Final Blog Post: Course Overall Reflection and Thoughts

My Thoughts:

This is by far one of the fun and interactive DECO courses I've done so far in UQ. Plus, it's a Lorna course, who doesn't like courses taught by Lorna? ;) The other one that was fun and good was back in my first year when I did DECO1100 where we were given time to test and play various games in the exhibition hall.

Along this course, I felt that i've learnt quite a lot of stuff, especially in coding. My coding skills have not been any good at all in my whole life as an IT student, but this semester itself i've learnt alot through AS3 and it's given me some hope and drive to go learn more programming. I have also learnt alot of prototype skills especially in this course. In every prac session, I really liked the exercises given to us. One of the good ones was to invent a makey-makey connection that allows us to play mario cat and one of the challenge was to not have the ground connected to us. This exercise itself helped my final prototype alot as i've actually made waters in the cups the ground/earth.

Hence,  i do believe that prac sessions are really useful and should be made mandatory, maybe make 70-80% attendance to pass the course? I remembered back in graphic designs (deco2200) where attendance to prac and tutorial sessions were mandatory and each of us made efforts to go, and we ended up learning alot from the sessions. But either way, even if each prac is not made mandatory, I think the TESTING SESSIONS should be made mandatory so that all students could benefit from the session. If 5 users only turn up to the testing session, the results are not broad enough or opinions could all be much similar to each other. I was lucky to have a good practical session where normally at least about 10 students would be around.

For the first assignment (video), I was disappointed that there was no Premiere Pros in our IT building, compared to the JACs building. Lucky for me, I own the Adobe CC student suite. But what about the other students that dont have? To rely on photoshop to edit videos is quite hard. Really hope that the IT building next time supports premiere pro as well, especially the mac lab.

About prototype planning at the start, i felt that maybe more consultation times with the tutor or even the lecturer (Lorna) would help. Because this would be the single idea that would be built and last for the would last the whole semester. For me, I actually had 3 game mash up ideas and going for one was quite hard. But I'm really thankful for all the tutors' who helped me assessed each game mash up and choose the right one for me to develop and build on.

All in all, I felt that I learnt a lot through this course. Going through the assessments along with your peers and getting advise from the tutors were really helpful. Many tutors and friends actually help me alot especially in coding. Being a more design based student, I'm very glad to be able to learn more about designing especially back in assignment 1, the video prototype where i get to learn how to make a good kickstarter style video which in future could be really beneficial for me. I also learnt alot of designing skills in illustrator as i have to make many of my objects through it.

Really thankful that I've taken this course. It's also a bittersweet ending as this would be the last course that Lorna would be teaching me in UQ. Thank you so much to all tutors (Will, Callum, Khoa and Peter) and Lorna!

PS: below are all the videos of the prototypes that I've done on the game mash-up of tic tac toe and minesweeper along the whole semester:

Video 1: Kickstarter Video Prototype

Video 2: Demonstration on Interactive Prototype II

Video 3: Demonstration on Interactive Prototype III

Week 13 Prac B Testing of Friends' prototypes!

It's the last day of Pracs/Classes!

After setting up my game and allowing friends and tutors to check out my game, I also had a chance to look around other people's game prototypes. one of the games that I really liked is this picture above here. It's a game of controlling the motorbike but you will have a timer bar which will decrease greatly if you keep touching the glasses. If you dont touch the glass, you will lose your sight. I got a score of 56 which was pretty decent. Really enjoyed the game at how random the cars could come and you would have to avoid them using the physical controllers.

Another prototype I liked a lot is none other than +Alex Balson's Star Thief. It was so much fun watching how the game was developed bit by bit since the start of the course, including the invention of his cool controllers. Below is a video of the four of us +Daniel H , +Cody Matthews , +Alex Balson  and I where we tested and enjoyed the game thoroughly. A really good way to end the last day of uni.

 *watch in HD!

Feedback for Testing and Evaluation- Interactive Prototype III

Several questions and feedback that will be asked to the users after testing this prototype:
a) Was there any problem between the interactivity of the ball, cups and also the gameplay itself? Did you hit a particular cup and a mark appeared on another tile instead?

Feedback from several users:
- at first there was no problem. But after some time i realised that taking the ball out of the cups would trigger either one of the coordinate which eventually will trigger the wrong coordinates for the next mark.
- no problems at all.
- Yes there were problems as marks appeared on another tile instead. But these could be how the marks were implemented. There should have been 16 keys instead of using the coordinate values.
- yes there were problems as mark appeared on another tile. But because of the makey makey's constraints, it is good that you try to work around with what you have, rather than tweaking the makey makey and have 16 keyboard keys to insert each tile into each key. Having multiple balls and allowing them to stay in the cup would definitely help to solve this problem.

