A Night at the Boardwalk
For this project, our team decided to create a boardwalk atmosphere for people to enjoy. We did this by creating classic carnival type games for people to enjoy as well as having an environment that would make it feel like you were spending a night at a beach boardwalk. We did this by creating a game based on areal life carnival game. We also picked out a background and a floor that we felt would give the user the feeling that they were actually at a boardwalk. We also added flying objects to give a more wild and festive feel to the experience.
During the ideation portion of this project, we went over many different topics before deciding on one. Our first idea was to create something that helped people with there fears, but we abandoned that when we realized we could not have made it very interactive. A second idea that we seriously considered was a way to help with physical therapy, but we abandoned that idea when we realized that it would be difficult to test without the proper physical input devices. Finally, we came up with the idea of making carnival games and decided to implement a boardwalk fitted with carnival games for the user to try.
When we picked the backdrop for our project, we ran into an issue. We had a very good idea of what we wanted as our backdrop. We were hoping to find a 360 degree picture of an actual boardwalk at night. We were able to find a couple very quickly, but they all had one major issue. They required payment to be able to copy and use. Because of this we were not able to use the images that we wanted. We ended up settling on a background that was brightly colored and gave the feeling of being at a boardwalk at night. Another issue with the backdrop is that it sometimes has problems loading. It normally takes a while for the background to appear.
For the floor we decided that a hardwood floor would give the experience that we wanted. Since most boardwalks are made of wood, we thought that this would be perfect for us. While we explored using a lighter shade of wood, we decided that the darker shade would represent the experience better, since we were trying to convey the idea of a boardwalk at night.
For the game portion, we constructed a find the duck game where the user tries to select the winning duck in a pool of other ducks. The user picks one of the multi-colored balls, which represent the ducks in this case, and is told if there ball is the winner or if it is not a winner.This was based on the carnival game where the contestant selects a duck and wins a prize depending on what is on the bottom of the duck. To represent the ducks we decided to go with balls since they were easier to represent. We placed the the ducks in an inflatable pool, and set them in motion inside the filled pool.
A second game that we tried to implement was the milk bottle game, but we ran into many issues. The cans would not stack due to an issue with the physics system in a-frame that we were using. We also did not know how we would score this game and keep track of how many bottles were knocked down. Because of all these issues, we decided that it would be best to scrape that idea. With more time we would have hopefully been able to complete this.
Overall, our inexperience with VR and a-frame caused us to not be able to add all the features that we would have liked. Given more time to learn this, we would have been able to implement more interactive games on the boardwalk. That being said, we accomplished our goal of creating an immersive whimsical world for the user to enjoy. By including all of the bright colors, we gave the feeling of being at carnival or fair. The game, while simple, is interactive and easy to understand and play. While more time and experience would have allowed us to create a more complex experience, the experience we created can be just as fun and enjoyable.