beepboopdesign

[beepboopdesign]

18 May 2024, 13:55

Today, Michael and I attempted to use his Android tablet to see if the application would run as an apk file. To my dismay, after multiple attempts the application would still not run even after changing several settings (such as using the latest Android build, etc.). Disregarding the resolution changes, everything is able to run smoothly except for the AR camera.

In an attempt to try Bluestacks again, this time using Michael's laptop, the AR camera is able to turn on. However, it would not detect the image targets which just hindered the progression of the game.

Unfortunately, there is nothing else we can do since we are unable to solve this problem. Thus, we have decided to just go with presenting the game through the Unity Editor. This was an unforeseen problem and there isn't enough time before submission to fix this. All other alternatives have been exhausted.

[beepboopdesign]

18 May 2024, 11:34

Yesterday, three different user testing sessions were conducted with my classmates.

Here is the first session.

Despite some language barriers that made it difficult to understand the Book of Anxiety Disorders, the player was able to utilize it when making the treatment choices. Furthermore, even after translating certain bits of the dialogue choices pertaining to the client relationship, the player made empathetic choices and managed to achieve a good result with the character.

In this second session, I asked the play tester from the previous session to help with the translation of some parts of the game. In this play through, the play tester said she wanted to try picking some apathetic choices just to see what happens. Despite picking some empathetic choices later on, this still resulted in a bad choice ending (resulting in an automatic No for one of the choices needed for the good ending).

In the third session, other than a bit of confusion regarding the scanning of the AR cards (due to language barriers), the session went well too! The player achieved the high clientRelationship specific dialogue like the first play tester.

[beepboopdesign]

17 May 2024, 14:42

From all the user test sessions so far, a common thread is that the players do not know which symptom cards to scan unless I tell them directly in the beginning. Especially in the tutorial. In order to combat this problem, I placed in pictures showing which Symptom cards are gained upon talking to the patient.

Here are some examples.

I believe this could point towards which cards will be needed, so hopefully it will work during future play test sessions.

[beepboopdesign]

14 May 2024, 17:31

Two user testing sessions were conducted today. First was with a friend's friend, and the second was with a classmate. Both were conducted at the school.

It is around these sessions that I realized that it takes approximately one hour to complete the whole game. I surmised it is enough to play just one chapter as it is enough to see whether or not a person could be empathetic to to the client. While there are limitations to this, such as different circumstances could lead to different choices being made (e.g like in the second play testing, the user had received the neutral ending because she did not pick most of the empathetic choices for Daryan). This could be a point for further research conducted in this topic, or if I have more time on my hands in the future.

Here is the link to the first session.

In this session, the player had difficulty with knowing which symptom cards to scan. However, he did well with the empathetic choices. To continue, during the section where the player has to pick a certain disorder that matches the patient, there was a glitch. After inputting the wrong disorder a certain amount of times, it led the input field to stick on the screen even after the right disorder. I am not sure why this occurred, it may be a fib on Fungus' part but I have placed an extra measure by adding another Set Active command in the block the story is led to after inputting the disorder.

(The first image shows the DiagnosingDisorder block where the next block is called after the right anxiety disorder is inputted, and the second image shows that the same Set Active command is set there as a precaution.)

Continuing with the second session, this one went pretty smoothly too. The player was a little lost at which symptom cards to scan, but other than that she was able to go through the entire chapter without much difficulty.

Here is the link to the second session.

[beepboopdesign]

10 May 2024, 17:20

A third user testing was conducted on this day with a classmate.

Here is the link to the session.

To start off, at the time of recording the lights in the classroom was not working. As proven in a previous testing session, light is essential for scanning the AR cards so at times a flashlight was needed to brighten the card for the camera.

Other than that blunder, the play tester noticed some typos that I did not catch while playing through it. They have since been fixed.

[beepboopdesign]

9 May 2024, 18:12

Today, a second user test was conducted.

Here is a link to the video.

The user was able to play through the whole game with little to no complications! The only problem that occurred that scanning the AR cards could be difficult at times due to the poor lighting of the venue. This proves that a bright location is needed for the camera to recognize the AR cards.

A highlight for this session is that it is the first time the real cards were used and it worked out great!

