to give our player a basic understanding of the background information and help them know what will happen during our experience.
What’s more, we redrew the tutorial images to make it easier to understand and also fit our art style better.
We also figured out the final version of the sky box and it now fits the engine technically. At the same time, we made sure it represents the milky way’s true direction over Pittsburgh from our expert Diane’s suggestion.
Music
Our game takes the player on a journey and we knew that music would be an important tool to help us convey the emotions the bird might be experiencing during each stage. Since nobody on our team had any experience in music creation, we decided to reach out to the School of Music for help. Michael Wong, a junior composer and a game designer himself, reached out and expressed interest in helping create music for our game, so we met with him to discuss the experience.. He took all the information and created a beginning and ending track for our game that really helps tell the story by starting off peaceful and then gradually becoming more tense as the player encounters more light. Having a song that is specifically made for the experience has really helped to elevate it and we are very grateful for his help.
Link to his website
https://michael-g-wong.com/music
Softs
This week we had softs on Monday with Heather, Mike, Shirl and visiting guest, Nathan Black. Everyone provided excellent feedback that will be very helpful for our development moving forward.
Key takeaways:
- Felt like you were the slowest bird in the pack and were trying to keep up
- Add birds around you as you’re flying
- Video at the end needed to be tighter and quicker
- Add text that says each dot represents a bird so they know it’s not bugs
- Was a bit confused what was happening at the end
- Felt like there could be more light from the buildings
- Didn’t feel the need to dodge
- Birds at the end should look like the birds in the game
- Would remove the tunnel vision when you go off path
- Make the off path larger
- Use VO at the end to help you to have less words to read
- Show how the lights change from bad to good when talking about Pittsburgh at the end
- Bring the music volume up
We also had alumni come playtest on Friday and this was a great opportunity for us to test the updates we made since our softs faculty playtest. We were really excited by the feedback we received from both of our guests. They mentioned how they felt disoriented by the light, how the sound at the end reminded them of a hospital and that they didn’t know that light pollution affected birds before playing our game, but now realize it is a serious problem. This feedback gave us confidence that we have succeeded in achieving our transformational goals.
What went well
This week started off with us getting a lot of feedback from the faculty soft playtests, which helped us to make some important updates such as having the birds flying around you. Then the week ended with our team getting confirmation that we are achieving our transformational goals from the feedback we received from our alumni playtesters. The experience overall has also become more polished with the music being added, art updates and updating the intro and outro.
Next Steps
Our focus now is to continue to polish the experience and work on the ending some more. We feel like there is still a bit of a disconnect between the ending where the guest is in the light beam and making the connection of how this is a real world problem. We will also be focused on making our game video trailer, completing our post mortem and final presentation.
After our final presentation is complete, we will be joining the World Migratory Bird Day Event at Frick Park, where we will get to share our experience with guests attending the event. This will be a great opportunity to help us to practice running the experience for a large number of people before we attend the Games for Change festival in July.
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