Final presentation

Worked with Olivia yesterday on the website during the evening so we would have a nice website to how when we presented our game today. The presentation itself went well and people seemed to like several aspects of it. A concern that Daniel from Logtown Studios shared with us was the age of our target group. A few companies such as HCT and Oculus does not recommend children under the age of 13 to use their VR product because there hasn't been done extensive research on how prolonged use can affect eyes that aren't fully developed yet. This was a concern I had already told some group members about since Daniel had asked me about it previously when he gave us a guest lecture a few weeks back. Back then I suggested to target children +13 instead of kids under that age. They might have forgotten about this decided to proceed with our original target group even though knowing this.

After all the presentations were done Daniel wanted to try our game but since we still had bugs that weren't solved he couldn't try it as he easily gets motion sick from lagging VR games. The most distinct and obvious bug he found was the distortion of the camera which made his actions in VR not correspond to those in real life. As this would cause him to get motion sickness we tried to find a easy fix together but not even he could find the source of this problem and solve it. I will try to spend some time next week and hopefully fix the last bugs including this bug if possible.


General reflection on the group work and progress of the project:
Now that the project is (kind of) done I am happy with my contribution and quite happy with the outcome of the game. I do feel that there's several things that could have been done better and more efficiently but it's always easy to say that in hindsight. If I were to do this project again with the knowledge I have now I would probably have started by nominated myself as the project leader. That's because I felt that my group wasn't very organised and people didn't always know what to do and therefore at time slacked. The contribution to the project was therefore quite unevenly spread between the group members. I also felt it was difficult getting my voice heard in the group. There was a member of the group that had very strong opinions and was at times difficult to work with and if I were to have gone back in time I would probably have decided not to work with him. On the bright side I feel like he has made me perform the best of my abilities as I felt he was quite condescending when we first started the project which in turn motivated me to prove myself and always be better.

On a more positive note I loved that we ended up making a VR game! It was much easier than I had thought before starting this course. Because of my new found interest in VR I've talked with Daniel about possibilities of working part time or partake in one of their project at his company, Logtown Studios, as I want to work more with VR and learn more about the makings of a game. I will also definitely take the Advanced graphics course next year!

Signing out,
Linette

Crunch-time

Final presentation is coming up and since my last post we have been trying to do as much as possible in the project. After the testing on Monday the 4th (which I missed because I was sick) we found that there were more things that we wanted to fix before the final presentation. After lunch I met with Linnéa and Olivia and I helped out with the programming of the website along with Olivia as well as fixed some smaller problems in our game but since the Vive was occupied in VIC we could try the game. Instead I booked the Vive the next day in hopes that we could solve most of the problems then.  In the evening I implemented the SceneManager.LoadScene code that would only have two loaded scenes on simultaneously to minimise the use of CPU and keep hopefully keep the fram rate above 90fps to not make the user nauseous.

So today me and the girls met at the VIC-studio at 10 but couldn't use the Vive until after 11 and tried the game again. We saw that while the frame rate was higher and more stabilised than before but still not at 90fps. When looking at the profiler in Unity to find the problem I saw that VSync used 80% of the CPU at all time and spiked when the user looked down (at the other levels). It spiked even though the scenes were no longer loaded at the same time. I tried looking up ways to solve this problem but couldn't really find anything. I also found out that developers had been encountering this problem since 2013. In the end to get around this CPU problem we had to build and then run our game as it was the only way to keep the fram rate high enough to not be lagging when the user looks down at the floor. We still have a couple of problems but most are fixed and it should be good enough to show it and test it tomorrow at the presentation!

(De)Bugging

So today Linnéa and I met at the studio after lunch and tested our game. The first and probably the biggest problem we found was that the frame rate of the game was very low (around 60 but piked to 30fps or even 15fps at times). So first I tried to make most of the light sources in the stairs "baked" so they didn't have to render in realtime which I thought could bring the frame rate up to 90fps but when that didn't solve the problem I tried to make more of the objects in the staircase static. When that didn't work either I was quite confused until I realised that the fram rate was at it's lowest when the user looks down. This was because of the game trying to render all objects in the levels underneath the player even though it's not visible to the player. Just quickly searching on google we found something called "SceneManager.LoadScene" that we could use to only load the scenes that the player is interacting with. Instead of focusing on solving this problem right away I focused on finding as many bugs in the game as possible so that we could split the problems to the other members of the group. This is a list of some problems. Hopefully most of these problems will be fixed until Monday when we have invited a few test subjects to try our game.

