TLDR
A most fruitful meeting with the estimable Dr. Zan Gao
UI overhaul
New aesthetics
New activities
Coin system overhaul
Particle effects
New sound effects
New music
Dr. Gao and the New Dream
Just before Thanksgiving, the team had the chance to speak with Dr. Zan Gao, a professor of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Gao has published many papers studying the physiological, psychological, and rehabilitative effects of video-game based exercise (aka "Exergaming"), including a number of studies in virtual reality activity games. We hoped to hear his advice on what makes certain games so good at encouraging exercise.
Some of Gao's favorite activity games are Wii Sports. He has found, both anecdotally and scientifically, that the best activity games are first and foremost good games, and when playing, you get a workout in the meantime. Gao seemed to have little love for the VR exercise apps he has seen: mostly they were exercise-first and game-second.
After showing him a demo of our app, Dr. Gao's first concern was the apparent lack of narrative structure. One of the great strengths of video games, he said, are their ability to keep us engaged with a singular narrative for months or years at a time. Therefore, a good activity game can keep us active for years at a time, provided that is has a good narrative.
This philosophy, game first, exercise second, is something we are just now starting to put together. The new aesthetics, sounds, and music all contribute to a new sense of interactivity, and in the future we are planning to organize that interactivity into a robust narrative structure.
UI Updates
The previous version of our in-game menu had as many problems as it could conceivably have: unresponsive, unwieldy, strange visual perspective, and lack of game pausing all made it in dire need of an overhaul. Thus, we created a new in-game menu that is inspired on the default in-game menus in Unreal Engine's VR Template. Overall ease of use has been improved, and many functions have been added, including difficulty settings and a Survival mode where the player has limited health.
Beyond this in-game menu, we also included a start menu that allows the player to take their time setting up their headset and controllers before the game begins its relentless onslaught of squatting blocks and side-steppable vans.
Finally, a Game Over screen was introduced. This will ease the tracking of high scores as well as allow for the showcasing of player stats (number of squats completed, coins grabbed, zombies bonked, etc.).
Clean Squats and Spinning Coins
Many of the visuals associated with activity blocks were lacking in conceptual clarity: players asked themselves "Am I supposed to jump over this thing?" (the answer to that particular question is always no). We sacrificed a few thematic elements in the squatting block for clearer design. A large, too-tall-to-jump-over hurdle with a big green downward-facing arrow that all but begs the player to duck, squat, or otherwise go under the block.
Turrets, Baseball Bats, Robots, and Zombies
The new activities that we are preparing to introduce are highly dynamic and exciting. The first of these, which has proven to be quite development intensive, is the robot turret activity: an actor appears in front of you and begins spawning lasers that aim for your head. The laser disintegrates when it collides with any object. If that object was the player, the player loses points. Additionally, the player can punch the lasers and keep their points.
The second activity in development ties into a mini-narrative that we are introducing to the game: robots vs zombies. The player begins by taking the side of the robots. In this activity, the player is given a bat and is asked to bonk a bunch of zombies.
Shiny Coins
A cornerstone of our development in new aesthetics comes to our coins, which now have a pleasing rotational movement and a even more pleasing particle burst on collection.
Particle Effects
For a game to be fun and satisfying to play, every positive action needs a pleasant feedback element associated with it. These can be sound effects, haptic feedback, or visual effects. Collectively, these feedback elements can be called "juice". We studied a bit of Unreal Engine's Niagara Particle System, and we began incorporating particle effects into our game. As of now, many of the game elements that despawn when the player interacts with them (coins, activity blocks, projectiles), have a particle effect associated with the despawn action.
Sounds and Music
A few weeks ago, we commissioned a friend who is getting a music minor to write an upbeat, loopable song for us to put in our game. The song is done, and is quite nice. Additionally, we have been on the lookout for all the free sound effects we can get our hadn on that may play into our game.
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