Category: Critical Practice & Exploration

Final Additions to scenes

In some of the scenes we went through to try and adjust certain areas of dialogue and how things are prompted to the player which included all of us adding some more highlights and even some subtitles to make sure that the player can follow the dialogue more easily during the narrative.

Technical Issues with the Scene changer

We had been working on this project mostly in unity for the past couple of months and experiences minimal technical glitches and problems. However we finally wanted to attempt a build of the whole project which now looking back we wish we had tried sooner because we found that there was a serious problem in the opening scene.

There is a collider in place in the bathroom doorway that when the player enters and walks through is suppose to set active more objects and set active false the collider the user walks through which worked perfectly in unity but in the build it crashed everytime. The build took quite a long time to initiate and so we had not much time to fix this issue and so we had to resort to simply removing that particular collider in the scene which did seem to work.

File Size Issues

Another issue we found with working seperately, merging files and using so many different assets was that the project became very large and over time it grew from 8gb, to 15gb, to 25gb and eventually to 35gb plus which meant that some of the loads times in between scenes could take up to a minute at times and so we had to go through a lot of the scenes and find areas where we could reduce these loads times as much as we possible could.

To resolve some of these issues we went through to bake the lighting and tried to remove some of the overall larger effects because in the 2020s scene it was 2gb of lighting which was insane to us!

We also attempted to lock the frame rate and reduce the overall draw distance to help with the load times on the levels

Changing Colliders in the 1990s and future scene

One of the main issues that we found when building the file as explained earlier was of course the collidrs and so we found that perhaps the set active false of the collider is creating an issue and so we had to go through all of the scripts and create an on trigger exit that would deactivate these instead. This however led to an even further issue where we found that we had written the word exit in upper case which also had a strong effect on the scripts which was annoying but we were able to go through the whole project to try and resolve this.

Problems with certain scenes in the build folder

In the build folder after multiple attempts and changes we were able to have mostly all of the scenes working such as the future and 2020s scene but we had problems where the 1980s and 1990s scene would crash on load. After some code changes and removing certain colliders we were able to restore the 1980s scene so that it would work with the transition but the 1990s scene was still crashing and unfortanately we were running out of time before deadline to try and resolve this issue and had to resort to showing the full level in the recording but of course having the risk that it would crash on that scene in the final build verison of the experience.

Final Submission

We were able to overall successfully get the file size down to a zipped folder of 1.8gb which was good for the moodle submission while also collating all of the other documents including the critical discussion, scripts, data, GDD and many other elements.

Conclusion

Overall i must say that i am very happy with how the whole experience came together that we were able to mostly create and make all our ideas from the original script and concept we had. We were able to create quite a large and hopefully interseting project for the players and the research iterations that we conducted were very helpful and also very interesting to discuss overall. As a group project it was also very enjoyable and collaborative so i feel we had all worked very well together considering the scope and time we spent on this project.

Adding Photos to the frames

One of the big elements in our experience was of course the character remembering and reminiscing about their old photos from their past. We had left a lot of these until the end so we could all decide and collate images that could be spread across and combined together accross the experience. Iris was actually able to draw out a good number of photos for this experience that she also tried to keep more anonymous so not to give away from the character might look like or directly who they are which we were striving for a lot when we were designing this.

In our scenes they were added especially to the older age scene for the user to look at at the start and also be interact in some ways as well.

Adding the Painting to the 1990s scene

In our story the character is an artist and we also have a painting interaction where the user can try to reassemble a painting that the character has torn up out of anger. For a long time this particular paintig was a placeholde but i have now finally gone online to find a painting to put in its place as you can see from the images below

This required me to go into Photoshop and try to divide up the painting in the correct size pieces of the objects in the unity experience which overall wasnt too bad to do.

Intro Menu Disclaimer and Tutorial

We realised as well that it would be appropriate to add a disclaimer message and also some information on the controls for the game to appear before the opening men and so these were created as sprites below

These sprites were then added in at the very start of the experience to fade in and out on display for the user before they can see the opening menu button at the start

Adding Glasses and Blur to the scene

While we found that the old age XR rig wasnt too successful we wanted to see if we could find others way to make the user feel older and an easy one for this we found was the user maybe having bad eye sight at an older age. When the user starts the experience they will have a gaussian blur on the lens to blur their vision and they will need to pick up some highlighted glasses and put them towards their head which will then correct their vision which we thought was quite effective overall.