Working on

So it's been over a week since the demo. We have since split the rooms we're working on and worked on them separately again to prevent merge errors. I helped out designing the "regular room" and Lukas completed it.

On the 23rd I sat at the VIC studio with Linnéa and we decided to change some textures since the rooms were pretty dark and cold. After searching for more colourful wall textures we chose the one with green tiles (to the left). I also searched for more models in the Unity asset store we could use in our rooms to make it more coherent with the cartoonish playful feel we are going for.

I had to soften the edges on the pattern of the green tiles as the one from the web had visible lines when repeated:

We divided the work we were supposed to do until today (29th of November) and my responsibilities were to update the graphics and make the feel of the rooms more playful, as well as make objects more consistent and if possible cartoonish. I'm also supposed to "finalise the puzzle" which I will try to do in the VIC studio tomorrow as it is problematic to make the objects in right size without using the HTC vive (since the objects has to be the right size to reach the buttons). I will connect the rooms with each other when they are finalised which will be tomorrow.

I've tried to make a new room that involves a handle that the player have to grab to make boms fall from above into the cauldron. The idea of this room would be to have the player grab the handle then catch the bomb which will then be used to destroy things (kids LOVE to destroy things) and in that way find the button to advance into the next level. However I have not been able to get the code for this to work and will try to fix it tomorrow if possible.

I also implemented a background that I got from the Unity asset store. The clouds moves and it's nice to see the cartoonish surrounding when looking through the window that Linnéa has made. Being able to look out the window and see such a colourful and peaceful surrounding makes it feel more open and less claustrophobic. It's also cool to see the perspective of the mountains and clouds change as the player falls from one floor to the next.

First demo

We had our first demo of our project today! However, we had some problems merging our things before the demo. Linnéa and I sat yesterday at VIC studio and thought that we would just do some fine-tuning before the demo today but found several things weren't in order. We found some problems with sounds, lightning,  the player falling through the floor when falling from one level to the next, the controllers could not grabb objects (the rigidbody and collider components had "mysteriously" disappeared on the controllers) and that most buttons weren't functional anymore. Linnéa and I sat at the studio with the equipments for about five hours and tried to fix some of these problems as well as putting together all the different rooms into the same scene. The rooms that were combined was Lukas (1st floor), Olivias (2nd floor) and mine (3rd floor). We decided on showing these three rooms during the demo as Linné and Thibault had other responsibilities and the last group member hadn't done much in their room. Since Linnéa and I found these problems the day before demo we told the rest of the group members that same evening. Together we decided it would be best to meet up earlier at VIC on demo-day so that we could fix them together and hopefully fix them faster.

 

And so the demo-day arrived! We all met up at 9 (except for one member that was booked the first hour) and Linnéa and I explained some of the problems we had encountered the previous day. Together we fixed some of the sound problems before we decided to move the equipments to the front of the classroom/studio where there was more space for us to move around. Then we got stuck when trying to fix the buttons as it was Thibault responsibility. When he came at 10 he started fixing the buttons as well as fixing the sliding floor. Since I then had booked a meeting at at 11, I had to leave but when I came back at 12:30 most of the things, that Linnéa and I had pointed out, now worked! The only thing I fixed after I came back was so that the cauldron destroyed the objects that were thrown into it (was a programming error on my part in the script which I fixed with some tips from Thibault). 

During the demo, we first showed our room and then had our class-mates try it out for themselves. It was really cool that they seemed to like the game! However, there were still some errors that we didn't manage to fix (i.e objects getting stuck to the "hands"). We will try to fix these problems soon. We also got comments that the rooms where too different from each other and that it should be more coherent. I agree and when discussing the comment after class we all decided to make the rooms in a more similar style and feels to the third room (the room I made for the demo). After the lecture I suggested to the group that we could have a level where the book shelfs (that is spiralling down the wall, see picture underneath) instead could be a dragon (since it ties in with the fantasy theme). I thought it could be fun to interact with the dragon, for example throwing things in the dragons mouth (kind of like the existing cauldron in my room) or putting things in the dragons claw. Perhaps even making it a level where the player should be careful/quiet with the objects (not throwing them around and making too much sounds) to not wake the dragon. However, the guys didn't seem to like that idea and wanted to continue doing things with buttons.

