I raced to get a new version of Be_A_Bird_VR ready for more user testing and got it done just in the nick of time.
https://youtu.be/N1_mIcqkmH4?t=636
User feedback was pretty good. User 2 seemed contented to ascend to a great height and just glide around — completely ignoring the berries. User 3 — a keen 2D gamer — quickly picked up the flight controls and started doing things I didn’t even know were possible (e.g. turning and changing altitude at the same time).
Since that round of testing there have been further developments including:
- Berries hang from L-system trees scattered along the length of the valley.
- A lone crow, making appropriate crow sounds, flies straight down the middle of the valley; flying at a speed that makes it easy to catch up with.
- At the end of the valley the PLAYER encounters a flock of three eagles, making appropriate eagle sounds, which is well received.
- A huge L-system tree in the distance has an arc of berries leading up to its summit, where the final scene takes place.
- There are two sound tracks now — one audible between the start and end of the valley. Another that becomes audible as you approach the “EYRIE”
User 4 really enjoyed communing with the other birds, flying along with them and copying their calls. User 5 flapped so hard that he was going too fast and he struggled to stay in the middle of the valley. This led to several collisions with mountains early on. That this didn’t lead to any kind of impact or death (the flight path simply continued through the plane) he found frustrating and encouraged one of two solutions: make it so that the PLAYER bounces off any seemingly solid surfaces rather than passing straight through, or destroy the PLAYER and return them to the starting point to try again. I may do both.
Broadly speaking the flight controls seem to be deemed an improvement on the version that user 1 tested. Certainly all four of users 2–5 managed to get the hang of them, ultimately reaching the final destination, which suggests the answer to my first research question: is it viable? Is: Yes!
But there is certainly room for improvements such as:
- add visual effects and sound effects for moment when a PLAYER successfully collects a berry; currently it just disappears, which does little to reward the PLAYER for their efforts in mastering the flight controls
- update user interface so that the berry counter can be read with zero effort
- experiment with giving PLAYER power over “roll” rotation; only having power over “yaw” makes the movements seem ponderous, not nimble
- add visual effects and sound effects when PLAYER reaches target for each berry type
- shrink Eyrie tree by half so that PLAYER doesn’t have to fly so high to reach the final destination
- add CG “flight school” tutorial at the beginning to replace the 360 film tutorial that is now outdated since flight mechanics were all changed
- fix problem that ascent and descent controls switch depending on whether player is facing north or south! (that nobody encountered because they all flew in straight line as per design of level)
- add THE END at the end of final scene and “fade to black” canvas to make loading of new scene feel smoother
- Introduce haptic feedback so that PLAYER can intuitively understand when they’ve strayed from the T-pose and when thresholds have been crossed that change the flight speed or trajectory in some way
- perhaps also add sound effects to help PLAYER better judge changes in speed, altitude etc
- record bird conversation so that PLAYER hears conversation between birds rather than bird calls after 7 yellow berries have been collected
