Informal Game Testing

Nick's Kinect game has reached a level where it is usable for play-testing. Some graphical adjustments are needed, and some unintentional gameplay mechanisms should be edited/removed, but the game is usable. Critiques and opinions on the control scheme have been collected orally, as a proper debriefing questionnaire has not been developed.

Opinions are varied, as are the subjects themselves. True conclusions cannot be drawn from such a basic method of data collection but it is good to get a general idea of the impressions the control scheme leaves on the SIG lab's occupants.

State of the Game

As of today, Nick's game has been improved in these ways:

Collision with "destroyed" objectives will no longer reset the course; these objects will no longer be collision targets until the course is reset by colliding with the start sphere. This was achieved by disabling the collider for the relevant game objects as they are triggered.

Current problems are that the timers update each time the end objective is triggered. They should only trigger once. A fix for this is being looked into.

Collider Experimentation

Multiple manipulations of the objective spheres' collider status has yielded various, though undesirable results. More info later.

Minor Progress

Today the projectile objectives have been improved to require each one to be hit in sequence before the timer reports how long it took to shoot them all.

Objective investigation

Today I begin to use the unity-side GetComponent commands and isTrigger booleans for making targets not trigger once "destroyed". The purpose for this is to repair a day one bug where destroyed/passed objectives will trigger an out of order response, resetting the course. With this fix, the player will not accidentally reset the course by hitting invisible objective targets.

Setbacks

Unfortunately an error has sprung up where the course does not properly reset when the starting sphere is touched. This is being looked into, and when fixed, will bring the game to full functionality with its new shot counters and secondary objectives.

Update 1: Reverting to a previous version has brought the game to a point where it works so long as the player does not hit the projectile targets after they've been destroyed. Monday's work will consist of researching and implementing methods to make the unrendered targets unhittable.

Shot Counter Success, Project Milestone

I have found the function that signals when a new shot is to be fired, and attached the shot counter to it. This method circumvents the problem where shots were being counted multiple times across multiple frames. Further, I have added the shot counter in both the Kinect controller's primary fire function as well as the mouse and keyboard fire function; all control schemes will count shots properly.

Sifting Through Nick's Game

Today and tomorrow I will be searching for the section of code responsible for instantiating the primary projectile prefabs in an effort to attach the incrementing shot count integer to it. This will circumvent the issue that has arisen from attaching the shot counter to the frame-updater: sometimes a single shot is counted multiple times.

Bullet Counter

The bullet counter has been added in today. However, there are bugs that need to be worked out: the counter invariably states that more shots were fired than is actually true. This is because sometimes shots are counted twice; this will be looked into tomorrow.

Nick's Game, Yesterday and Today

Yesterday I successfully created a separate loop of timed objectives. Today I have successfully added that separate timed loop into the larger timed objective loop. When played, the game will report your time taken to shoot the three destructible targets.

Nick's Game Restored

As of today timer functionality has been restored. The current state of the game: keyboard controls are active and fine-tuned on the timed-course level. Tomorrow further efforts will be made to add the smaller-scope timer as well as the corresponding shot-counter.

Modifying Nick's Game

Today I've, with help from Nathan, successfully imported the keyboard control scheme onto the Pit Level timed course for testing. Numerous movement speed / mouse sensitivity adjustments have been implemented. Tomorrow's work will focus on restoring the timer functionality associated with the startscript, endscript, and testscript.

Much of the time spent working on the project is spent learning what the scripts, scenes, and objects do and how they relate to each other. More in-depth documentation will remedy this.

Dry Runs, Final Presentations, Asteroids Completion

Today I've reached a point in the Asteroids tutorial where it can be called finished; I now apply my Unity skills acquired during the Asteroids tutorial towards adding the desired increased functionality to Nicks' game. Additionally I have attended a dry run of Joe Kider's defense and Alex's character AI presentation.

Last Tuesday and Thursday

Last tuesday Tuesday I continued to tinker with Nick's game code, but was having trouble with some of the fundamental functionality of Unity. To fix this, I have put myself through a Unity tutorial to make a simple Asteroids game.

Timer and Shot Counters, Nick's Game

Of the people here in the lab and with Nick away in Germany, I am the most familiar with Nick's game project. Because I am to add in a timer and shot counter to the game, I must familiarize myself further; today I am searching for the timer function in order to replicate it elsewhere. Specifically, it will record the time interval between the first green target being hit and the last green target being hit. The shot counter will be active in between these events, recording the amount of shots fired in order to hit the three targets.

Previously I have been working with the Asteroids tutorial, which will be described in later posts.