after mulling over what the pattern shapes i wanted the graphic assets to be a strange realization hit. i am abstracting a system in nature… why am i trying to portray these things to it’s literal form? so i thought about simple shapes and geometry… thought a little about works by tony smith and yayoi kusama and tried to figure out what the point of those shapes meant and their function.

so i simplified them and it’s almost embarrassing how i made this realization last week. the next task was my issue with color.

the biggest mistake was looking through color swatches… again, i needed figure out the importance of color and why i needed it. pretty obvious… and rather embarrassing to admit to this mistake.

what i needed:
– 2 colors for the player to switch
– these colors should contrast one another
– 2 colors for a background
– one of these colors should be red- direct correlation for danger

everything else outside of this was superficial… but in a way necessary to create visual atmosphere. i wanted small things to happen while the game was going on. tiny creatures appearing and moving in a playful manner. during a playtest session, norah mentioned how she wanted to interact with those creatures so i thought it was important almost everything in this environment to be responsive towards the player- even if they were subtle.

as of now… it is working but it’s not at a final place. but there are some fun things happening. hopefully… it’ll be an enjoyable experience.

[btw- this could not have been done without brian s chung.]

for gameplay:

– layers switch when players switch- previously they didn’t and it caused players to use mostly one color

for assets:

– for sound, i started reading about binaural tones and thought it was interesting how an imbalance of numbers can be applied to frequencies for sleep patterns, meditation, and various mental states. (some claims, however, seemed rather bogus.)

– there is a fine line between appropriate and cliche when it comes to colors.

– it’s more of a polish-phase step but from play testing it was suggested to make the character more moth-like. would like to try to give the character a bit of personality with sporadic movements.

***

notes from 12/3 work session:

– tiny sounds will not upload and will cause the program to freeze. it’s a known bug that can easily be worked around.

– optimization is the last thing i need to worry about but if this project were to participate in the winter show, i need to fix up a lot of things.

i’ve received a lot of great feedback from a few user testing sessions.

we only have a couple of classes left and until the final class i plan to continue working on software and making changes to the game to see what works and what doesn’t.

for the next class i want to work on software for a little bit, maybe the first hour and a half, and then search for some people to test with.

– testing out different images/color/patterns/sounds
– cleaned up how the progress meter worked- made it smoother

(graphics are dummies.)

while there is much to test maria paula played through it quickly and provided feedback:
– instruction/tutorial-like introduction
– to test out many patterns for the final visual style of the game

surprisingly i am on schedule. i have until next week to finalize this proof of concept/prototype and start testing with many users.

currently the game allows the player to see their progress through a progress bar, a background that changes color indicating danger, and sounds that progress and change as the game is played. i feel like there needs to be more- these indications should be very obvious to the player.