Week 8

Kryat

This week was not a very productive week in terms of work that got completed, due to unforeseen circumstances however, thing were still done in this week that helped with the project.

3D scanning and Printing lecture (WSA)

As i mentioned in a previous week during my research into polymer clay there was concern that the models made with said clay would be too brittle and break easily so i looked into 3D scanning the models to have them 3D printed in case we, found them to be too fragile for play.

So when there was a talk about how to use the iPad 3D scanner that the Uni has access too, me and group leader Logan went along to learn what we could, the iPad scanning worked through an application installed on the iPad that when an camera assesorie was connected to the iPad could be used to map a particular object and convert it into a 3D model file that 3D printers and 3d model software like blender or Miya can understand.

When you open the application, you have to select an area in which the item you want to scan is situated and everything in that area will be scanned, then the person has to walk 360 degrees around the object, if the person got too close to the area being scanned the screen would go red signally that they needed to back up.

When I got to try out the scanner I scanned the model I made on the right, which is an early concept model of the grand beast, due to the models balance issues I had to balance it against a tin can which then became part of the 3d model due to it being within the scan area. However, the app allows users to use a range of editing tools that allowed me to chop off the tin can from the scan and resolidify the object so all the vectors were in correct place ready for printing.

When we saw the files when they were uploaded to the 3D printing software, I realized what this lecture had taught me, and that was that the 3D Scanners are very useful however if your model is not super detailed and you don't get really precise with the 3D scanning which can consume hours of time the produced file will lack the detail of lets say a polymer clay model, which at this point solidified the idea in my mind that polymer clay was still the avenue to go down in terms of making the models for the vertical slice.

Playtest version 4

During this week we tested a new mechanic that was designed by Logan based on my suggestion that the player characters have some sort of meaning to the game and that was allowing each character to have different abilities that they could exchange a new (a this point) non existent item called charges for.

For example each player starts the game with 3 charges each player character has two abilities one that costs one charge to use and one that costs two charges to use for example the thief has the ability to use one charge in order to steal a die of their choosing from another player and a 2 charge ability that allows them to essentially force another player to return a creature to the deck sort of as if they are holding the other character at knife point and shouting at them to release said creature back into the wild (the Thief is a wildlife preserver who knew)

In order to gain more charges players can sacrifice their turns and gain two more charges from skipping their turn allowing for strategic thinking on the part of the player as to how they want to play.

Our Findings from this play test

After we play tested this version of the game with some of the first years who we met during the 3D scanning lecture we found the following:

Charges mechanic works well
Least amount of die card needs to have some sort of reward/purpose for the person who drew it if its at the start of the game.
Needs to be a way to stop someones attack on the beast as according to play testers the fighting feels lacklustre and that no-one wants to start fighting the beast as the person who starts most likely wont kill it meaning you cant win if your first to fight and testers also voiced that they felt like they had no control over how the beast fight turns out for themselves and others.

Improvements to game play based on these findings

In order to fix the game in accordance with some of our findings from this play test we firstly decided that the card that comes up with the ability that gives a bonus dice or die to the person with the lowest amount of die should have a clause that meant that if it was drawn at the start of the game or if everyone has the same amount of die then the person who drew the card gets the chance to roll a D6 in order to gain a random die.

In accordance with the suggestion from alumni Sid about how the grand beast fight needs to have a way to make the person who first fights feel as if they actually have a way to be the one to defeat it we came up with the idea of having another third charge ability that all player characters have that allows the player to use 3 charges to disrupt/stop someone else attempt on the grand beast giving players a chance to control the beast fighting process and potentially stopping the other players so that they can be the one to win by killing the beast adding another possibility for strategy in game play.

Play test version 5

After we completed the 4th play test and decided on some of the improvements other classmates came into campus who helped us do another play test to test those changes and we found:

Beast hinder charge ability - it added lots of fun competition between the players during game play and especially towards the end when some players had saved up charges and had a lot of control over how events played out.
Poacher camp card that states "Gain back a discarded creature" had no purpose if the player hasn't discarded any creatures yet

Improvements to game play based on these findings

After this play test we believe we have developed our final form that the game play will take due to there being only one amendment to make which was changing the poacher card so that if a player hasn't discarded a creature yet they roll a D6 in order to gain a random die.