Category: Term 2: Collaborate Unit

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.

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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.

This VR game was developed based on Oculus Quest 2 and using Unity as the engine. Players can walk around, move, teleport, and interact with characters and items to explore the game world, solve puzzles, finish tasks and achieve different narrative endings.

There are three main scenes in the game: the starting place, the spaceship and the forest. Every time the players start or restart the game, they will begin in the starting place, in which they can get themselves familiar with the actions, read the developers’ name list and walk into the regular game at any time.

After getting into the regular game, firstly the players will arrive in the spaceship. By the first time the players come into the scene, the human character “Master” will give some background information from the view of human beings, relay a series of tasks to the players, and tell the players how to transfer between the spaceship and the forest.

In the forest scene, there are spirit characters “Oins” staying around different spots. Once the players are close enough to a spot, the Oins nearby will separately give different pieces of information from the view of the forest spirits and relay another series of tasks (puzzles). Except for these, the players are able to explore freely until they finish part of or all the tasks they have.

To finish the tasks from the human beings, the players will have to collect different crystals on specific plants according to the information given on the tablets in the spaceship scene, bring them back and put them inside the container of the analysing machine. After all the crystals have been analysed, the game will come to the end after the players get out of the spaceship under the order of the Master. Whether the End 1 or the End 2 is going to be shown depends both on the progress of the tasks from the Oins and the players’ choice.

In the Oins’ tasks, the players find clues from the voices or by exploration, solve the puzzles according to the alchemy manuscript and activate the alchemy matrix in the forest. There will be a ray with a button to control it after all tasks are done.

By the end, if the players finished the Oins’ task, the players can choose to use the ray to hit the Master’s spaceship. The forest won’t be bothered and the Oins can live their lives as before. If the players choose not to, or they haven’t finished the Oins’ task, it will come to the End 2, in which the Master goes back and bring more and more spaceship to start their colonization in the Oins forest.

Appendix: dialogues appearing in the game

Master’s

Scene	Content
The first time the players get into the spaceship.	“I’m the greatest botanist in the world, you may call me Master!” “You should be grateful to assist me, I need you to get something for me from your nasty forest. [the radiated, killing forest] Now, go collect every plant on these tablets.”(Master slap the guide on the table) “If you try to escape or be late I will destroy you, your kind and your forest!”
A hint to tell the players where to go if they can’t find the way to transfer themselves to the forest scene.	“What an ignorant creature!” “The exit is the glowing white spot, just behind you!”
The players go back to the spaceship without any plant crystals.	“Look at the time. You’d better finish your work before I lose all my patience.”
If the players explore freely in the forest for too long a time.	(The player can hear the voice of the master from far away) “What are you doing! Why haven’t you come back!”
When it comes to the end.	“Hahahahaha, good! Just like what I expected, your plants are the best for our new energy resource! “You are useless now, disappear from my sight! ” (player been kicked out from ship)
End 1 in which the players use the ray.	“What! What’s happening…no, STOP!!! ”

Oins’

Scene	Content
A group of Oins near the entrance (the transfer gate) of the forest.	(all) “Here, come here, One of us!” [excited voice] (one) “We all worried about you, he took you away! (messy) “What happened? Does he hurt you? What does he want? He wants to take our forest! He wants to destroy our forest! What will happen to us![ Oins talk anxiously] (all) “Bandit! Bandit!”
A group of Oins near the legendary manuscript of the matrix.	(one) “Ancient forests and our ancestors will help us to prevent this great evil. This! Is the legendary Manuscript of Matrix. You will take it! Use the alchemy matrix and we are going to defeat him!” (all)“Defeat him! Defeat him!” [Oins excited]
One Oin near the pathway.	(one)”Don’t resist that human now. Work on both tasks for the moment, we’ll finally let him pay the price. Now go for it!”
A group of Oins near the alchemy matrix.	(several) “Here, you found it!” (one) “This is an ancient alchemy matrix. According to records, it can provide huge power in a second, just like a big cannon. All we should do is get the materials prepared and wait for that human’s spaceship to rise up.”

