Josh Lee

Here’s an extended trailer for Race of the Zodiac!

Zodiac Teaser – March 2013 from Brandon Karratti on Vimeo.

This summer we were fortunate to have kids come in during the University of Utah’s summer camp program and play-test our games. While one might question the amount of children around such expensive equipment, having actual kids play our game was worthwhile and showed us a lot of the issues with the poses that I had concocted for the game. For example, I imagined the cat pose as one that is similiar to the Japanese Lucky Cat –  The right arm is bent 90 degrees at the elbow with the hand up, and the left arm is bent 90 degrees at the elbow with the hand low. To me as a previous dancer, it was a move used many a time in Hip Hop choreography, but it was clear that it’s a hard move to pull off for many people and kids. Our culture is one where we don’t fully explore body movement – we sit in desks and travel passively in cars – so we don’t move our limbs in odd ways. The move felt very natural to me, but people have issues wit hit. Below is a picture of a kid awkwardly in the cat pose. I think it’s funny. but I was able to see the challenge for kids in looking at the pictures afterwards.

Another issue was the rat pose. We went through a few iterations of it – from a grounded pose to one where players hold their fingers over their head like they have mouse ears. In the gallery below you’ll see Brandon guiding a young child through the pose. Though it’s a cute one, I don’t like that it’s not very active. It’s also focused too much in the body, and sometimes the Kinect has issues recognizing it. This will definitely be changing due to the fact that we’re cutting all the animals and modifying poses. The rat’s pose is completely going away and will be something different for the rabbit that is replacing it.

Overall though, it was cute to see our target audience play the game and enjoy it. This event in the summer has given us a lot of thought about the game as we move forward into the future and this has been a guiding force in our decisions. We’ll be applying what we learned about the poses and kid’s behavior as we create the Beta build of Zodiac.

This post is from the Origamer’s Blog as written by Karatti. It goes further into the changes for the game.

While examining the paper prototype that we’ve put together for use as our level design, something quickly became apparent – The change gates were not necessarily compulsory. Theoretically, one could never make a change, and still finish the level as quickly as if she had hit every change gate exactly on-time. While this may have been attractive for young gamers, it presented a more fundamental problem – There was little replayability outside of just loading up the game and choosing a different character to be first. Considering that the poses and transformations were to be one of our main “hooks,” this presented a problem.

As the leads consulted together, we talked about different possibilities. The first was a “looping” mechanic that would bring the player back around to the change gate if he missed it the first time around, giving him opportunities until he finally did the motion correctly. While this initially made us smile, we could see how this may become frustrating.

Other ideas included more complex and branching levels, encouraging exploration in order to find the “best path,” but such trial and error seemed a little less than compelling.

Finally, Josh and Jorge put together an interesting idea of using Temple Run as a model, with the transformations taking the place of the turns, and thereby giving us a model to increase the speed of the game. With this idea, we’ve decided to implement the mechanic behind the “looping gates” into something different and unique.

In what we’re calling “dynamic transformations,” the player will theoretically be able to play the entire, single-track level without ever changing. Instead of forcing the player to change, the player will instead be rewarded for changing, with an optimal form as the “fastest” in a certain part of the level.

By example, the Ox is the fastest swimmer, and so will move the fastest through a water section. If the player instead chooses to remain a cat, he’ll flail his way across the area, but will lose considerable time, unless he changes into the ox, at which time he’ll speed up. By the same token, if the player is trying to get through a small tunnel, the rat is her best bet, but the ox can just crash his way through it at a slower pace if she so chooses.

This dynamic system should allow for incentives to learn the poses and time the movements accordingly. As well, it will allow players of any skill level to play the game without being frustrated by having to “redo” sections if they miss a change gate. The entire level, in essence, will be a change gate.

During this discussion, the idea of “Epic Poses” came up, which seemed like an interesting addition. Borrowing an aspect of rhythm games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero, when the player hits an “Epic Pose Zone,” the game will slow down a little, and the player will need to correctly match a sequence of poses in succession. If he’s successful, this will trigger an “Epic Event,” which may include influences of anime “combat” scenes, or something to that effect. This will offer the player an awesome reward, as well as a significant shortcut which should help times, and encourage more skill instead of just barreling down the track.

Finally, the track has been determined to utilize three “slots,” and for the player to jump from one to the other instead of being free to move all over the track at will. Especially considering the speed that we’re aiming for, this should help the player to remain focused and invested in the gameplay instead of fighting against the Kinect to get it to do what it wants to do. As well, this takes some of the focus off of the steering and places it back onto the transformations, where it belongs.

We feel that this is a productive change, and though the “branching” system is simply cleverly hidden within the new design, it feels a little more fluid than it was. Also, this should significantly reduce the size of assets for the art team, though it may invariably increase the number of required animations. We’ll have to go down this path a ways and see how it goes.

A few weeks back, my cohort’s thesis games were chosen. I was picked as lead designer for our kinect game, The Zodiac Race. It has an art style based off of origami and will be a self contained episode based off a portion of the zodiac legend. For research, I’ve drawn upon my movement background and looking at animals within nature. Also, I’ve been playing different Kinect games at the studio.

Kinect games have a tendency to haves good UI for players getting into the game or a really bad UI. Kinect Adventures and Sports have great UIs that allow the player to easily start their adventure or sport session. dance central plays well, but it’s menus are better managed through a controller. By far the worst game that I’ve played on kinect is Hole in the Wall. The graphics are abysmal, the gameplay stale, and the menus incorrigible. Off the top of my head, here are a few observations that I think make for a successful Kinect game:

1) Make it easy for the players to jump into the game!
It’s incredibly frustrating for a player when they can’t manage menus effectively. Kinect Adventures & Sports creates an easy, intuitive menu for players. The menus feature large icons for players that are easily accessible – using the right hand moves the on-screen cursor and when the player hovers on that icon a circle loads to visually indicate to the player that they are choosing this icon. Hole In the Wall has its menu options bunched together closely, which doesn’t translate to a quick menu experience. If the player moves their hand just a little, another menu icon is highlighted. While part of this may be due to the Kinect technology, the designers placed icons too close together with a result in which the wrong selection gets highlighted.

2) Avatars – To be or not to be?
There is feeling most satisfying when your real life movements are reflected by your cartoon self on the Xbox 360. It’s a special sci-fi moment to wave hello at the screen and see your avatar wave back at you. Also, it’s just really fun to mess around with those avatars and see what goofy stuff you can make them do. However, they serve an important purpose – they teach the player the extent of what the Kinect can recognize and how fast it processes their movement. Knowing their avatar’s limitations helps make the player a better Kinect gamer, and hopefully, have a richer experience. In games like Dance Central, the avatars are pre-generated and their movements fully choreographed and the player is given visual feedback via colors and messaging that let them know if they were flawless, ok, or just bad. The avatars don’t reflect the player’s movement, but within this context they serve as a teacher to the player: “Do these moves and you’ll be a fly, groovy dude. Follow my movements and you’ll get that high score and unlockables.” So the question of whether or not to use an Xbox avatar rests within what type of game it exists in. Games that require precise movements require a choreographed avatar. Games in which there is exists a simple set of movement phrases (such as ducking, dodging, moving side-to-side, etc), tend to have an avatar that mirror the player’s movement.

I’ve got other ideas, but I’ll post those at a later day. It’ll be about The Gunstringer and how it hurts your arm. 🙂