Additoonal Tutorial Elements in the starting scene

To also add some further guidance and help for the user we also decided to add a tutorial message on what the user needs to do in the bathroom and how they should take a medicine to test out the mechanic and once they do they will also be instructed to go to bed after this. This messages fades in and out on display on the mirror in the bathroom when the user enters.

Adding in the AR Images to the User Interface

In addition to drawing photos for the scenes, Iris also created some additional imagery, writing and informaiton to appear around the mirror in the AR experience that can be enlarged for the viewer to see when they are click on as shown below.

Old Age Starting Scene

In the future starting scene we wanted a way for the user to navigate through this scene and then be able to continue through the narrative while we knew that the scene changer would load into a different scene. So we created a number of colliders in the future scene which triggers the medicines appearing and also a collider on the bed so when the character wants tot sleep in the story it will change to the next scene which will be the scene changer.

Creating the Level Changer

We added the three medicines into the bathroom and made each one interactive and have a collider which will then be able to trigger the change of scene. We wanted to have it so that when the user comes back to this scene each time the medicine that they previously drank will still be gone and so with a lot of trial and error we did this through static objects in the game manager that will permanenty be set active false after they are collided with the main camera which overall worked very well.

After creating the game manager all of the objects were then linked to the Main camera of the player so that when those particular labelled objects collide with the players head it will trigger the scene linked with that model.

Drinking Sound Effect

We had created now created how the user will transition through the different levels we wanted to further emphasise the effect of taking or drinking the medicine and so the code was changed a but further so that when you lift the medicine to the head collider it will play a drinking sound effect while the bottle dissapears.

Candle Interaction in 1990s

In the 1990s scene i felt that there were still some more interactions that could be added and also help show some additional story elements for the user. In our group we had dicussed that their mother had passed away by this time and this is why they are in the apartment on their own and so perhaps their would be a photo of the mother on display to show this.

I saw an oppurtunity here to add another interaction to this scene by allowing the user to light candles to show respect to the mother character in this particular scene. To do this i added in a lighter model and candles with particle effect flames created seperately above the candles. Thes particule effects were set to false and they could be triggered active on collision with the flame from the lighter which overall did work very well and had the effect I wanted. I improve this further by also having sound and the lighter turning on and off if the player places their hand into its own collider.

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Merging all the scenes together into one project

We decided this week will be when we merge all of our scenes together after working on them seperately to save time and allow us to work on those scene how and when we wanted. This was done by making my file the overall master file with Lin and Iris packaging their scenes so they could be imported into the project.

This method did require some trial and error and having to locate, relink and add in again some certain assets but overall after some time we were able to successfully merge all the scenes into one project and now of cours we need to spend time to make everything cohesive and all works together in one project.

Separating the Bathroom environment for scene change

After some tests we initially planned to have the future scene be the scene changer, start and end but we felt like it would be easier to have a dedicated scene the user will go back and forth to that focuses specifically on this main mechanic and so it was seperated off further int the scene.

Animating NPC character for start and end scenes

The brief requires us to have NPC characters in some way in the scenes and our narrative starts with the doctor talking to the player about the medicines and so I tried to find some models on Mixamo. From the images below you can see that I found this paricular model and textured him in Unity and overall i feel does look the part of the character from the script

I then looked further on Mixamo to find some animations which includes him standing idle, talking and walking to leave the room which I was able to find and implement overall in the scene but i am not an animator and while these are not perfect in the game they do work as a whole.

Experimenting with Elderly XR rig

Creating Rain effect outside the windows

In the 1990s scene i thought it would add more to the atmosphere of it being dark and dreary to add some rainfall outside to really add to this emotion and hopefully show this feeling to the player as well. This was created using some particular effects that are on loop on one side of the building only where it is viewable through the window.

Adding in Spatial Sound into the 1990s scene

I also wanted to experiment with some spatial sound and so I decided to add a radio to the scene that can be playing static and when it is interacted with it can either be tuned or turned off just as some additional elements for the player. Using spatial sound it can sound louder closer up and quieter as the character walks further away.

I also wanted to add some spatial sounds with the rain outside so that when a character walked closer to the window the rain would sound louder and then quiter as they walked away which i thought worked quite well in the whole experience.

Creating AR UI in Spark AR and incorporating Filters

In Spark AR i started to experiment with the overall user interface and how buttons are created and interacted with the in the App which i discovered is straightforward to do but can become quite complex and a lot with the more interactions that are added because of the long string of events which need to be tied together overall.