Reflection and Outcome:
i did realize this problem when i was testing the product myself. the first ball that enters a cup and makes a mark would not have any problem at all. the problem comes when the ball is being taken out of the cup for the user to play. When this happens, the program might record either one of the coordinates of the current cup that had the ball, this means that when the ball lands into another cup, the mark will not appear on that particular cup but this time it will appear on another tile. This could be solved by changing how the marks are put into the tiles. Instead of having coordinates that take up the position of the tiles, 16 distinct keys could be inserted into the game to recognize 16 distinct tiles. However, this would mean that I would need to change the default MakeyMakey instead of working around its constraints. Other than that, everyone liked the interactivity between the physical beer pong prototype connected to the game through MakeyMakey.

b) What do you think of this new feature? Does it actually improve the interactivity of the game by changing the game style into a more skill based game instead of just relying on the chance/luck based game?

Feedback from several users:
- its way more fun now. i feel that the game now is more random and i love the beer pong feel to it. definitely way more interesting to selecting tiles on a screen.
- It makes it more of skill based and challenging.
- the game's current iteration is great. It focuses on a physical task that needs to be performed that requires some degree of skill to be executed.
- i feel that this game's interactivity is very interesting. And it does help making the game more skill based as you would need to actually know/learn how to bounce balls into cups instead of easily selecting a mark by selecting a button.

Reflection and Outcome:
I am really happy to receive positive feedback on the new physical prototype. This feature helps to improve the original gameplay, making it overall a really tactical skill based game. With this feature, the game becomes more challenging and will take longer for one round to end.

c) Was it hard to land the ball into a cup? What do you think of the addition of the 3 tries per turn rule and skip function implemented? Does the skip function give a heavy advantage to the opponent?

Feedback form several users:
- landing the balls wasn't too hard. but landing it exactly where i want it is going to require a bit of luck. i foresee this game taking awhile to complete due to the luck required to land the balls at the designated spots. it may not give the opponent much of a help to be honest. if he is able to skip it back to you. unless there is a forfeit for landing at already open cups or out of the arena, there isnt much incentive to skip? i didnt try out the skip function tho  just from my own guess.
- I didn't find it too difficult to land the balls in the cups.
- It's not too hard to land a ball into the cup, but to land a ball into the desired cup is quite hard. you would have to aim properly and be really good at beer pong. I think the skip feature is good. It realy punishes a player if he doesn't manage to land a ball into a cup. But i dont think it gives a heavy advantage to the opponent as he would also have to earn his mark in the game. Hence, i do like the idea of having this skip feature which is logistically good

Reflection and Outcome:
I liked the users comments saying that landing a ball is not hard at all, but aiming at one would be hard. This would be the reason why this game can act as a game by itself and could then be added into the original game to make it more challenging to place a single mark on a tile. also, as the previous prototype was very quick to end, this game will last way longer if compared.


d) On a scale of 1 – 10, what do you think of the length in time of the game? Did it take too long for a round to end? (1 for very short time and 10 for very long time).

Feedback form several users:
- 8. its quite long but users shouldn't find it a drag to complete it. good replacement for a beer pong game
- 5
- 7
- 6
- 5
- 7

Reflection and Outcome:
Out of all the feedback i got above, the average score was 6.3, which is quite reasonable. the users think that the game would take quite some time to play, but would not take too long till a point where they will get too bored and not even end the game.

e) Any other suggestions that could improve the current gameplay of the physical interaction?

Feedback form several users:
- maybe slightly bigger cups so that games may be completed within a shorter time? maybe have walls around the cups so that the balls may ricochet off the walls and maybe into the cups instead of falling off the table. also a measure so that the balls dont go off the table and forcing the user to pick it up, wasting time
- Have multiple balls and let them stay in the cups, as well as having the program sense who's turn it is.

Reflection and Outcome:
I really agree that small walls could be implemented in this game around the cups which could help
to ensure that a ball would enter the cups. This way, the duration of a whole game would decrease gradually as chances for a ball to enter the cup increases greatly. A really good idea to implement and improve the prototype. Next, I also do agree that playing the game with multiple balls would help as then users wont have to take the ball out of the cup. If there would be another prototype to implement, I would definitely make a small square tile that reveals the colour of the player to reflect who's turn it is.


Overall Reflection:
I am really satisfied with the final outcome of this interactive prototype III. As this prototype received a lot of positive feedback, i believe that the testing and objective of this game succeeded. The main objective that I wanted to test was making the game more challenging and changing the mode into a more skill based game instead of a chance/luck based game.