PROGRAMMING

This past week we’ve made a lot of substantial progress in our main mechanics. We have all of the actual Chinese interaction segments are relatively finalized and draw data from the database. In addition to practice, multiple choice, and fill in the blank all working modularly, we now have a complete gameplay experience, being able to transfer from the title scene to the intro scene to the world scene and back to the question scene.

The next most important programming task is one more related to the goal of the project rather than player experience, which is saving individual user data. As the game is to be used as a tool to teach Chinese fluently, the instructors naturally need a way to track the player’s data as they progress throughout the game. As such, there’s a couple more tables in the database regarding player identifier information, and the player’s question responses. The challenge then becomes both tracking player throughout the game as well as saving their data uniquely to the database.

Multiple-choice question

Drag-and-drop challenge

 ART

In the past week, we came up with the sketch of the restaurant where the player practices with buddy bot and receives the quests from customers. We also experimented with UI design. In terms of the character spites, we completed different facial expressions of the buddy bot. All different expressions of buddy bot match with the expressions of NPCs (neutral, happy, confused, mad, awkward). But the expressions of buddy bot are more exaggerated than NPCs in game in order to indicate the (in)correctness of player’s language choice at the practice phase.

Over-world View Sketch

Inside Restaurant Sketch

Facial Expressions of the Buddy Bot and Fruit Vendor

PRODUCTION UPDATE

In the coming week, we will playtest the prototype with learners of Chinese. Programming-wise, we will work on saving player data, connecting different game phases, and adding the rewards system. In terms of art, we will have polished overworld view and restaurant view, bank teller character. We will also work on better UI design and look into sound effects as part of the feedback.