Tuesday, 1 August 2023

First playtest

Here are the main notes from the first playtest:

  1. The main thing found was that the turning wasn't user-friendly, I believe I was able to use it myself as I knew what the program was doing behind the scenes so I found it easy to navigate. When the tester was playing, they just found the mechanic really infuriating as it was hard to be accurate with it.
  2. The tester mentioned that with using the VR headset it didn't feel natural to need to control the rotation with your voice, it would make more sense to just move in the direction you are facing and use the short note for something else, maybe a jumping or shooting mechanic.
  3. They asked for some kind of mute button to be created, as they were wanting to talk whilst playing, but it would pick it up as singing.
  4. It was hard for the tester to understand what was meant as the difference between a short and long note and they ended up singing a long note when wanting to turn as they were unsure how long "long" was.
  5. As the 2 short notes were hard to do with them not being intervals that people are used to singing, the tester said they would prefer it if there were specific intervals that did something, for example, a perfect 5th, so they felt more natural to sing
  6. As there is no sound in the game currently, the tester said they felt a bit of a spotlight on themselves and would like the game to be playing sound. For example, some NPCs that would be wondering about making noise that the player could then interact with somehow

Main points I want to address in the next stage:
  • Change the movement system to get rid of the complicated semitone rotation.
  • Add a mute button.
  • Add a tutorial.
  • Add sound to the game.

Insights & Conclusion

- At the start of this project, my main idea was to make a game based on exploration. The player would sing to move about a world, collectin...