Safari aDVENTURE
Poject Info
Duration
2 weeks
Team Size
5(2 programmers + 2 artists + 1 sound designer)
Assigned Theme
The feeling of freedom/ Naive guest
Platform
HTC Vive
Team Members
Jiajun Tan, Muhammad Bin Tahir Mir, Jinyi Ye, Chenchen Tan
My Contributions
Game design, gameplay programming, playtesting
ETC Festival
Yes
Gameplay Video
Design:
1. Designed a core game mechanism that is easily understood and conveys a strong feeling of freedom for guest, using the camera.
2. Designed the interest curve to attract player's flow from normal animals to fantasy animals, glowing whale, which provide a special experience for the naive guest.
Programming:
1. Implemented the scenes movement function by combining coroutine API and the Lerp API and succeeded in solving the problem of motion sickness.
2. Learn and use a Unity particle system to build some beautiful elements in worlds to makes the world appealing. For example, rays with Unity post processing effect in the tunnel to show a feeling about spatial travel to a special place.
3. Implemented the glowing whale using small particles by combining the particle system mesh render mode and bake mesh API which created photo moment successfully.
Introduction
Safari Adventure is a VR game on HTC Vive, which provide the guest with a compelling and fun experience that guest can take photos with those special fascinating moment and even everything in the world. The whole experience with the camera in a safari park delivers the direct feel of freedom to the naive guest. Players can take photos, view the album and zoom in/out which means he can do almost everything he wants like a real camera. So that it helped the naive guest to experience the world without any instructions.
Notable Contributions
Design Phiolosophy
I think a good game design method is considering every expectation that would be built in guest's heart and use those expected to produce a surprise. So we use the camera concept to build a basic expectation for guest, and design different circumstances to transfer those expectation to surprise. For example, we made an avatar for guest so when they take a selfie of them the avatar will surprise them.
Design Problem:How guest experience the world with prop
In the beginning, we design our prop with a wireless mouse. So we need to decide which button will take pictures. We assumed guest will hold out a prop in a gesture like a real camera. So we use the left button of the mouse to take pictures. While after the playtest process, we found out guest prefer holding the prop in a gesture that put their index finger, the most flexible finger, on right button and middle finger on left button So they usually try to use right button to take pictures, which inspired me that when I designed prop to assist guest to experience world, we need to think more about how will guest use the prop in a most comfortable way. It also can be applied in system design that the system should be comfortable to play with because everyone will choose to enjoy comfortable things.