Hand Models
One of the main aspects for this experience was of course to add some hand models so the player can see where there hands are in a virtual space but this is something I left until later. I started to research online ways to add hand models to the XR interaction tool which didnt seem to difficult overall because you can attach and resize imported objects to each controller which will then appear on screen. At the moment the hands are currently static models that dont have any motion or animations but I am hoping that gesture or grab animations wont take too long to implement into my gameplay.
Adding Navigation
Navigation is another aspect where originally I wanted the experience to only work if the user can actually physically step around the environment but then of course I needed to think about the accessibilty of the experience and how some people might play sitting down. Researching more into the XR interaction tool it was also not too difficult to add quite a simple form of navigation to the experience.
I have now added a continuous move provider which is based on a locomotion system so that using the left hand controller joystick the player can move around the environment at a relatively fast pace which give the oppurtunity to further explore the environment they are playing in. I then included a Continous turn provider which allows the user to turn the camera left and right using the right hand controller. This is currently set to a continous motion which after a few attempts gave me slight motion sickness so i want to research into this further to have set turns that will isntantly turn the player in 60 degree increments for example.
Boundary Walls
After adding navigation it became apparent to me that the boundary walls that i was going to originally add to the experience might not have a use to stop the player falling out of the environment. This was quite simple to add walls which have a collider and rigid body with no mesh to create a visible boundary that the player cannot cross to try and leave the environment.
Introduction Screen
After having our lesson/class on ethics in virtual reality i knew that it was extremely important to include some information or a disclaimer screen message to explain and justify the experience to the user. I also fet that including a title screen also just helps to round off the whole game as a full experience with a clear start and a clear end. To create this I decided to use a series of animations to keep it simple so that tht title ‘STUTTER’ would appear followed by the first disclaimer and then the tutorial informaiton for how the player can start the experience.
Outro Screen
The Outro screen was made in a very similar way to the introduction screen which was made through a series of animations all timed to fade in and out after one another. The outro screen starts by displaying a message of information about speech impediments and Stuttering which is followed by a message that i think is important to show players to wrap up their understanding of the full experience.
Typography/Word Updates
After some initial viewings and suggestions to my VR experience, I was told by multiple individuals that the typography that i had chosen is quite difficult to read and if I had done this on purpose. I knew that after quite a few people had mentioned this that i would need to change the typography. So i decided to go back into my original Illustrator file to change the fonts to something much more legible as you can see from the images below.
Difficulty Transitions
For this project I wanted to avoid having different levels and transitions to keep the scope and time frame for this project achievable in the given deadline. This meant that transitions between my difficulty ‘layers’ would be one of the most important aspects and something that I knew i would need to leave until last after everything else in the experience is completed.
This week i focused on ways that i could have the transitions take place by fading in and out the different sections or ‘Parent’ objects that i have seperated each difficulty, disclaimer and conversation. To start this process I created a canvas that would be triggered using an animationt to create a fade to black effect by block the players view while different sections load in and out of play. This was then achieved by identifying each section as a game object and using a ‘StartCouroutine’ and ‘IEnumerator’ i could time the transition effect between each difficulty level.
Each of the ‘CorrectWord’ boxes were then assigned a counter so that every time a correct word was shown in the box, the counter would go up by 1 each time. This then meant that if all three words were correct in the easy difficulty the counter would go up to 3. The transition was then triggered by an if statement so that if the counter was at 3, then the animation fade would start and the next difficulty level would load in. Each difficulty was assigned a certain counter number and so on which luckily achieved this effect with quite great success. I still need to play around with the timings and length to see what works best but im confident over time I can find a good length of time between levels.
Next Steps
The next steps for this experience is to start some user testing to see if all of the gameplay mechanics and understanding of the experience works for the user or player. I will also need to go back over and check the sound and audio for the whole experience and make sure that the timings for transitions and difficulty lengths work together to make a satisfying game for a player.