We have continued to iterate on the game. Rather than having multiple track types (ground and water), we are going to only have a ground track and cut the idea of the animals running/swimming through water as that set of animations would be too time consuming right now. I have also advocated for a forking path that will give players the opportunity to play the level differently. It also givers us the ability to create an “ideal path” where players can achieve a higher score via a faster run through the level. There are newish poses for the game’s new animals. The goat’s pose is still similar to the bull, the rabbit’s pose is your arms wide over your head still, and the tiger’s pose has players holding up their hands like a cat getting ready to pounce.
Finally, our modular levels are proving useful; we can quickly lay out a track for the game so that we can test to make sure the tracks are working efficiently. Since Unity has a terrain builder within it, we can also create a landscape of sorts around the track to give the level life and make it something more than just flat landscapes. We’ll be adding lots of art assets to it hopefully in the form of trees, caves, buildings and maybe other animals so that our Zodiac becomes alive.
Below is a picture of us in action with the poses that I’ve finalized.
Ashley is in the goat pose. The pose itself is grounded and actually very similar to the bull’s pose in the first build of the game. However, Jorge and I are tweaking it in Kinect so that it is more forgiving. That allows players to place their first wider (ie, outside of their hips) or more narrow (to the midline of their body). This creates a more enjoyable experience for the player so that they can focus on the game at hand rather than fighting with the pose.
Troy is in the bunny pose – it’s silly and elevated pose and hopefully elicits a connotation of surprise and excitement. Rabbits are hyperactive creatures, so in my mind this pose reflects the excited mind of a rabbit. It’s a higher pose than the others and creates a different feeling in the body (a stretch through the upper torso), and such activity is stimulating for the body to add to the game’s level of activity.
I am in the tiger pose. Gameplay tip: You don’t actually have to lift your leg, but you can if you want because the Kinect is actually looking for how your elbows and hands are in relation to your shoulders. That being said, hypothetically, players could do different things with their bodies as long as they’re doing the poses’ distinctive features (torso grounded and low for the goat, hands high, separated and spread apart for rabbit, and hands and elbows in their appropriate position in relation to the shoulders). This is another strong pose, it’s aggressive, and when I do it, I like to tense my body. This gives the sense of a tiger’s strength. Granted, players don’t need to tense their body when they strike the tiger pose, but it was a guiding idea in the design of the tiger.
Some of the emerging gameplay that can come out of these poses is for players to hit these poses while playing the game. Can they turn into the goat will scampering side to side to dodge the rocks and collect the coins? Can they jump and turn into the rabbit at the same time while avoiding logs? And can the player rapidly change from the tiger into the rabbit to maximize their speed in grass areas but also jump over logs quickly? It’s fun to see how fast you can switch between poses and what that makes for gameplay as you travel through the level.
Josh Lee 