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April 24, 2005
Playtesting2
Sunday April 24th, 3-4 pm
10th Floor lab Rm 1005
I bought too many Japanese snacks...
The simultaneous video input thru firewire and USB turned out to work really well. I was really pleased with the relatively clear photos and very little lag. I suddenly feel this game will actually work by the end of the semester, with this break through. Because after this, the problems are more things I can control. Playtesting went well today, I thought.
People came and went. People were usually watching and they enjoyed it, it seemed. There were about 5 games played with different people -- people of different heights and there was one pair that was boy vs girl.
Here are the photo rules I used:
1 pt for a hit (director automatically awards)
0-2 pt for a photo (judge awards)
...2 pts when opponent's face can be seen
...1 pt when opponent's body part can be seen
...0 pts when there is nothing
-- Ideally there would be a seperate judge and ref, but due to limits in time, I just played both.
-- I used a 10ft diameter circle which was perfect. Not too small, not too big. I am not sure exactly if there needs to be a rule or not here but this is something to still consider.
-- The game was only 30 secs long, but it seemed long enough that there were enough hits, it didn't get boring, and people didn't get too tired. I installed a button that manually freezes the timer and score and plays a boxing bell to announce the end of the 30 secs.
-- I curved the straps more so that the box lies further towards the front. This makes it easier for people to get hits and for the camera to take good shots. This was pretty successful I thought.
-- The starting position was good, especially when the players have their arms outstretched, because they can't get into a hit position before the game starts.
-- I am starting to get a hang of the phrases used by the ref, like "get into your ready positions" or "there is 15 seconds left on the clock," etc...
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Comments I got:
-- People ALWAYS ask me why the top of the head. But when I explain the reasons, then they usually think it's fine.
-- People thought it was suprisingly physically tiring although they thought the 30 sec interval was pretty good.
-- There seemed like a little confusion about the photo and hit points. Charles Truett, good friend and avid gamer, gave me some great advice. What if there were no automatic awarding of points by the comp and instead the comp would only show who made the hit. Then the judge would award the points. This makes sense since, there needs to be more clarity with who hits. A lot of people would ask who made the hit when a hit was made. Also, the all the points responsibility goes to the judge. It makes it clearer that way what is happening. In this case the point system would go something like it does above, but he judge would be the only one awarding the total points. So, a sort of control board -- something easy to use -- would have to be created with the following buttons: START, RESET, 1pt, 2pt, 3pt, END.
Posted by kaho at April 24, 2005 12:57 PM