The parts I responsible for are the design of the game story line and game flow. At the same time, audio production is also one of my later work. In addition, during the final integration, I also completed the voice control function with Horace.
Game Storyline Design
For the plot of the game and the design of the story line, I did a lot of online research during the initial design period. The main forms include online interviews, brainstorming and online voting. The purpose of this is to quickly collect users' interest preferences and obtain new design ideas. In the end, based on the results of online voting, I chose the zombie theme that users are more interested in as the game story line theme for this project.
Game Level and Game Mode Design
Regarding game levels and game modes, the main user feedback is as follows:
"I think the difficulty of game levels must give players a process of adaptation at the beginning. For myself, if the game is too difficult to set up at the beginning and fails after several attempts, I may not try this game. "
"In game mode, you may refer to the somatosensory game to set up multiplayer mode so that users can experience the fun of multiplayer mode, such as completing some tasks together."
"If I have to listen to the game story introduction every time I start the game, I will become less and less impatient, because I am already familiar with those introductions."
"Level rewards can be set in the game to stimulate players' interest in playing."
"I think it is best to have a certain level of coherence between levels and to be independent of each other, otherwise the story of each level will be reduced a lot. If I play a lot of levels, but the plot of each level is independent of each other, which will confuse me."
Based on the feedback above, I made several rounds of modifications to the original design and finally determined the game levels and game modes of the current final product. More detailed content can be viewed through the outputs page.
Audio Production
For the production of audio in the game, I used adobe audition to complete the software. Before making 3D surround sound, I collected many kinds of sound effects and mixed them. However, due to the relatively large number of sound effects, after mixing them together, the player sounds less than ideal and will feel a bit confused. In addition, we use external speakers to play the sound, which makes the identification of the position more disturbing. Therefore, we finally decided to use headphones to listen to game sounds and make 3D surround sound.
At present, the production of surround sound is mainly achieved through two methods. The first is to simply separate the left and right channels, that is, to pass the audio orientation (left and right) by controlling the audio channel. But the disadvantage of this method is that the sound transmission is relatively direct, there is no three-dimensional sense, and it is only suitable for the scene simulation of the left and right directions. Another way to simulate 3D surround sound is to simulate a 360-degree sound source by adjusting the sound image and volume. This is the way our audio production is used. In addition, you can add effects to a single audio, you can simulate the real sound effects through the Doppler effect, by setting a linear sound simulation or surround sound simulation. However, the duration of the audio of our zombie attacks is relatively short, and the effect of using this sound effect is not particularly obvious. But this method seems to be the most realistic audio production method at present.
This video mainly shows the phase analysis of 3D audio (right half of the video).
Voice Control Module
Regarding the voice control module, what we use is a software called Blinker and the JDY-16 Bluetooth module of Arduino. blinker is a software that can connect to smart devices via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. First of all, we use a mobile phone as a voice input device, and establish a connection with the Arduino Bluetooth module to realize the function of voice input. Then we added a relay on this basis and used it as a switch. In this way, we can connect the power line of the program we want to control with the relay to realize the related program control by voice input. This method is a good way to complete the voice control function we hope to make, although our initial solution is not like this.
Reflection
Through the production of this project, although I am not responsible for the main physical connection part, I still think that the part I am responsible for also has a non-negligible impact on the game experience of the entire project. Regarding the game plot design, I think the game plot is also an emotional interaction. In the game, as time goes by, the more and more levels the user plays, the more emotion the user has for the game plot. Therefore, a design storyline that can evoke the resonance of users and make them play games attentively has a very positive effect on enhancing the game experience.
For the production of sound effects, I think this is a new attempt of my own. In the previous course, I have not tried to do 3D surround sound. Therefore, this project helped me acquire a new skill, and after a semester of production of media materials, I think I even have a basic literacy as a blogger—cutting videos, dubbing, and photography. Regarding the method of 3D surround sound production used in the project, one of my new ideas is to slowly add more sound effects to the gradually increasing difficulty levels, such as the sound of ambulances in the casualties and the sound of roadside tracks and many more. These sound effects are very suitable for making 3D surround sound with Doppler effect, I think the final sound effect will be very shocking! This is also my future development plan for our project. Even though these courses are over, I still feel that this will be an area worth exploring.
For voice control, our original plan was not to implement blinker. Our initial idea was to use the Arduino's HC-05 Bluetooth module to connect to the android phone to achieve. Unfortunately, this requires downloading the Arduino voice control in the Google app store, which is the accessibility of Google voice. Since Australia cannot currently use Google voice, we finally abandoned this solution. If we can use Google voice, I think the voice control effect of this project will be better and more stable.
In short, after this busy semester, I am proud of our team’s projects and my teammates, because we basically completed our initial concept design. Although we encountered many problems in the process that forced us to find alternative solutions, we finally found suitable solutions and successfully made our project conform to the original intention of our original design, and completed the design of the problem domain.