#MixedRealities Week 3: Further Unity work, and AR game ideas

This week I primarily focused on leveling up my abilities in Unity. I did this by watching a large amount of tutorials online, the majority of which were from the YouTube channel Brackeys which showed me the basics of creating a game in the software (Brackeys, 2020, August 31).

(Image of Brackeys YouTube page, photo taken on my school account on 31/08/2020 at 12:53PM)

Inspired by both these tutorials, as well as Mark Billinghurst's lecture this week on prototyping Mixed Reality, and my own boredom of starting lockdown, I decided to sketch out and create a physical prototype of my very own AR game. Inspired primarily by the AR Hockey game Mark showed us, I decided to create a two vs two multiplayer dodge ball game, that could be projected onto the walls and floor of a room in a similar way to the the Hockey game. The requirements for the game were: that it could be played in my hall, and that onlookers could easily view the game and cheer on the teams, an aspect of watching physical sports I particularly enjoy. The cost of setting up/creating the game also had to be as cheap as possible, due to us all being students. The initial need for this game I would like to solve would be: to create a experience that could be played by my hall mates and I, that wouldn't cost much to create/run.

My initial sketches were primarily focused around exploring and putting down as many different ideas as I could, I wanted a game that could make the user feel as though the dodge balls were really in their space, that the objects had presence, and to this end I developed a number of different designs, evaluated these designs and then redesigned them in order to fix any mistakes. The result of this, was a AR dodge ball that, as previously stated, was projected onto the walls and floor. Inspired heavily by the AR Hockey game that was shown off slightly later on in the lecture. Movement for the game would be tracked by a Xbox Kinect. I chose the projection method, as I felt as though it would be easier for the players to play without the need for any potentially bulky AR googles that could get in the way of the experience. I was also primarily designing this game for myself and my friends in my student hall, and as such didn't want their to be a large cost barrier of entry (Therefore the game couldn't be designed around Hololens or similar priced AR headsets).

(Images of some of my early sketching prototypes)

The next step for me was to storyboard the game out, and try to get a feel for how it might function and it's overall layout, as well as a slightly more detailed layout.

(Storyboard of my game)

The game starts with two teams of two on either side of the room, once the timer ends, both teams rush to the center of the room and get as many balls as they can (from a total of five) back onto their side. These balls, projected onto the floor, will change color depending on which side they are moved onto. The objective is then to kick the balls at the opposing team, if they are hit, the ball disappears from play, and their teams damage score rises. If it misses, and hits the edge of the playable area, it loses most of it's momentum, changes color, and can then be safely used by the other team. This rule allows the game to last longer, and provides an easy intensive to aim your kicks carefully. Once all the balls have hit an opponent and have disappeared from play, the game ends. The winning team, is the team with the lowest damage score (the team that got hit the least by balls) I implemented this rule as the game is designed to only be played by a small number of players, meaning that if traditional dodge ball rules were played the game would be over incredibly quickly. This problem was picked up during the initial interaction design process. An alternative solution would also be to either increase the number of players, making the game virtually unplayable in most of the rooms in my hall, or by changing the win condition of the game, and making it so that the game ends when a team gets hit a certain number of times (e.g. 10).

After story boarding my idea, I then created a physical mockup, to see what the game would look like in a 3D view.

(Physical mockup of my game)

Unfortunately due to the Covid-19 lockdown, I was severely limited in the materials I could use for this mockup, using purple pills for team 1, and orange bottle caps for team 2. This was also inspired by the physical mockup of the AR Hockey game Mark showcased in his lecture.

I am excited to continue work on this project once Auckland opens back up into level 2, so that I can create a paper/experience prototype, and receive user feedback from friends/hall mates, as well as create a virtual mockup in VR

This week I also began working on my poster for Assessment one, and began using Professor Deb Polson's Case Study Analysis template (Polson,D. 2020) to elevate different AR and VR projects. While I have not yet decided on the case study I would like to look at, an early version of my first case study analysis (On Beat Saber) is shown below:

(Evaluating presence template)

References:

1. Brackeys (2020, August 31) How to make a video game series. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/user/Brackeys

2. Polson, D. (2020). Designing Mixed Realities. Draft CS Model for Evaluating Presence [Lecture notes].