Welcome back! Last week was a busy week and so is this week! After the Playtest Day, we are still constantly testing our experience with different people, including our instructors and our classmates.
Advisor Meeting & Meeting with Steffen:
We had a guest playing our experience at Monday’s Advisor Meeting and the guest’s name is Stefan, a friend of Professor Charles. He’s an expert in vehicles and his insights were very inspiring, providing us with comprehensive feedback on the environment, user interface, and the vehicle’s interaction dynamics. Below is a summary of the key takeaways from his session and feedback:
- Movement forward and backward is really smooth and works very well.
- There is arm fatigue
- Look into creating a fixture or arm rest where the guests can slide their arms.
- You can seat them in a chair, use an armrest already built into the chair.
- Is the vehicle driving on the terrain or hovering? If it is driving, I’d want to feel it through the vest, or through the arm.
- The haptics may not be on the vest, but just on the arm.
We decided to take some of this feedback into consideration and see what we can do later and we want to share some updates of Tech, Level Design, Art, Room Decoration and Sound SFX.
Tech:
Harry and Sher finished setting up the sequence and logic of actions for the initial stage of our project, and we also got some of the main menu interface functionality done. Also, Sher modified the steering of our vehicle based on the feedback from the playtest.
Level Design:
We’ve completed the resource collecting & gathering section of the first level and are aiming to wrap up the storm and lightning level soon.
Art & UI:
We decide to buy the assets from Unity Asset Store, and after browsing through the store, we picked several asset libraries that aligns with our aesthetic style.
We have made progress with the 2D UI that will be projected on to the front screen, simulating a front window looking out into the world. We also implemented a crude navigation system where the arrow bends towards the direction the vehicle is turning.
Sound:
Thomas is in the process of composing background music that will complement the desolate Earth atmosphere and the thunderstorm setting.
Build Room Decoration:
We have decided to build the room out with black foam core, as it was structurally more rigid and was easier to set up. We added walls to separate the onboarding space, and created a ‘window’ to be able to view the onboarding video projected on to the wall.
Advisor Meeting & Process Grading
On Friday, we had our second process grading with our instructors Heather and Charles. During the meeting, we discussed an issue with the Kinect camera’s position, as it has become evident that some individuals do not lift their arms very high, which leads to detection problems, especially when seated. This can result in the camera picking up the other hand accidentally, causing unintended interactions with the controls.
We agreed that having the hand centered, and to mitigate the detection of the non-active hand, the use of black gloves was suggested as a potential solution to make it invisible to the camera.
Finally, we considered the sequence in which users should gear up. Some recommend putting on the vest first, then the sleeves. This sequence simplifies the process and reduces the possibility of detection errors during the setup phase.
Thank you for reading and see you all next week!