Personal aims and objectives

Recently, I was thinking about the relationships between colonization, races, resources competition and the development of both technology and social formation. For me, my narrative aim in designing this game is to tell a story, in which human beings are looking for new energies and therefore violate the spirits(named Oins)’ forest, but also leave some technology on how to use those energies to the Oins (during generations colonial). The players, as one of the Oins who’s kidnapped and forced to work for the human beings, by the end, can choose whether to do nothing and see it happens or to fight with the human beings with the technology that they learnt from them to protect their homeland.

As for the gameplay, we hope to make a mini immersive world for players to relatively freely explore and finish tasks, and gradually understand the storytelling during these processes.

And for the visual presentation, our VR groupmates would like to make a magic forest while I was thinking about the visual atmosphere of the First Industrial Revolution. We kept these two in two different scenes and combined them into our narrative aims in representing the two different races.

Critical Reflection

The game

I was not familiar with coding regarding VR. As a result, there were loads of hidden peril in my coding for the game. Some functions were realized in weird ways, which might cause unexpected problems in actual plays. For instance, in spite of DontDestroyObject, I used a weird method to allow players to move with objects between scenes- applying a trigger on the player’s body (as I didn’t know how to check if specific objects are grabbed by VR hands), and while the player triggering the object and the gate at the same time, enabling a same object by the position just in front of the player in the next scene.

Besides, there are different aspects regarding guiding players that need to be improved. Before, every time while playtesting, the designers would have to explain to the players how to act (teleport, grab items, …) with the device in person, even if those actions were commonly used in a lot of VR experiences. For most people, VR devices are non-necessary stuff compared with phones and computers, thus they are usually not familiar with using such devices.

We realized that by the last playtest, which was already very close to the final submission time. An initial scene was urgently added to give a tutorial on how to use the VR Oculus equipment, as well as provide an area for players to get familiar with it. It worked as expected in an extra playtest, but might not be the best way as we didn’t have time to think a lot about it. Guidance design concerning all possibilities of players getting stuck as well as introducing players to the game world should be considered at the very beginning next time.

By using the new-developed language and the vocal guide we’re trying to avoid stiff hints in the VR experience, but after it’s done some problems were raised. For instance, as all the sounds are played by VR devices this is not straightforward to ears like headphones, players might face difficulty getting all the things clear, plus player is able to move away from the NPCs at any time, which also decreases the opportunities for them to go through the whole narrative and get the information on how to play through.

More severely, for a more immersive VR experience, we didn’t make a UI system for players to check what they need to do easily by general language. The guidance relies almost totally on the audio dialogues. Once the players choose to ignore the NPCs’ voices, they will very probably lose their targets.

The project

Overall, we were trying to make a game that is more complex than what we can finely do in two months. As a result, loads of things had failed to meet the expectation. There were still several functional bugs left with the final submitted version, e.g., the Alchemy Matrix sometimes could but sometimes could not recognize the correct Plant Crystals (we speculated it’s a collider issue but didn’t have time to figure out), which might prevent the players from getting to the next step. Plenty of non-functional improvements are needed as well, e.g., 1. while speaking, the NPC’s head should be able to turn following the exact position of the players; 2. There should be a loading UI for a smoother experience while the players try to transfer from one scene to another.

Working with VR

This was my first time making a game-in-VR during which I realized there were differences in things that need to be considered between VR games and PC games, not merely the familiarity of players using devices, but, associated with this, more complex behaviours and expectations. For example, after getting familiar with the situation, the players who were new to VR tended to pay most attention first on teleporting through the whole map, trying to find all interactable objects in the scenes, whilst ignoring the background information like the animations and the sounds, which might cause confusion about how to accomplish the game. But this kind of players may feel satisfied with the pure interaction in VR, and the game inside is more likely a surprise but not a necessary experience for them. This may change if VR becomes more popular, but before that, how to balance the interest attracting of VR and of the game should be considered.