Group Project- Development 01

Introduction: In this blog post, I will be discussing the project idea and explaining the decisions we made as a group.

Theme: Maths

Need to create a VR/AR experience that would get KS3 students more engaged with learning maths key stage 3 graded questions.

Idea generation:

The idea that I proposed to the group in the group project is the idea that the group has decided to do. It was taken into account that the game would be played on a headset in a classroom. The college has limited headsets, so it would make sense to create an experience that could engage the whole classroom. I used Keep talking and nobody explodes as inspiration, the game includes a player in the vr world with a bomb, he must communicate with the other players not in the headset to understand how to defuse the bomb. This concept works well and engages multiple participants.

So I thought let’s build an elevator escape room where the players need to figure out 3 questions displayed in the elevator and communicate with the manual (companion app) working out numerical answers that can be inputted into the elevator button control keypad (if answered correctly they will escape). This will include different levels of difficulty from A , B , C and D KS3 grading with a set time of 10 minutes for the teacher plan lessons round the learning level of their students.

For the ideas generation and general direction, I took the lead at the start of the project, planning a manageable project that we could complete within the parameters of the assignment deadline. We agreed upon different areas of interaction that we was going to undertake playing to the strengths that we all individually have in key areas of game development. It was decided these areas would be a focus for each member of the group:

>Leaderboard
A leaderboard that will display score of the player when they complete a game. This is to add a competitive edge to the game and possibly could be used to challange two classes against each other

>Companion App
The companion app is a simple manual which has rules to answer the questions to play the game on a mobile phone

>Sound Effects/Sound
-Interactable sounds for when the player presses a button or gets a question correct
-Lobby Music
-Elevator falling sound effects as the timer decreases

>Difficulty Selection
Modes to select the difficluty of the questions descending from A,B,C and D

>Timer
A timer that will count down the player

>KeyPad
Input for the answers to the questions so the player can win the game and add a score to the leaderboard

Ross:
– VR headset and interaction methods
– KeyPad implementation
– Whiteboard/ Whiteboard Pen
– Elevator timing
– Testing

Caleb:
– Question/Answer System
– Main Menu Functionality
– Companion App
-Testing

Me:
– Elevator (3D Modelling)
– Leaderboard (Serialisation)
– Sound Effects/ Sound
– KeyPad Tutorial / KeyPad Implementation
– Testing

Week 1, What we are all focusing on:

Ross – VR headset configuration
Caleb – Companion App
James – Elevator 3D Modelling

Aims & Objectives:
– Conclude on designs of the Elevator model
– Create the Elevator Model and implemented in the scene

First of all, we created an inspiration board of how we wanted the elevator to look and decided on just using matte colours as the game felt like it didn’t need that step of realism.

Aims & Objectives:

We decided that taking the measurements of the elevator in the college would be a good approach seen as the audience we are designing for is the solihull college KS3 maths students.

Measurements of the elevator in Solihull College:

Elevator measurements
Height: 2.2m
Front to back: 1.35m
Width: 1.9m
Door width: 1m

Progress Update

Model Created:

Created the elevator in blender and added the model into the scene. However, had some issues with the play space being too big so needed to change so the player has a smaller play space.

Obsticals and Challenges

– The model was too big and needed to be adjusted for a more appropriate design for play space
– Correcting any faces that was facing the wrong way

How was this overcome?
– Adjusted the play space and handed to ross to see if the parameters of the play space felt more fluid
– Fixed all of the faces that were flipped so the game

Whats next?

• Create the Key Pad so its interactable and then we can start to implement the questions into the scene
• Will use a keypad tutorial

Thank you for reading,

James Lacey