Project Devlog First Day

The project started after we had received the task (designing a game or toy for people with cognitive disabilities that integrates the digital and the physical world in 5 days). We first thought about game concepts individually, then by forming groups according to common interests.

Several game ideas emerged within the first hour. We then pitched these game concepts to the whole class. After that, groups were formed once everyone had positioned themselves on the pitch that interested them the most.

Our group decided to work on the project "Submarine", a game about exploring the underwater depths with a submarine. We wanted the submarine to be controlled by a physical, manipulatable object. An integrated gyroscope should transmit information about the tilting of the physical submarine to move the in-game submarine accordingly.

To achieve this, we saw three options:

• Using a wiimote: The wiimote "motion plus" contains a gyroscope and an accelerometer. The main challenge is to integrate the wiimote with Unity. For this we bought a Unity plug-in that could allow us to interface the wiimote with our project.
• Using a Smartphone: Smartphones all have built-in accelerometer and gyroscopes. However, we would have had to develop a dedicated android application for the phone (separate from our game) and implement a network connection to integrate with our game. We decided that this option was too risky and that it would have required too many resources that could have been used elsewhere in the game.   
• Using an arduino with a gyroscope and an accelerometer: We decided to quickly rule out this possibility given the greater complexity of this solution.

In terms of gameplay

We thought about two great possibilities:

- Either let the player freely explore a 3D environment without constraints, like in Abzu.

• Or define a path along which the submarine automatically moves with the possibility of moving it slightly up, down, left and right, like in Starfox.

Second Day

After the presentation by a person from the association children sun and with more information about the general needs of our target group, we decided for the second solution in terms of Gameplay. It seemed to us more suitable to the target audience of the game. It will be easier for them to simply guide a submarine rather than control it completely (it was mentioned that our target group frequently has issues with navigating 3D-environments).

From the second day on, we started each day with a daily standup to keep the whole team informed about what everybody else has been working on, is currently working on and whether they are having any problems or not. We ended each day with a small play test of our latest progress (in addition to the small internal play tests that we conducted throughout the day as needed).

Once the project idea was well defined, we split into two groups.

A group working on the all-digital aspects (e.g. game play within Unity, art assets, etc.).

A group that works to make the Wiimote integrate with Unity and builds a custom, physical controller around it.

After a few hours, we had a first prototype on Unity, however, it did not work with the Wiimote, yet.

Towards the end of the day, using the Unity plug-in, we managed to connect the Wiimote to the game and it worked very well. Thanks to the gyro built into the wiimote, we could move the submarine by tilting the Wiimote in a certain direction.

Third Day

At the beginning of the day, we tried the game together with the Wiimote controls.

For this day, we focused on the visuals of the game. We worked primarily on Level Design, 3D models, sound assets, VFX and others.

We replaced our placeholder with our submarine.

We also focused on the main menu of the game. There would be no UI in-game.

Fourth Day

We continued the graphics of the game, the LD was completed and we finished the menus.

Fifth Day

We added more polish in the game, (VFX), bug fixes etc ....

The final build was planned and executed around 12:00 h in order to be ready in-time for the playtesting with our target group at 13:00 h.

We tested the build again one last time to make sure there were no bugs.

We then conducted the play testing of our game for people with disabilities.

Overall, the game was well received. The controls were quickly understood and adopted by the players. They understood that the game asked them to pick up the fish all along the course. One player requested the ability to make the submarine move faster than the maximum speed that our options allowed. For the future, we would expand the speed option and allow the players to choose even faster speeds.