This week, we did several things: we finish our project pitch during class, get some feedback from the staff and modify our MVP goals. We also started walking on our draft version of Product Requirements Documents (PRD), getting more in depth about our goals and responsiblities. Lastly, we have three pieces of demo: room design, networking (for the group discussion part), and a simple room with basic interaction.
What Every Member Did
- Jack: interactions with objects, controller input, collider
- Zhifu: basics of networking, also start researching on colliders
- Diana: refine the room design, blog post
- Sean: networking which allows multiple person in the same space
- All: work on the pitch deck, PRD, and the simple demo on Thursday
Project Pitch
After getting some feedback from Luyang, our mentor, we did our project pitch in class on Tuesday. And we got some awesome feedback from Ira and John. Ira brings up an important point about how are we going to demo this game, which can potentially takes an hour to play, in limited time. And John also reiterate the point about the scope of the project, which makes us realize that we have a misconception of the MVP. Originally, we thought MVP means the product that will be done at the end of the quarter, but that should be the target product not MVP. The MVP will be due in about two weeks, so we do have a time crunch here.
As a group, we discuss and rethink our MVP. We reduce the number of rooms that should be done in MVP to only two rooms, which is the meeting room and another room for room examination phase. The meeting room needs to support networking in a sense that people interaction can be seen, and any animations need to be synchronized across players. For the other room, we need to support user interactions with the objects to reveal hint and story. Both rooms need to be well decorated with enough details to provide an immersive experience to our players.
Product Requirements Document
This is our draft version of PRD. We will refind and modify as needed.
Update on Code
- Zhifu: Robust room model
- Jack: Control pieces with gestures, supporting grabbing and throwing them with basic physics and collision. (Press A/B to drop a new white/black piece). Click to View.
- Diana: How to add event listener onto a GLTF model with self-animations. This can be useful when we need interactions such as open a drawer or a box. A very simple demo with opening a drawer: Click to View.
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Sean: Attach human model to indicate the position of the players. The demo currently supports allowing multiple players in the same A-Frame and letting them move
and rotate into different directions and refleting each player's position and rotation on everyone's screen.
Link to the code - Thursday demo for room + interactions:
Update on Ideas
Here is our room design plan.
Plan for next week
Milestone: A mock version of the MVP.
Description: a naive version of the MVP which can integrate controls, interactions, and networking. The basic outline of the two rooms should be built, and static items and objects are placed.
- Jack: user input, synchronization with the networking
- Zhifu: work on colliders and set up the two rooms
- Diana: add and position objects to the static environments, work on details of hints (what the pop-out window will display)
- Sean: refine model and action for players. integrate network into the actual scene.
Blockers
- Nuisance of JavaScript
- Syntax
- Scope of "this"
- Way to access Gamepad object
- Continous update of an entity's position and rotation
- Customize collider for hand (controller)