Conclusion & Evaluation

Having now finished the 3 day end of year show I can look back and evaluate what I have produced.

All in all I feel that the overall show was a big success, everything which we had planned for in terms of the room had been constructed and painted to a fairly high standard. One area which could have had a bit more attention was possibly the overall advertising for the show. Even though we had many visitors to our room most of them were there to see the art and photography exhibitions, and therefore had little interest in what we had to offer. There was some interest from local games companies however the overall show would have clearly of benefited from a private viewing one night. This being the first year of this course, some holes & areas for attention was always going to appear & this is something which can now be amended for next year.

For my final piece I felt that it operated very well and was pleased with how it went. The soft toy on the rod worked well with the plain white background and the overall length of the rod was just right for all heights of people. The overall feedback from players of my game was fairly positive and it was enjoyable watching people playing a game which I had created, it also showed that my target audience prediction was accurate as it seemed apparent that my game was quite appealing to a wide range of people of all ages.

One problem which did occur when the game is being run for long periods is that the overall game speed seems to slow down. This may be because of the web cam or an error in coding; the overall slowing down process didn’t however really affect the game play noticeably. This is something which I would like to have a look at if I have time in the coming weeks after the show.

Because we had all the lights switched off for the 3 day show I needed to make sure that lighting around my web cam was of a suitable level for it to operate properly. Tests were done in the week before the show began and I found that the lighting levels were just right for the web cam to detect movement.

One thing which I would change if I had to carry out this project again would have to be including a written poster containing instructions of what to do once someone has walked over to my game. I found that many people wandered over to my project and didn’t know that they could get stuck in and start playing the game. They just needed a little prompt to say it was ok to play around with what was in front of them.

Another thing which I would change / alter is the on screen character which the gamer controls. Many players were unclear as to what part of the monkey they had to make go over the items of fruit to collect them. All it really needs is an added graphic which makes it clearer to all the gamers. Finally I would also like to of included a top score board, where the gamers could enter their name along side their final score. This would add to the competition of the game making it more interesting for longer periods of time.

Finishing touches

To add the finishing touches to my final piece I brought a selection of fruity sweets which the visitors could help themselves to. This just makes the stand look nicer and more appealing to look at, also everyone likes a freebee.

The initial idea was to buy the foam shrimp and banana sweets as used in the game, however all the local stores had sold out around the time of the show, a suitable fruity alternative therefore had to be found.

Room Preparation

Almost all of our time over the last week has been spent preparing the exhibition room for the final show. The room had fake walls put up, creating a more suitable shape, these walls then needed to be scraped and painted white.

Once dry we had to install the correct number of PC’s, and televisions into the room and ensure that they all work properly.

For my individual piece I needed to measure out shelves for the monitor and web cam to sit on and construct a second wall to enable the camera to work properly. These then had to also be painted white to tie in with the rest of the room.

Posters and wall art then had to be lined up and stuck into place, before testing the overall lighting and sound quality within the room.

Finally after tiding the whole room up the floor had to be painted, covering up all the scratch and old paint makes giving the room an overall professional look.

Creating a Background Poster

Perhaps a little late in the day but I spent this evening designing a possible background poster to sit in front of the web cam to give the game more depth. This idea came out of a discussion between myself and Sam Butler as we both agreed that it would only add to the experience.

Because the overall theme of the game is bananas & monkeys it seemed logical to create a jungle scene. Because I wanted to print this out on a large scale I created the scene using the vector based Adobe Illustrator. This will allow me to rescale the image to a large size without pixilation.

Updating My Website

To make sure that everything is up to scratch I spent the afternoon updating & tiding up my online portfolio website.

Hand in Date

Today was the final day for any little finishing touches to the software side of the Final Major Project. All the work from now on would be around the preparation of the room, and creating any art work for the game.

Before giving in my CD I played through the game one last time to make sure there were no obvious errors. Because I used a downloaded font I also included this on the CD for safety just in case it is wiped from the machine during transportation.

Suitable Fonts

One design consideration which needs to be looked at is what font I am going to use for the final piece. My chosen font needs to fit in with the overall theme of the game as well as being easy to read and of a suitable colour. A key factor in good design is not to use any more than 2 different fonts, and keep the range of font sizes down to a minimum.

With this in mind I went onto http://www.dafont.com/ to have a look for any fonts which I think will be suitable for my game. Quickly I came across a number of fancy fonts which could have been candidates however I didn’t feel that any of them were just right. Eventually I came across the font ‘Copa Banana’ after doing a search for bananas. I felt that this font was suitable as the aim of the game is to collect all the bananas on the screen.

Creating a Backdrop

Now that I have a little clearer idea into the best way to control the character I was now able to look into / sketch out possible end results for the final show. In other words design drawings of how the visitors would interact with the final piece at the show.

One idea which I was keen to progress was having a soft toy on the end of a thin rod, the gamers would come in and wave the rod in front of the camera in a attempt to collect the on-screen items.

A key factor which I have to always consider is the unrelated background movement behind the web cam. This would seriously affect the overall game play and is something which needs to be carefully planned out when constructing the exhibition room.

Testing A Little Bit

In a random experiment into what was the best way in which to control the on-screen character I happened to dangle a Playstation 2 controller down in front of the web cam.

This proved more successful than using your hand because the thin wire was almost undetectable by the camera, therefore allowing you to easily position the character anywhere on-screen without errors.

Storyboarding It Out

To get a clearer idea as to exactly how all of the components will fit together in the final piece I started to put together some story boards.

Currently I am working on that the game will consist of 3 levels in which the gamer has to collect all the items within each level before the time runs out. As each level progresses the overall time scale becomes shorter, and the number of collectable items will increase.

Once the gamer has collected all of the items in each level an ‘exit’ symbol will appear, which they then have to catch allowing them to progress to the next level.

Dropping the Sound

Today I made the decision that I would drop all the sounds which I have created from the game. The reason for this is because it wasn’t very practical to play my game whilst wearing headphones, as the wire could prove a dangerous hazard whilst waving your arms in the air.

Speakers were also not really an option because of interference from surrounding TV’s and over-head projector, leaving me with no real choice but to drop the sound completely.

Losing The Maze

After a discussion with the course leader about the direction in which my project is going we both came to the conclusion that I was perhaps making things too complicated for the time scale available to me.

Because my initial idea was all about reflection and mirrors I decided to scrap the keyboard controlled maze completely and focus on a simpler web cam controlled version.

This will now consist on the gamer controlling the character using their hand to collect a set number of coins before the time runs out.

Counting lives

Currently when you are hit by one of the monsters roaming the maze the game automatically ends as you are killed. This can get really annoying as you only have one chance to get it right before you have to start over again. This after time would get really annoying and gamers would soon lose interest in the game.

Therefore I started to look into creating lives for the gamer, so that when you are hit by a monster / obstacle you don’t die instantly and have another chance to complete the level. The code for this was fairly easy to put in and I managed to get it fully working quite quickly.

One problem which did occur was the monster sometimes took off more than one life at once; this therefore wouldn’t be very good in an actual game so I started to look into ways around this. The solution I found to this problem was to add a slight time delay to the monster timeline where the code was. This gave enough time for the monster and player to move away from each other without making the time delay obvious to the gamer.