Level 3 Team Project - Summer Plan

As the summer break has now begun, weekly journal updates will be postponed until the first week of October, 2010.

Work completed over the summer will be posted to both my team and individual blog upon completion. Find below a link to the teams 'Summer Plan', of which was presented to Brian, Phil and Claire the last week of May. The Summer Plan contains a more in-depth overview of what work will be completed over the course of the summer, with the specific individual tasks each member is to complete.

Click here to be taken to the Team Fable 'Summer Plan.'

To view the Team Fable project blog, click here.

To view all of the Team Project diary entries, click here.

Level 3 Team Project - Week 16

In the past week, the team has spent much time considering summer work and assigning what tasks need to be completed and by who. After the verbal report with Brian, Phil and Claire, changes were made to our milestone dates with the cut off point for the second moving back until the end of July rather than the end of June. This was done to give the team more time with the Alpha build, as it'd take far longer to create a fully functioning Alpha from scratch than it would to turn that Alpha into a final product.

For sake of convenience, the second and third milestones have also 'merged' so team members need not present half way through the summer. Team members will still be treating milestones two and three as individual sections of the project, but both will be presented as if they were merged into one, longer presentation during the second week of October. During the summer break, team member Steve will be liaising with Brian and presenting the work completed up to that point for some informative feedback.

Over the summer, I will be performing some in-depth research into the emotional factors of our test, specifically chivalry, sympathy, empathy and engagement. I'll also be helping to create physical builds of our level in hammer and writing various other research pieces that hope to back up the decisions made during our levels production.

To view the Team Fable project blog, click here.

To view all of the Team Project diary entries, click here.

Level 3 Team Project - Week 14 and Week 15

The past two weeks have seen slow progress with Team Project work as deadlines for other subjects have been coming to a close. Meetings with Andrew Williams have taken place of the course of the last two weeks, with positive feedback and recommendations given.

Now making a summer plan, the team hopes to pick the pace back up during the break and have a fully functioning alpha build by the end of June.

To view the Team Fable project blog, click here.

To view all of the Team Project diary entries, click here.

Level 3 Team Project - Week 13

This week saw the team starting work with Milestone II, picking straight up with a meeting on Monday where team members discussed what work was to be complete and who did what.

After reading an Environment Study completed by Kyle on the secret bases of 'Goldeneye', I decided to write up a study of my own on Left 4 Dead's 'Dead Air Office Complex.' You can find the three page investigation here.

To view the Team Fable project blog, click here.

To view all of the Team Project diary entries, click here.

Level 3 Team Project - Environment Study (Left 4 Dead)

After reading Kyle's recent environment study on the secret base of Goldeneye, I decided perform an investigation of my own. I decided to look into another area of our test location, the beginning office section, and decided that the office complex found within Left 4 Dead's 'Dead Air' campaign would be an ideal candidate.

"The office complex found within the second chapter of the ‘Dead Air’ campaign in Left 4 Dead is an environment worth our team analysing for a number of reasons. Firstly, Left 4 Dead has been built using Valve’s ‘Source SDK’ [2], the same editor we will use to create our testing environment. This means the tools that were available to the Valve Developers during the production of Left 4 Dead are identical to those available to us when creating our environment. It also means we can study Valve’s metrics, getting an idea what dimensions door frames, rooms and other areas should be. Secondly, the office complex found within Left 4 Dead has a sense of crisis and panic between the player and the NPCs on their team, similar to that of ours when test candidates are ordered to exit the office building at the start and when gunfire is heard."

To view the three page document in .pdf format, click here.
 

Level 3 Team Project - Week 12

This week saw the team delivering Milestone I, of which concluded on the 30th of April. All goals and tasks were met with the presentation taking place on Friday.

Aside from helping out create the Milestone I Presentation and deliverables, I wrote up an article on Katherine Isbister's study 'Consistency of Personality within Interesting Characters.' You can read the source analysis paper here.

To view the Team Fable project blog, click here.

To view all of the Team Project diary entries, click here.

Level 3 Team Project - Source Analysis (Related Studies)

As part of the teams ongoing research, I've written a short two page document on Katherine Isbister and Clifford Nass' 'Consistency of Personality in Interesting Characters' study.

"The study ‘Consistency of Personality in Interactive Characters’ performed by Katherine Isbister and Clifford Nass examines how people respond to four different on-screen characters, one introvert with matched dialogue, another introvert with extrovert dialogue and vice-versa."

"Ultimately, Isbister and Nass predicted that those who interacted with one of the on-screen figures that possessed a matching posture and personality would be the most likely candidates to be influenced by that character, leading them to change their answers. By doing this, Isbister and Nass prove that the more consistent a character is, the more believable they appear to the player. In addition to this, it’s also hypothesized that out of all the versions of the character, the extrovert with consistent responses would influence almost all candidates under it to change their answers. This would prove that, as this figure has both charismatic poses and interesting responses, it would be the most engaging character out of the four." 

I feel that this source is one of the most important encountered during our research so far. Due to this, not only has this analysis been written, but also all team members have been asked to at least skim-read the fifteen page report alongside the two page document.

To download the full two page .pdf version of the source analysis, click here.

Level 3 Team Project - Week 11

This week the team spent time going over our plans for the project testing, refining our ideas and coming up with a solid testing strategy. We decided to go with three methods of collecting test data; observation, video logging and questionnaires. We spent time discussing how each of the three methods would be recorded, paying special attention to what methods we could use to gather the desired metrics via video logging.

We also spent time planning out our test environment and back story, giving a basic premise that will both leave lots of room for interaction and connections between the subject and the NPC, while also being emotionally engaging in itself.

During the week, I spent my time contributing to group discussing and starting work on our Milestone 1 Presentation layout. Hopefully the Presentation will be near finished for the dry run on Tuesday.

To view the Team Fable project blog, click here.

To view all of the Team Project diary entries, click here.