Playtests and meetings
26/01/2022
Confirmed to use Google Drive as the collaboration platform.
Discussed and ensured the main elements: VR 3D, players be to freely walk through, forest and nature, racial conflict, technology and resources.
03/02/2022
A storyline with all scripts finished. The first draft of the game mechanic had been done under discussion. VR scenes were being built in sync.
10/02/2022
Discussed and removed the life system. Players would not lose health points when touching dangerous plants anymore.
Changed the way of punishment.
Changed the endings from “the Master brings back the player to keep assisting him, and the player will see how his/her mother forest get destroyed, before that, the player can choose whether to activate the Alchemy Matrix remotely and perish together” to “the Master kicks the player out of the aircraft and fly away, soon brings back more aircraft to exploit the forest, before that, the player can choose whether to shoot the Master’s aircraft with the Alchemy Matrix in person”.
17/02/2022
The first simplification: 1. Shortened the storyline. 2. Removed the one-by-one countdown time control and punishment system. 3. Deleted the design of the level, make all tasks appear at the same time and let the player explore freely. 4. Cancelled the plan of UI panels design; 4. Simplified the progress from collecting the Plant Crystals to gaining final products. (In the original version, players will have to use a series of equipment that were designed according to the principle of nuclear reaction activating.)
23/02/2022
Got the first version of the Master’s and the Oins’ voices from Sound Art students, not very easy for players to figure out the exact sentences. Editing method discussed and settled.
Playtest 1
1. Gained compliments on the visual effects of the scenes.
2. Some players were keen on throwing the Plant Crystals upward and watching them fly away. But there weren’t refresh settings of the Plants Crystals, if the player throws all the Crystals away and can’t get them back, the game will be stuck.
3. An issue regarding teleport and collider of background objects: players could teleport to the top of different plants and stay in the air.
4. An issue regarding teleport: several players reported teleporting were interrupting their experience. That would be resolved after the Telepathic (players will be able to transfer onto another Oin’s body) was done.
5. The forest scene was big and the traffic flow was not clear enough. Players gave advice on showing a minimap by the corner. We discussed that later. Instead of a minimap, we chose to put talking Oins near most of the functional positions to give the players some hint which won’t hurt the immersive experience.
6. Players sometimes tried to interact with objects which are not interactable. Some of the players reported they would have a desire to touch the items which were glowing. Adjust regarding glowing and attention attracting was arranged to help the players distinguish which items are interactable.
7. The first bunch of plants with Plant Crystals should be moved closer to the starting point, in helping players to realize what to do.
03/03/2022
The second simplification: 1. Removed all the special operations that players would have to do towards the plants and the Plant Crystals, like putting fire on the blue mushrooms to get blue powder, or cutting the white crystals to gain white liquid with a knife and a container. 2. Decided to delete the way transferring with Telepathic as it would be complex work and we didn’t have enough time to finish. 3. Totally removed the time limit, players would not have to face the failed ending and get killed by the Master anymore if they can’t finish all the tasks in time.
Additionally, due to technical reasons, the form of the Plant Guide was changed from a book to six elec-sheets placed in the lab and can’t be brought outside that scene anymore.
Along with that, an Analyzing Machine was added, took the place of the original recording way- holding the Plants Crystals above the correct page of the Plant Guide.
11/03/2022
Gained help from Zans and Richard, the issues with the OVR manager as well as the black screen problem was fixed.
Playtest 2
1. Plenty of safety issues were found- players would frequently drop off the scenes from the floor by different spots. Air wall was built later to solve this issue, as well as a script to reset the players in case a similar problem happens again.
2. Some interactable objects were hard to reach by VR hands, such as a Plant Crystal sandwiched by a bunch of other plants, and mushrooms that were too short. Positions of several objects were adjusted regarding these issues.
3. The positions of the Transfer Gates might bring confusion if it’s not at the same place as the starting points of each scene. One more Transfer Gate was added to the biggest scene to ensure a better experience.
4. Issues regarding collider: when picking up the Plant Crystals, players would have a probability of being unable to move or getting pushed by the Plant Crystals, and the alchemy platform had a small probability of not being triggered as well. We didn’t give the highest priority to fix these and they were left to solve in the final version.
5. Players generally reported that the moving and rotating speed of the joystick was too fast and caused dizziness. Speed was adjusted to lower to a certain extent.
6. Almost all the players tried to interact with the Master and the Ions because they were moving and catching their eyes. A possibility of physical interaction should be considered in later updates.
14/03/2022
A guide scene was discussed and finally decided to add.
A backpack system was mostly made but finally given up as both the groupmate who took this responsibility and the rest couldn’t import it successfully to the main version.
(Mini) Playtest 3
Got advice to make a real physical book for the plant guides, though sounds interesting, I haven’t yet imagined how it can be combined with games with VR devices. Maybe that can be tried in a digital 3D game after.
16/03/2022
3D animations were imported. Some pieces of animations would change the character’s position, but the afterwards ones did not remain at the new point and will return to the origin point. Issues were reported to animation groupmates and get fixed.
A mistake was found in the finished sound. “The exit gate is just behind you” was read as “The exist gate…”. This tip sentence was finally abandoned as there was no available time block in the Foley studio for sounds art groupmates to make a fix before the submission time.
(Mini) Playtest 4
1. The arrangement of the guide scene was adjusted according to a final playtest. The guide of VR was moved from the back to the left front of the player. The gate towards starting the game was moved away from the origin platform. Several tips were added.
2. Players seemed to tend to ignore the dialogue and the animation. The volume of voices and the positions of NPCs were adjusted trying to catch more attention.
Reflection on collaboration
Although we managed to finish developing by the end, our project management on collaboration was far less than a good case. There are several main points among the collaboration process that need improvement:
1. The project file is too big to be stored online, in addition, only one of us has the VR devices. There were three of us working separately on building scenes, writing game codes and making shaders, which means all three would need to use both the project file and the devices.
Under this situation, we didn’t arrange a regularly onsite co-working time or at least a timetable for taking turns keeping the hard drive and working on it. Instead, we worked on old versions respectively and imported new works together to make a new version at the weekly meeting, which usually caused a mess.
2. We didn’t combine all the work well together until the ultimate days, which wasted the opportunity to have a complete playtest during studio time.
In addition, we didn’t check the resources from animation and sound art groupmates as soon as we got them, which caused plenty of last-minute adjustments and even a few deletions as there was not enough time for them to make a new one.
3. Due to the lack of experience in designing a game in VR, we didn’t work enough on prototyping and its testing. That caused more modification which could have been avoided.
4. The game we planned to make at the beginning was too big and too complex. Although the project was finally completed, a lot of time was spent during the first weeks on things that had to be cut in the later management. If we arranged a more reasonable proposal at the beginning, maybe we could free up more time to test and improve, making the whole project more polished and running smoother.