Furthermore, the user got the neutral ending. During Chapter 3 (Daryan's chapter) it seems like she had a bit of trouble navigating the more empathetic choices for him. Regardless, everything else went alright.

[beepboopdesign]

8 May 2024, 18:31

Today, I picked up the printed booklet and AR cards! Then I made little paper pockets to paste onto the booklet to keep all the chapter cards for convenience. As for the one tutorial card and therapy cards, I used a little plastic pocket and pasted on a sticky note that's supposed to be from Dr. Peri (tutorial character) to add more ... realism to it.

Here's a video showcasing the booklet.

[beepboopdesign]

7 May 2024, 16:34

Today, the first user testing has started. A friend from the animation degree has agreed to user test.

Here is the link to the whole play test session.

The play tester was able to go through the game even though there was a little difficulty in the beginning regarding the story. Despite that, she managed to pick empathetic choices and treated the characters well in the treatment section in order to achieve the good ending.

One of the set backs in this play through was that the conditionals at the end of chapter two were not properly done, which caused a glitch in the story where it would not continue past a certain point.

After the user testing was conducted, I fixed this just by deleting the first If command. Originally, I had added it thinking it would make things easier to sort but perhaps I made it complicated.

Nevertheless, everything else went smoothly and the user completed the game without any more complications.

[beepboopdesign]

6 May 2024, 15:22

The game is unofficially finished! Dialogue coding and artwork has been completed, including the scheduling of the printing of the physical booklets and AR cards.

Like I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the Android APK is still in the works so I am waiting on that.

User testing will commence this week. I have asked a few of my peers to help game test so it will be done during this week and week 7. Based on the feedback gathered I will make sure that it's all done by week 8 to deliver the final game.

[beepboopdesign]

4 May 2024, 11:00

Today, I consulted with Michael regarding the camera issue in the build. As it turns out, Vuforia only supports Android builds. This is an oversight on my part and I should have checked earlier when I was first developing the initial idea. Regardless, we have discussed 3 different alternatives to this problem during presentation.

I build it as an APK and run it on an Android tablet. Michael will bring an Android tablet next week for us to test if this will work.

I build it as an APK and run it on an Android emulator, such as Bluestacks, on my laptop during the presentation. Michael suggests Bluestacks, MEmu and NoxPlayer

I present it as is on my Unity Editor.

The last alternative is the worst case scenario, so I will be attempting the first two.

As there is plenty of time before I can try running the build on Michael's tablet, so in the mean time I have attempted to download different Android emulators to get it to work.

With Bluestacks, I am unable to run it as it does not support my laptop nor PC which both use Apple M1 chips.

Bluestacks specifications (source).

With that, I tried another popular emulator, MEmu. From the get go, it seems like this is a Windows only application. So it immediately disqualifies as a possible alternative.

MEmu specifications (source).

NoxPlayer was downloadable, however I could not get my laptop to authenticate it properly. The usual system preferences privacy pop up was not there so I was unable to download it.

Unfortunately, I will have to wait and see if Michael's tablet works. If not, then I will use a classmate's laptop a week before presentation to to run it as an application and see if it is a possible workaround.

Again, worst case scenario is using the Unity Editor as the final presentation method.

[beepboopdesign]

3 May 2024, 16:13

Game testing had been done today. Since my build isn't able to operate the device webcam properly, it's decided that Geoffrey would play on my laptop while presenting to the rest of the class.

Here is the link to a portion of that user testing.

The feedback summed up from this session mainly lies in the tutorial.

Geoffrey noted that I should:

Add arrows pointing to different sections of the navigation

Make the different AR cards pop up when the tutorial is explaining it

Add more noticeable arrows in the input fields

These fixes could be done by the end of this week.

Besides that, I'm planning on coding both Chapters 3 and 4 into the game to be ready for user testing next week.

[beepboopdesign]

3 May 2024, 06:20

There is good news and bad news to the project.

First to start of with the good news, I have finished writing chapter 3 and 4's story, and figured out what ending I will do. Artwork for both chapters and the ending sequences are 50% done and will be finished by the end of this week (possibly). Coding will be done afterwards and will take a couple of days to finish, so it could be accomplished by next week.

In addition, the essay is on the 20% mark with both introduction and purpose done, and features and functionality should be easy enough.

As for the bad news, there are two current issues.

