Week 6: Staying Flexible

This week, I finally got all of the resources together to be able to make progress on the algorithm. I spent most of Monday and Tuesday in meetings with Christian (CEO) and Bitarello discussing both front-end player experience and back-end implementation.

The project has continued changing; it evolves very quickly in these early stages, making it difficult to know what representation I should consider for the algorithm. The most significant change was going from a continuous 3D world to it’s discrete representation. Players will now be creating tracks on a grid, rather than a completely open-ended space.

We decided that some guidance was needed after testing with the game TrackMania on PS3. There are beginner, intermediate, and advanced track-building modes for players. Acting as builders ourselves, we found the advanced modes too complicated and often frustrating. There is some balance that we must strike between freedom and usability. We think that the grid representation will keep players from being overwhelmed.

Another problem that the grid helps solve is player orientation. The 3D world is easy to get “lost” in. Sometimes it can be difficult to perceive the orientation of an object (the track, in our case) when there aren’t many objects in the world. Other objects usually indicate orientation by revealing the direction of shadows. The 2D grid gives the player a reference; the shape and size of the squares, which are always at ground level, reveal the relative distance and orientation of objects.

On Thursday, I was able to help with some work that was well out of my area of specialty. As the animators are working on the scripts for the TV series, they have to consider the timing of the words. Aligning the audio and visual is actually quite difficult. Because the primary language of the series is English, they needed a native speaker to read over the script and to give markers for timing. I acted out the script, reading each of the different characters’ voices. I am certainly able to appreciate voice actors more. It takes a type concentration and passion that engineers rarely evoke.

Monday night, I was walking back from TECNOPUC when I ran into a group of people from Casa do Campus. I was about to ask them what they were up to, but they grabbed me and told me I was coming with them before I had time to say anything. They said that they were going to the observatory on campus at PUCRS. I didn’t even know that there was one, so I felt quite strange having no idea where we were going. In the end, though, I was glad they were so forcefully nice to me. We went up to the top of one of the buildings, where an astronomy professor was waiting for us.

He pointed out constellations and explained their history and mechanisms. Although there was less light pollution because we were up above most of the lights, it was still fairly light. That is, until we went inside a telescope dome; all thirteen of us piled into a pitch-black space with a huge telescope in the middle. We took turns looking at the various bodies that the professor focused on – the moon, a couple of planets, and a constellation. It was an intriguing, completely unexpected experience that I won’t ever forget.

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