Since I did not feel well, I did not go to the internship.
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I joined the RPI class, which RPI students did presentations for their games to my internship company people. I saw 7 ideas and I learned several things.
1) The game should be easy to understand at the beginning. Like an essay or an article, no one knows what is writting or what the game is about before playing it, so users need to understand easily at beginning. We can make this happen by givinig some introduction videos or go through some features with users. 2) Designers and composers are significant for games. When we hear about creating games, we always consider about programming, but a design and a music is what a user actually see and listen to, so this is really important. Also, to attract people who do not play games, the designs are important. If a design is overly complicated, we feel the difficulty of games as high. Thus, a simple design is a key for games which want to attract beginners. 3) Creators need to be really careful about social problems. If we make some games about mentally ill, we really need to be careful about what the actual mentally ill people are. It is better to separate a fantasy from a reality to reduce problems caused by a game. It was a good experience to learn a lot of new things about games. I would like to learn more about games. I started to work on a new project, which we make a web page with virtual reality college tour. We first saw other websites and YouTube video using 360 views to make a virtual reality college tour. Those videos are using video recordings of 360 degress views, so the user can scroll a screen to see the different spaces in the room. If the video is showing a lecture, a user can see both teachers and students, providing more information about a class size, a class engagement, and etc. We decided to make this for RPI as a sample version. We used the 360 degress photos already taken by RPI student. We used the programmed codes as samples, and modified them. We used ATOM to edit codes. To create an website, we need a server, but since this is a sample, we just only run the website in our computers. We use localhost, which is a local server, so the website only runs in our computers. We used json as a main programming language.
After that, to put some objects on this video, I started to learn abour Three.js which is a progamming language for making three dimensional objects. It was really fun to play around. I would put some objects next time. The picture is the example of Three.js. By learning Three.js, I can create 3d objects on websites and apps. I put all photos and information of each building to an app. I got used to use the platform to program this game.The difficult part of this process is the lack of information. Sicne I had not idea about building in Troy, I needed to figure out which building is what. Most of the buildings have names on top, or some informations on the walls of buildings, but some of them are not, so I needed to ask people at the company to ask them. Also, becasue a user will find the place of building by walking around, I needed to put the accurate position of building. Because I did not remember where the building was, I needed to go on to the Google Map to figure out where the place was. Through my experience of this internship and the internship that I did in summer, I noticed the information management is one of the harderst thing. Since most of the games keep a list of infromation, a good arrangment of management of information is essential to create a game or an app. I went to walk around Troy historical buildings to take photos of each buildings to put into my app. Due to the battery of iPhone, we could not take photos of all the building, so I would like to continue this taking photo process next week, too. I at least got some pictures, so after this process, I started to create a game. On ARIS platform, I downloaded all the pictures that I took and created plaques of these buildings. Each plaque contains a photo of a building and a short description of the building based on the excel sheet that I made last week. These plaques will be part of quest of users. I am thinking to add videos with people wearing costumes at the time period talking about the building or asking some quizzes. After I put photos to each plaques, I set all the plaques to their locations. I made plaques for: Clark House, Cannon Building, McCarthy Building, Soldiers and Sailors, Rice Building, Bank of Troy Building, and YWCA building. This is my prototype game app. I will add more buildings next meeting and also construct some features to make this app into a game.
I started to search on Troy's historical buildings to put information and to design my game. However, I realized there are abundant of information about these buildings. Also, since our games are not for APUS history students but everybody including students and adults. It should not be boring but fun. I made a excel sheet with each buildings' information. I will add information of time period of each building.
I have two ideas about a game: 1. A user will be a treasure hunter, who try to find each word or number from historical buildings that the user needs to research a little bit or need to ask people at each buildings. Thus, there will be interactions. 2. A user can choose time period to teleport. A user will visit a time and go to building of the time period. Users will have some conversations with game characters to know more about a time period and feel the time period. Next week, I will go around some historical buildings in Troy to brainstorm and get more information about these buildings to put into an app. Also, by talking with people at a building, I would like to know what kinds of things they want visitors to know. I learned how to use ARIS, a platform for augmented reality. ARIS allows users to make a easy game using augmented reality. A platform looks like this. A left rectangle shows objects, each of which "contains media contents." When a user goes to a specific place, objects will appear. It could be conversation with a game character or mini games that users need to accomplish. Middle part contains triggers, which when a user actually visits the place, media contents that we created will popup. Users can do some quests. Right part usually shows the details of triggers, deciding a place, and a range, and choosing media contents that will pop up at a trigger. After I learned how to make a game, I made a sample game. I started to research on what kinds of information we can put, what a good course that users can do quest, and what buildings or places I should put. Since I focused on Troy, I decided to divide buildings into each street, time period or a type of building.
Next week, I will keep researching about historical figures and decide more details of my game. I have a first meeting, and I and my mentor discussed about what projects I could work on. There are two choices; one is using virtual reality, and another project is using augmented reality. Virtual reality is "the computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image" according to a dictionary. Basically, people can feel three-dimensional images; for example, oculus and Google Cardboard are famous. Augmented reality is "a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world" according to a dictionary. The good example is PokemonGo; users can see pokemon or some images on their real lives. Since I have never done neither of them, I thought it would be really hard to program. However, game industry is changing rapidly, that programmers need to learn new languages constantly, which means programming languages are user friendly. Thus, it is not really hard to learn. I decided to try both of them and decide which one sounds more fun. I started to research which programming I can use, and I and my mentor decided to use ARIS for augmented reality. Since making an augmented reality game collaborating with historical figure in Troy was a good idea, we decided to work on it. Next week, I will figure out how to program ARIS. |
AuthorNana Takada Archives
March 2017
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