Prototypes Week 11

This week I thought we were lost on the project. Every time we met up we would just sit around and say “Hammer is good......Unreal is good” and that wasn’t moving us forward. Also we were not thinking about the project design and just about engines which I thought was the wrong thing to do, I tried explaining this on Tuesday, but I don’t think I was clear in expressing what I wanted to do next for the project .
So on Wednesday I went into the Library and looked up Game Design Books on Prototyping ideas to see if the techniques suggested in these books could help better explain what I wanted to do next in the project.

I came across a book called Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton and she had this term called “Physical Prototype” where you build out your Game Design on paper instead of using software. This way changes can be made easily if something doesn’t quite work out during the design process. The more I read, the more I felt this was the same situation our group is in and this is the next stage for our project.

Also discussed with the group was an example of a test we could try. With the mind set of finding out Misdirection Techniques for Prototype tests, I played “Borderlands” and thought about how there lots of Exploration, Colleting of Items and Side Quests that misdirect me from the Main Quest of the basic Mechanic of Shooting Enemies. This got me thinking about whether I would invest so much time if these extras weren’t in the game and it was just shooting enemies while trying to get from point A to B.

So I came up with this idea for a test in which one level is just a “Get from Point A to B” level with good level design and assets, etc, but the level is just shooting enemies and getting to the destination. The other level would be the same level, but with all the extra misdirection techniques like “Side Quest”, “Collecting of items”, etc.

The team seemed to agree on both a Physical Prototype and about the way we should go about testing for our question, which had to be structured a little differently based on this new test idea we came up with which is:
“Is there a link between immersion and misdirection and does being misdirected have an impact on players being immersed within a video game?”
Making two levels, one with these misdirection techniques and one without, we will test to see if that is the case or can good level design and the mechanic of shooting enemies string enough alone to immerse players into a video game.

So this week, is all about getting a Physical Prototype working based on our level so that over the Christmas break we can create the Digital version for the Milestone on January 13th.

Prototypes Week 10

This week has been focused on creating Prototypes. I know over the weeks I have mentioned that work towards a Design Document has been needed, advice was given to try out different game engines and create some prototypes for a project.

Buy creating simple Misdirection techniques in these game engines, the team can have a better understanding of which tool set is best to create our overall project.

I have been creating small prototypes in Unity while others in the team will be creating prototypes in tools such as Source Hammer, Unreal Engine and the Crysis Editor.

Come Monday we will present our ideas to each other and see if we are creating the right kind of Prototypes and decide on the engine. Then work towards level designs and the design Document will take place.

Over Christmas work towards these and more focused prototype level will be created to be presented in our 2nd Milestone presentation a month from around a month from today (Presentation date 13/1/2011).

First Milestone Week 9

This week was presenting our first milestone in front of Brian. We had organised plenty of team meeting to make sure we had a good understanding of what we wanted to say for the presentation.

Despite the fact I had to read from my notes frequently, the content of the presentation seemed to be enough to help us get a good grade. This was good news for the team as the grade for the last task wasn't very good making us unsure about our project. Getting this grade really motivated the team as we now know that with the last task the content was good, it just wasn't organised and presented good enough for anyone to really understand our project.

This next few weeks will be focused on creating a Design Document now. This has been noted quite a few times over the last few updates, but with the first milestone complete the focus will be on getting this completed now. With the team not getting a good grade from the first task, a lot of focus was put on this presentation to make sure we got back on track towards getting a good grade from this project.

First Milestone Week 8

This week we had a dry run of our first milestone presentation. It went well, though the information was quite a lot to take in. The advice was to add more visual aids to the presentation.

Work on our design document has been slow once again. This will pick up once we have done our presentation on Thursday (November 25th). The work towards it has been a loss of focus as the work seem to look more like notes for our final report than a design document.

This week work of the design document is the main focus. Discussions on the software to create our levels in is also needed for this week.

First Milestone Week 7

This week has been focused on making sure we get our done for the first milestone presentation during Week 9 of the overall assignment.

There are have been lots of meetings to make sure we have everything we need for this presentation because will will be having a Practice Presentation on Wednesday (17th November 2010).

