APD_week8_Play and Sound

Theme
Play and sound

Context
Beat Saber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV1sw4lfwFw

Beat Saber is a game that people need to follow the beats and hit the box at the right timing. I asked if we could create the beat instead of following the beat. In the class time, Matt has presented Max work that players can create their own beats by recording them into the phone then play with mix and match of them. Also, Luna showed us a game that people can put up different clothes on the character to make him give out various sounds, voices or beats. The idea of a side-scrolling game with different sound/ beat when the player fires was born in my mind.

This week’s work sits in the field of creative and explorative play where players can try out different combinations of firing sounds.

Method
The game is coded by C# in Unity. The UI components were created in Adobe Illustrator. The soundscapes were collected from Youtube then edited in Premiere Pro.  

Response

Play “Beat-it” online: https://simmer.io/@MargaretWong/beat-it

When I watched the video of “Barcode Player”, an idea of scanning AR tracker and then different sound comes up, for example, a musical note is heard when scanning an alphabet or a sound of animals is heard when scanning the corresponding animals, poped-up in my mind. Then, I had an idea of mixing up the sound of different animals, for instance, a sound of the elephant comes out when people click on the duck.

For last week’s IOL class, Nick showed us a video of Dr Tina Seeing, executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program mentioned about challenging the assumptions. What she meant is people should not go with their first and even second waves of answers, especially when working on something creative.

Bearing that idea in mind, I continued on brainstorming to get my third wave of answer, a side-scrolling game with different sound/ beat when the player fires. Usually, when players shoot, a sound comes out. What if they can choose the sound of shooting?

As I worked on the game, I found it would be better if the player stays in the same position instead of walking here and there within the time scope, thus it changed the idea a bit. After finishing on the normal sound of beats, I was curious how it would feel if some strange sound, eg sound of elephant or sheep, comes up when the player fires. Therefore, I added two more soundscapes.

Reflection
The first two waves of ideas were kind of repeating my ideas in the previous weeks. I asked myself to get out of the box and give a more innovative idea. I’ve never made a similar game by coding in C# and I quite like the response of this week which allows players to play with the sounds and kill the monsters. 

At this moment, there is no goal for the player in this game. It’s just a platform for them to play with. It’s important to give the players a goal in game design (Romero et. al, 2017). I may try to turn it back into a side-scrolling game that the players can collect different characters with different shooting soundscapes by defeating different monsters in the future if I have time. That will give the players goals in the game.

[Follow-up experiment] I let my friends play the game and most of them question why there are four different bullets/soundscapes. Inspired by them, I tried to make four different monsters that could only be killed by corresponding bullets. Since it takes time for the player to process which button to click now, the spawning rate and moving speed of the monsters need to be slowed down. Though players cannot “choose” the shooting sound now, the game becomes more challenging. This may also contribute to further developing it into a side-scrolling game. Link for the follow-up experiment: https://youtu.be/HPEVc3YySks

References
Tina Seelig: Challenge Assumptions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp-Jj6BBkzM

How to Fire Bullets in Different Directions in Unity game. Simple 2D tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8jkkFaIF7A

How to Spawn Monsters Randomly from different Spawn Points and Make them Follow the Player in Unity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1gAtOWTs-o&list=PLrxWmYKbjD81rqZFCyih9LtIfTMNfgFhh&index=161&t=0s

Brackeys 2D movement
https://github.com/Brackeys/2D-Movement/blob/master/2D%20Movement/Assets/CharacterController2D.cs

Destroy gameobject on collision
https://answers.unity.com/questions/712369/destroy-object-on-collision-1.html

How to add sound or audio effects SFX to Unity 2D arcade game | Very simple Unity 2D Tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pFlnyfRfRc

Romero, Brenda, and Linkedin.com. Game Design Foundations: 1 Ideas, Core Loops, and Goals. Carpenteria, CA: Linkedin.com, 2017. Web.