Goal: Creepy
Group members: Dian Chen; Yang Gao; Wenjing Ying; Haozhe Jiang;
Please take a look at our world or demo video!
Creepy farm: users.wpi.edu/~dchen3/
Our VR world is called “Creepy Farm” and our goal is to make the user feel like he/she has been thrown into a crazy dream. Our beautiful environment and creepy music are the key factors that make our world immersive. However, our initial idea was to make a “Relaxing Farm” and we originally wanted to create a world that provides a sense of relaxation. The environment we used is A-frame’s preset environment “forest”, which we found lovely and animated. When you enter the “Creepy Farm”, you will feel like you have been dragged into a dream world that nothing makes sense. If you find an egg, try to put the cursor on it and click!
Brainstorming & Sketching
We started this project by brainstorming about what should a farm look like and what elements are supposed to be in a farm. Then we wrote down some names of animals or plants. Luckily, we have 2 extremely talented artists on our team, Dian and Yang. Dian and Yang drew a picture of our world as we talked about what our imaginary farm looks like. They also cut down their drawings into a picture-story book.
It looks lovely and animated for the initial paper prototype, as we thought before, this suppose to be a relaxing farm. Plus, we designed that we could feed the animal, so that it can reach our initial goal — relaxing farm. Therefore, this became our initial paper prototype.
Initial Design
We started building our world by first setting up the environment and background music. Then we added in some obj 3D models of animals but we just lined them up in front of the camera.
We already had our dreamy background by then. However, we wanted to do more with our animals and possibly add more fun features. We want the user to be able to explore our farm and immerse in our world while feeling relaxed.
Other than that, we made something surprising for whoever finds the egg and clicks on it.
This feature gives the user a sense of discovery and makes the user want to explore more. Although we had not developed more fun features yet, we were very interested in making our farm like a exploring game. If granted more time, we would like to make our farm more lively.
User Testing
We brought our paper prototype to the first demo day.
We have gotten some inspiring feedback from the first demo day.
Our first user suggested us to make a dancing dog. However, we couldn’t find out how to implement “gltf” objects or “gif” files into our world due to technical limit. Our third user wanted more cows so the cows will not feel lonely. We thought that was a really good idea so we added more cows to make the farm more lively.
After we’ve created our initial design, we brought it to the second demo day.
Final Prototype
On the second demo day, our testers had provided us with more interesting ideas.
Tester 2 wanted better navigation and bigger map. Unfortunately, the camera and environment are built-in features for A-frame so we couldn’t make any changes to it. Tester 3 pointed out that our cow is a chocolate cow that probably makes chocolate milk. He said the chocolate cow was really funny. However, he wanted to see a blue sky with nothing on it so he didn’t like our title “Relaxing Farm” floating on the sky. Tester 4 really liked our trees and music. He said it made him feel peaceful and relaxed. He also reached our hidden feature and got himself a chicken.
However, there are also suggestions that we didn’t agree with or we couldn’t change. Tester 5 wanted more click and more animations. Unfortunately, adding more animations will cause our world to lag terribly so we decided to not have many animations. Tester 6 liked our goat, which was not really a goat. It looks more like some animal taken out of Warcraft, but that’s exactly why we like it. He also wanted better control, he wanted to move the cursor without dragging it. Again, A-frame doesn’t work that way so there was not much we could do. Tester 7 pointed out that having an instruction somewhere would be really helpful. We strongly agreed with that we need some kind of instruction. He also said he wanted an infinite field because he is a gamer and having an infinite field is very cool from a gamer’s point of view.
After the class ended, we stayed in the classroom and discussed about the feedback we received. We decided to add more animals, an instruction, and maybe some other features. We found out that most testers didn’t necessarily get a sense of relaxation but felt creepy and funny at the same time.
Results
In the end, we decided to completely change our goal and theme. First, we added an instruction so the user can immediately get an idea of what to do once he/she enters our world.
Since most testers found our farm humorous in a creepy sense, we decided to change our world to “Creepy Farm” instead of “Relaxing Farm”. The environment and the animals are still very lovely, but we changed the background music to a creepy one.
Other than that, we decided to do have more fun with our animals. One of the testers inspired us to have more eggs. However, we couldn’t implement more than one animation. Therefore, we ended up making it a treasure hunt game. We added 5 eggs in our farm but only one of them will give you a chicken. Can you find that lucky egg and get yourself a chicken?
If there are 5 eggs, then there’s gotta be more chickens. Of course, we won’t let our user to just have a peaceful time with the chickens and eggs. The “Creepy Farm” also has cows running around and goats fighting with each other.
If you don’t think our farm makes sense, then you’re absolutely correct! Our farm provides a sense of reasonless for people who are tired of the real world. Our farm will shock you with randomness and probably scare you with creepiness. However, as a result, we hope you will laugh at our crazy animals and have fun with the treasure hunt. You will end up feeling happier when you leave this world and return to your own.
Reflection
Our world is designed to shock people with the crazy animals. We wanted to show a contrast between our reasonless world and the real world. We found A-frame very powerful but there were still certain limitations. We couldn’t figure out how to implement “gltf” objects. We also couldn’t paint the animals the way we wanted. Additionally, since the background is the forest, when we tried to make the cow or other animal in a light color. The “shade” in the background would slightly changed the animals’ color, which we didn’t expect to happen. Unfortunately, having more than one animation would cause horrible lags. Plus, when we tried to import a group of animals, it turned out that some part of the animal would go across the other animal. For instance, when we weretrying to make the fighting goats, the horn of the goats would just go across each other’s horns. This is the problem that we couldn’t solve. On the bright side, the built-in environment is fairly cool. I guess the biggest limitation was that A-frame only allowed us to click on something if we put the cursor on it, which means the user will have to drag the cursor all the time.
The user feedback was significant for this project. Although most of them suggested things that we couldn’t do, some of them gave us great inspirations. Since we completely changed our farm after the last demo day, we didn’t get a chance to do user testing for the “Creepy Farm”. But we are confident that it is creepy and fun.