One, I am unable to get the Comfort items system to work. While I thought it could be done by just simply using the Call:Continue command in the block, it would not operate the same way as the MoodUp/MoodDown block does for changing clientRelationship and it's icon. Unfortunately, I am unable to get why this won't work... It's not an incredibly huge issue as the game could do without it- But it's still disappointing.

I tried to fix it as best as I could, but everything I did wouldn't get it to run properly. Instead of spending all my energy on that, I decided to just let it be and move onto working on other things.

Second of all, today (well in a few hours to be exact), we are supposed to show Geoffrey and our classmates our final draft of our application. We'd need to build the game into an actual application and send it to the Teams channel for Geoffrey to live test it in front of everybody. While originally, I presumed there were no problems with this, it just made me realize I should've attempted building it before today.

When running the actual application, everything runs smoothly until the moment you're supposed to start scanning the AR items. For some reason that I can't figure out at the moment, the application would not ask for camera permissions, consequently you would be unable to use the device's webcam.

This is the unfortunate result.

I don't know how to fix this problem... I've tried searching online for answers but they don't seem to be specific to my problem? There's no other choice for me other than to ask Geoffrey to play from my Unity editor because I genuinely don't know how to get it to work. I admit that it was my fault I haven't attempted to build the application and this should have been a foreseeable risk.

For now, I suppose I will only need to play from the Unity editor. On Saturday, I will ask Michael to help me with this issue and hopefully get it to work. AR plays a large part in the game, so I really need to fix this otherwise I'm doomed to fail.

[beepboopdesign]

26 April 2024, 15:56

I am a little behind on schedule as Chapter 3 has only been completed this week. But I should be able to get Chapter 4 up and running (at least a draft of it) for the test demo with Geoffrey next week, and for the subsequent user testing the weeks after.

After configuring with the save systems both from fungus and the custom script Michael came up with, I realized that it wouldn't really work well as I'd have to add manual save points in each block, and that it also messes up with GameObjects outside of the Fungus plugin, including the AR Camera and background images.

While I am able to save whichever final choices made and (eventually) the resulting final clientRelationship score that will effect the game's ending, saving in between scenes as a whole is still something outside of my current capabilities. Therefore, after discussing with Geoffrey, I decided I will forego the manual saving system and will stick to saving variables and whatnot that I am able to do.

Other updates include that I will definitely start my report this week.

[beepboopdesign]

19 April 2024, 15:12

I'm almost done with Chapter 2 and I'm on track to finishing Chapter 3 by the end of this week. I'm aiming to finish Chapter 4 by week 5, to get it ready for testing by the week after!

I'll also start on my document this week since I have enough material for it all.

[beepboopdesign]

12 April 2024, 14:18

I am finished writing Chapter 2 so this week will be implementing it into Fungus, including all the artwork and dialogue. A little bit of Chapter 3 is being written at the moment so everything is on track with the Gantt Chart.

I will start writing the report once I'm done with Chapter 2, as all mechanics will be implemented by then. I am still not sure if the Comfort items cards will be added, so I will be consulting both lecturers for their opinions.

[beepboopdesign]

23 March 2024, 10:48

This is my last update for this term. I just completed my final update presentation and showed a quick demo of how my game would work to Michael and my classmates.

This is my updated Gantt chart. Coding wise, I mostly have issues with the Fungus save system so I will mostly work on that next term alongside with coding in the final story into the game.

User testing is also aimed for next term, although they will be completed in the middle since it will give me ample time to complete the documentation and any changes to the final game in the process. Before I complete the final game testing, I think I will conduct an early testing for the tutorial level and chapter 1, so that I can further improve on the next chapters based on user feedback.

I believe that I will be able to finish everything on time.

[beepboopdesign]

13 March 2024, 01:48

As of today, I have officially finished the tutorial level and chapter 1. The tutorial level explains a bit on the player's character, allows the player to input their name and also saves it over to the following chapters.

Players can choose to skip the tutorial entirely, or go through the whole thing and get an explanation on how the AR cards work during the game. The use of comfort items will only start in chapter 2, so for now it is only the symptom and therapy cards.

Here is a short demonstration of the beginning of the tutorial and includes the player's name saving over to the first chapter. Overall, this is good progress and enough to show at the final presentation in 2 weeks time. The next course of action is user testing so I can make improvements next term.