I started to think about including more puzzle-game elements since the first two rooms are just clicking buttons to get to the next level. I feel like there should be more to the game than just clicking buttons in VR! That was main the reason to why I added the Cauldron in the first place. We got a comment from one of the players that he though the best thing with the game was cauldron, which made me really happy and made me think that the player should be able to do more of that. Therefore I would like to perhaps include the cauldron in other levels as well or include something else (that isn't a button). 

Before going we split the work that we decided should be done till next week. Lukas would start on the Business plan, Thubault and Nicolas would work on the buttons (not sure on what) and Linnéa, Olivia and I would make new designs of the rooms so they would be more coherent. So hopefully I'll get to try add other elements to the game! 

Update - "the unity expert"

After we had presented our puzzle tower idea on Monday the 6th we decided that the entire group was going to get more familiar to unity by doing some tutorials and read up on how to implement HTC vive until this Thursday (the 9th) so that we could try the equipment at the VIC studio. I played around in Unity and created this room in which I then imported the SteamVR from the Unity asset store and implemented the controls needed for us to test the program with the VR equipment.

 

On Thursday the 9th we met and tried my scene as I was the only one who had done something we could test. We played around, continued to build and tested the project while being at VIC the entire afternoon. Since I was the one who built the scene we tested and was the most comfortable with Unity I was in charge during this session. I also got named "the unity master". During this session we added a second floor (level) as well as two clickable buttons. We succeeded in connecting the buttons so that when it's clicked the player falls through the floor onto the next level (YAY!).

At the end of this session we decided that each member would make a room of their own until yesterday (13th of November) so we could try and see what aspects of each rooms we like the most. I Continued working on my two rooms and got this: 

 
This wasn't exactly the feel I had intended when I did the sketch since this scene is a lot darker and smaller. It was hard to reach some objects so I had to make the room smaller so we wouldn't collide with real life objects when testing it at the VIC-studio. But I still liked the idea of having many interactable objects so I added many books and other smaller objects. I added stairs with objects in them to enhance the illusion of falling when the player is falling to a new level.  On the second level I also added in objects such as a cauldron, pumpkin, magical staff, lanterns and candles as it ties in more with our storyline being that we're a dragon locked inside the evil wizards tower. Since I added a cauldron I thought "why not be able to use it?". Therefore I wrote a script that I added to it with an smoke effect so that when the user throws something in the cauldron there will be a visual feedback of that the thrown object now is in the cauldron (Hopefully our sound master Linnéa can apply some sounds later as well!). I'm thinking of incorporating the use of the cauldron to the puzzle but will need to think more about that.

The group will continue working on their respective rooms and I will connect the different rooms on Friday before the presentation.

Sketches and Ideas

So it's been a while since we started this project... We had a rough start with group members not being able to agree to one game idea. After booking a meeting with Björn, on 2nd of November, we agreed to make a puzzle game in VR. While still not knowing what kind of puzzle we wanted to make, we started sketching scenes a few days later. Since we knew we wanted to have the player fall through the floor when a level is cleared all we knew was that the game would be played in a tower. So this was my sketch of a possible puzzle room:

The idea behind my sketch was that it should be a cozy room with lots of interactable objects. I wanted it to feel like a safe and mysterious place (at least not scary) since we decided to make it a game for people around the age of 15. I also thought it could be a nice place for someone that hadn't been in virtual reality to play around with the many different objects. Since we didn't know what kind of puzzle we wanted I also thought that we could use some of the objects as a part in the puzzle, for example arranging books in a certain way to unlock a key to clear a level. After showing my sketch we talked about making a story for the game and decided that the user will be a dragon locked in the tower by an evil wizard. I like this idea as we then could explore more "magical objects" (things floating in midair, magical spells and so in). I think this is good as it's a great opportunity for us and the users to experience some of the endless amounts of possibilities of being in VR. 

I also started making our logotype that we then used during the presentation of our game idea. I started with the logotype to the left just to get a feel of what we would want and with the groups comment I then iterated the design a few times until I got the logotype to the right.

... And one other member of the group finalised the logo

The idea of the logotype was to incorporate the tower as the entire game will be in a tower. We wanted the game to be cartoonish since that would be better suited for our audience so I also wanted the logotype to reflect on that.