Updates to the environment and decorations

After some time I spent quite a lot of time this week making updates trying to find some additional assets which might feel more suitable to the time period and also further decorations to fill out the area more and make it more interesting for the player and exploration.

Adjustments to the layout and asset sizing

One thing that i found when making adjustments and to the XR rig was that certain objects were just too big or too small and so i needed to spent quite a bit of time making adjustments to all of these different elements. This was also needed to be considered across all scenes and how the player percieves certain items in VR because it is so much different to looking through the headset than looking through the editor.

Adding outlines to points of interest

One aspect that i thought would be really helpful is adding highlights to certain points of interests or objects in and around the scene. I found a veru useful shader and highlight script on the unity asset store which works great where you can adit the colours and thickness of the outline on most objects in a scene as seen in the photo below.

Triggering text animations on events

To also help guide the player on how to do certain tasks and events i thought it would be useful to have some text or ‘thought’ prompts to help tell the player what to do and also show what the character is and might be thinking at the time.

So in a number of the entrances to certain rooms and areas i added colliders which act as triggers for animated sprites hidden in the scene so when the player crosses these colliders it will show these text prompts in the environment.

The text prompts are hidden or set active false in the scene and when they are triggered an animation will play that fades them in and reveals them for the player to read but then fades out after a short time.

Adding hand Models to the scenes

we also added hand models into the scene which are animated so that when the player uses the triggerss the fingers are animated to bend. The hands were also given a texture which makes them more faded and transparent so they appear more ghost like and then be more anonymous to the player to hopefully help with the overall feeling of embodiment.

Testing 21 different users

During this past week over multiple days and locations we were able to test 21 individual users. All of us in the group took build folders of the user tests and distributed the 2 versions of the test randomly between the users to get the results that we required. We initially planned to test a total of 20 people but we were able to get one additional person for the data and of course for more effective quantitative data we would ideally need to test upward in the triple digits but for the time we have 21 should be fine to get some general idea of the data.

Overall the results of the data were very interesting and each user who tried the younger age XR rig, felt that it was effective in making them feel like a younger character with some users even stating that during the test. However for the older XR rig users mostly did not feel like they were an older character and were more annoyed by how slow they were moving as a character. So we felt that the younger rig was very effective and will need minimal updates for improvements but perhaps the older rig will need rethinking.

Results of the research iteration

Ideas for the elderly XR Rig

After testing some of the users and realizing some issues with the XR rigs we began to discuss and think of ways to improve it or other alternative options. After discussing with our teacher it was suggested that perhaps we could experiment with how most people’s eyesight will worsen as they age and so could we maybe add a slight blur to the lens to simulate this? It was also suggested that this idea could be emphasized if you start the user with a blur and when they pick up glasses it will correct the blur and also add frames around the lens for the player which might also help with immersion.

Creating the opening Menu

For the opening menu I spent some time to make something simple but also relevant to the overall experience and I thought it would work well like in the experience for the menu to be a bookcase and you can start the experience by clicking on the photo frames. The environment is completely dark except for a spotlight on the book case.

The photo frames were then added and changed so that there is buttons that the user can choose between like a normal menu.

A line renderer and script is then attached to the players hand so that when they move the line over the button and select it using the trigger it will then jump to the starting scene of the experience.

Creating the closing credits

The closing credits were then also kept very simple by creating the text credits as sprites which are then added to the scene which fade in and out after one another over the time the viewer is looking. There is also a disclaimer stating that the user should go try the AR element with a to be confirmed title of the experience.

User interface design for the AR app (Adobe XD)

For the AR element of the experience with the face filters i started to develop further and create a wireframe of what the overall experience will roughly look like on a mobile device and how it will work in the final experience.

Trying out Footstep sound effects

One idea that we had for the user test iteraction to see how people react to changes in the XR rig was to add footsteps sound effects to give the user an idea of speed and movement while playing the scene which i attempted using the code as shown below:

However through some further research and general testing i found that this method really does not work very well at all because it can confuse the user since its not their own feet making the sound effect and its also isnt necessary overall so we decided not to move forward with this.

We knew that we could need to develop some more testing and perhaps find some more ways of how we could make updates to the XR rig.

Questions for our Second Iteration:

1. Did you notice any differences?
2. If yes, please explain your answer
3. I felt like I was a child
4. I felt like i was an old person
5. Do you have any further comments you would like to add?