There has been work towards our Design Document too this week, however progress on that has been slow due to our focus towards our first milestone presentation.

Greater understanding on how to create a worthwhile test for the project took a big step in the right direction this week with the idea of misleading players by playing with their understand of previous knowledge and life experiences.

An example one of our team members wrote up was this:

"For example, applying this style of misdirection to an object in game a player is asked to find the “missing key” to progress to the next room. In their current room there are many objects the player can interact with ranging from a table lamp to a statue. The door is what the player would most associate a key to be related to; however the key they should be looking for would be a key from a piano."

This kind of play on words seems to to be a good direction for our overall test. Nothing is final at this stage, but research into this idea is going to done to see how we can make a worthwhile test to help find important data to help improve game design overall.

Literature Review Presentation Week 6

This week was just a case of presenting our literature review to the lecturers. The team organized the structure of the presentation and had a few practice sessions before giving the presentation itself.

The lecturers see to this we had good content, though feedback was rather minimal. Case study into Video Games with Misdirection and only allowing one person to present instead of four were the key points taken from the lecturers.

This weeks focus is into finding games with misdirection, if possible, to help with out project. Also work towards our First Milestone, which is to create a design document, is need for this week.

Literature Review Week 5

This week has been rather a slow week in terms of developing the project. It was all about making sure we handed in the Literature Review for the deadline, 27th October, which was achieved.

Great organization from the team meant that we had plenty of time to make sure we had no errors in the document and made sure our work flowed and helped bring out our ideas for the overall project.

We have to make sure we have a presentation piece ready for next week going over the same information found in our Literature Review, so work towards our project will be rather slow again this week.

Literature Review Week 4

This weeks work has been on the first assignment which is to hand in a Literature Review along with a Project Plan.

This team task is worth 10% of the overall mark for the entire project and must go over out subject area. In no more than 3,000 words, the team must produce work based upon the research that has been done over the last 3 weeks.

So the work this week was more focused on making sure we had enough content for the assignment based off our research on misdirection and immersion and try and make a convincing argument to our question:

"Is there a link between immersion and misdirection, and does the level immersion that the player is experiencing have an effect on how susceptible they are to being misdirected?"

The deadline for this assignment is October 27th, so this weekend is just focused on making sure the review is up to a good enough standard and make sure it supports our ideas for the overall project.

Research Week 3

This week was just more of the same, research on the topic of immersion. With most of the papers going over the same topics, it felt like going in circles trying to find something of interest.

The only paper of interest was "A Single-Neuron Correlate of Change Detection and Change Blindness in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe, Current Biology (2006)" by scientist Leila Reddy.

This paper is finding out whether change blindness can be tracked in the activity
of single cells within the temporal lobe.



After researching more about the temporal lobe, It was interesting to find out the key functions of this part of the brain of on Speech, Hearing, Emotional Responses and Long-Term Memory.

More research on this topic is needed, but this could be an interesting area to base our research and question for the overall project.

Reddy,L. 2006. A Single-Neuron Correlate of Change Detection and Change Blindness in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe, Current Biology.Online.Acessed.17.10.2010

Research Week 2

The project is starting slowly. All we know is the area topic of immersion and don't have a clear understanding on a question to both ask and answer come the end of the second semester.

The last 2 weeks have been focusing on research on immersion. The research that I first latched onto was on a mental state called "Flow". Proposed by Hungarian psychology professor Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, "Flow" is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.



Another area of interest that I looked at during this week of research was on the topic of "Change Blindness". This occurs when a person viewing a visual scene apparently fails to detect large changes in the scene. For change blindness to occur, the change in the scene typically has to coincide with some visual disruption such as eye movement or a brief obscuration of the observed scene or image.

The Colour Card Trick Example

This idea of "Change Blindness" seemed to get the group thinking of good ideas that could lead into our question for the overall project. One test which I thought was interesting was the idea of allowing the player to select their character in a First Person game and change the hand texture during the game and see if they notice the difference. This could lead to other changes such as changing the voice, etc.