destiny team mailing list archive

["Mast, Thomas O" <tomast@xxxxxxx>]

Just a few thoughts:

--Sounds to indicate correct/incorrect answers upon passing through the gates 
--Is it possible to have the gates register a passthrough sooner? About 50% of the kids would get "inside" the gate then try and go back up and down into it because they thought it wasn't registering.
--Some sort of incentive to really negate just blasting through the level that will make the kids actually -want- to answer the questions correctly. Extra enemies, something
________________________________________
From: destiny-bounces+tomast=bsu.edu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [destiny-bounces+tomast=bsu.edu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Doug Shook [dsshook@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 2:36 PM
To: destiny@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Destiny] Beta Testing!

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Doug Shook <dsshook@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:dsshook@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Beta testing round 2 happened today! Here's a recap:

There was still an overwhelmingly positive response to the game.  Not everyone liked it but most did.

>From the surveys:

Likes: Questions, Bunny, and Bunny Sounds
Dislikes: Questions, dying when it appeared they shouldn't have
Hardest part: foxes/cars

The responses were about 50/50 between it being too hard and just right.

Some of the suggestions:

-Fix the collisions.  (not what they said but what they meant)
-Have less enemies per zone
-Better pictures of the animals

I know that we talked about the collisions previously, there were more complaints about it this time.  I still think it would be wise to consider making the bounding boxes a bit smaller to help this.  If it makes it too easy we can always jack the speed up a bit, but if the kids keep thinking that they're getting cheap deaths then they won't want to keep playing.

Tom was also with me today and he had some good ideas for improvements which I'm sure he'll share.


On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Zach Elko <zachelko@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:zachelko@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
O.K., well that is misleading a bit. What happens internally on each movement is the bounding box is updated, but the bunny isn't re-drawn. The reason for this is simple: We need to check to see if the bunny has moved to an invalid area before we can draw it. So, we update the bunny's position, check it against all invalid areas (walls and boundaries), and correct as necessary. So, it doesn't surprise me at all that there would be a situation in which they don't appear to be touching, but internally they actually are; the game simply ended before the next render() could take place.


Zach J. Elko
Ball State University Unified Technology Support
Certified Hardware & Software Technician


On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Doug Shook <dsshook@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:dsshook@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
The reason he felt that he got cheated is because it was when he lost his last life.  The game freezes at that point and you could clearly see that the rabbit and fox pictures weren't touching at all.  I understand what you're saying about the bounding boxes, and I agree that there's probably not a bug involved, but we may be able to get more accurate collisions if we adjust them a bit.


On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 7:41 PM, Zach Elko <zachelko@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:zachelko@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Excellent! I'm glad they didn't hate it. The enemy speed is trivial to adjust, so we'll start there. There is a bug in the tracker in regards to how far the bunny moves per iteration, so that will need to be fixed before we can increase the bunny's speed. Although, I think slowing the enemies down will suffice.

As for the student that stated they died when they didn't think they should have, we'll have to see that bug replicated in order to fix it. Although, since they are playing with the bounding boxes turned off, it is easy to make that assumption. Chances are, there are no issues in the actual collision detection in terms of detecting a collision when there isn't one. But, I suppose we could make the boxes smaller, although I don't think it's necessary to do so. Slower enemies should address the difficulty concern.


Zach J. Elko
Ball State University Unified Technology Support
Certified Hardware & Software Technician


On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 6:12 PM, Doug Shook <dsshook@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:dsshook@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hey everyone, I went and did some beta testing with the kids today and it went very well.  I got through about 8 kids today and there were very few complaints.   The basic rundown:

Boys liked it way more than girls, of course.
Normal difficulty is in fact way too hard for them.  Everyone ran it on easy and even then some kids struggled.
Girls cared more about the questions than the boys did.  One boy even blazed through the levels without even caring if he was right or not.
They LOVED the different types of enemies and the rabbit character.

The number one complaint I received was that it was too hard.  Their suggestions were usually to slow the enemies down or make the rabbit faster.  A combination of the two would probably be ideal.  There was one kid who was upset because he thought he died when he shouldn't have.  Making the bounding boxes smaller would help this problem and perhaps make the game a bit easier as well.

Finally, I asked them to fill out a short questionnaire afterward and here's a brief rundown:


Likes:
Math questions - half the kids put this (the girls perhaps?)
The animals

Dislikes:
the speed of the foxes - 6 of 8 kids
Speed of the rabbit too slow

Hardest Part:
Foxes and/or cars, similar to the above

I asked them if they thought the game was too easy, too hard, or just right and it was a 50/50 split between too hard and just right.

 That's it mostly.  I'll be going back on Thursday to try and get the rest of the class done.

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