Finalising some Interior Design and Decoration

During this week i tried to go through my scene and make sure that i was filling up the space and really making it interesting for the user and adding any small details or additions that I could. It was also important to add elements that incorporate story elements such as the room with the painting that i wanted to make sure contained a lot of assets in this room specifically.

Creating the Painting Interaction

The painting interaction i initially thought would be quite trickt but overall using the set active true and false collider effect did work the charm with this interaction. I could create seperate faded objects that assemble together to make one whole object like a painting and have objects on the floor collide with these elements to reveal the fixed painting.

The script that i used to make this system work was quite simple so that when the particular painting piece the player picks up is collided with the faded versions that that piece will dissapear and reveal the correct version that will eventually lead to a full painting.

Creating the Photo Interaction

The photo frame interaction was created in a very similar manner to the painting interaction except this time they are linked to the photo frames and also use a very similar code to create this same effect. Sound effects were also added so that they would player on the particular collision with those objects and placing them.

One element with these particular assets that i found tricky was the box collider which had a strange centre of origin that needed to be reset for each part of the object. Luckily my lecturers helped me solve this issue and is something that i would definately need to remember for future assets in use.

Phone Answer Machine

The phone answering machine was quite easy to create in the end and mainly required having a audio source linked to the object that could be triggered when interacted with. I will also attempt to add spatial sounds to this particular element as well to try and create a more interesting and immersive effect for the user.

Photo Flash Scene Change Effect

For the scene transition i used a very similar approach from some of my previous projects which used a canvas and an animation that created a fading out effect. In this particular case i used a yellow flashing effect like a camera that also has a linked sound file of a camera flashing to essentially end the scene.

Updated to the Apartment Layout

After looking at the apartment further i decided to try some further alternative layouts by looking at some different apartment floorplans online to see if i could create something a bit different and perhaps more interesting to move around and navigate for the player.

Final Developments to the first user research iteration

To put together the user research iteration all of the rooms were divided the rooms amongst the group which included Lin creating the 1980s apartment

After all of the different environments were merged into one singular scene I then looked into how we can arrange this layout and the best way to switch between these scenes for the user testing. To avoid any issues with the user being able to see the other buildings outside the windows I decided to stack each one on top of one another so it wouldn’t be possible to see the other flats in the environment. This would hopefully not be too distracting in the environments.

As you can see from the image below the four XR rigs were then put in place so that the user would always start in the same position within each environment. The only difference between the XR rigs is the Y coordinate and each rig being labelled and specified for that certain apartment or time period and so we can turn on and off the different rigs as and when we please. For the research test we simply planned on showing the users the different environments and then getting their feedback on each one and also showing them the environments in a random order and not chronological so hopefully this wouldn’t influence there answers.

Finding test participants

After discussing with our teachers how we should go about this first user research test we decided that it would be best not to test too many participants and so we settled on finding up to six different users. Ideally for the test it would have been more beneficial to get users of different ages brackets but due to time constraints and also the demographic that we can get hold of. So for the actual test we were able to assemble six other people that were aged between 22-26 to look at the environments.

Overall it was great to see how different the users perceive environments but it is also a shame that these users will not have viewed a 1980s environment first hand compared to those who would have been older. However it is also interesting to see how users interpret the environments and see what there idea of an older or newer apartment would be.

Each participant was tested over the course of a week with some being tested and using the VR headset within some of the university classrooms as LCC while some others were tested at their homes using a Oculus Rift S or Oculus Quest 2 headset and each person was then also asked to fill out our demographic questionnaire and also our research iteration questionnaire.

Analysing Test Results

After we had completed all of the tests with six different individuals we were able to analyse there results and answers and overall it was quite interesting to see what each person thought each environment time period was and also there general opinions of the layout, furnishings and decorations of the apartments.

Overall for the first question we had quite a positive result in which nearly everyone thought that Environment A was the 1980s, Environment B was the Future, Environment C was the 1990s and the only stand out was some mixed results in which Environment D was thought to mostly be the 2020s but had a couple answers which were not matching. However The results were mostly positive and what we wanted and so we would not need to make that many major changes to the environments in the terms of the time periods.

Luckily all users had noticed differences in the environment which overall does show that they care about their surroundings and the differences that they see. Most of the users noticed more obvious changes such as technology, colours and general furnishings that had moved around or were different styles.

However there were some elements which users noticed felt or seemed out of place in the environments such as certain aspects they believed to be historically incorrect or didn’t match the surrounds which is feedback we can definitely incorporate into improving our environments.