Please rip my interactive demo to shreads. I know there is a lot of work left on it. There are more mistakes and areas that need to be improved when you really dig into the blend. Thank you for looking at this hot mess of software/artwork.
It’s not 100% functional yet. For example the answer to each question is always A) and there is no keyboard for the questions.
Download Rocket Launch (~ 7Mb)
regards,
honeycomb
It seems like a pretty cool idea for educational software.
I like that movement is realative to the view rather than following FPS controls.
For the controls - the character doesn’t always turn in the quickest direction (sometimes she turns 270degrees when she could just turn 90degrees the other way).
And she has too much momentum. Since she is only walking she should stop almost immediately after you release the key.
The hotspots for interacting with the objects in the room are too small. For instance you have to click right on the eyepiece to use the telescope.
I’m hoping that your questions have something to do with space/rocketry. Otherwise it might come off as way too cumbersome of an interface for a quiz.
For your character - are you planning on modifying that character or replacing it all together?
Personally, I would use dLoc for your character motion. It’s smoother. The clothes and the character should be the same mesh in the end and all unnecessary faces should be removed except the character’s, LOL.
Sounds are going to be essential if you are going to interest the user. Make the rocket more impressive. Something big needs to happen when a question is answered.
Looks good! Let me know if you have any trouble making fire. It’s nice to know there are other educators out there doing this stuff. It would be nice if you let us know a little more about your project about it’s progress.
Thank you for your replies.
Here is a bit of background on this demo. The thought of wasting a buch of time just trying to get a large group of people to develop a game concept is not one I savor at this point. I 've read the books and research papers, checked into the marketing and demographics and whipped up a couple of business plans. I thought to myself why go into so much debt for such a long time when one can still create all the infastructure and content for a large game by starting small. In addition as you go along the profit is more immediate not years down the road.
Secondly, I am a bit older than the target market for gamers and I have found that the concepts and genres have not matured with me. The whole “run and gun” mentality of current games no longer appeals to me. Total destruction of a “sandbox” world like GTA or the singlemindedness of a FPS bore me quite frankly. Yes they were fun once but no longer.
Third, while passing time at mundane tasks in my “day job” I began to notice problem areas in businesses that could be better served by an “interactive demo” or “video game”. There were instances of unqualified human resource personel hiring people without the proper skills, there were instances of people performing tasks for which they had little or no training, there were processes and procedures which were no longer being followed, and there were no available systems in place to provide training and opportunities for those who wished to advance themselves. The biggest failure was in the people themselves and in particular the management team who had bypassed the system and were allowing these problems to persist due to issues with “human nature”.
As an example employees were tested on their compentency in their job assignment. There were instances where employees were not following the procedures and had no clear concept of what or why they were doing what they were. The supervisor in charge of the evaluation merely passed these individuals because “we’ve worked together for a while now and you’re OK, you are a nice person and I wont fail you”.
Now back to your replies.
I have a personal preference for the third person viewpoint. The setup in this demo I owe to “ineedanewbike” and the demos he posted. I have studied the concepts and ideas and I am implementing a similar setup in python which will reduce the “logic” bricks by a magnitude.
I think a simple check on the vectors for (dot product?)the character and the base will allow the script to select the best rotation direction and this will avoid the rotation through 270 problem.
I am not sure how I wish to tackle the motion issues. I am not a big fan of dLoc motion as I personally feel the motion of starting and stopping to be unnatural. And yet the linV option does also suffer from the momentum issue. My goal is to have a blend of the actions from “Walk” to “Stand” which I hope will mask the momentum. The only problem I have is that using Action blending crashes blender for me. In addition perhaps I could tweak the material "Dynamic"properties and increase the friction to slow the momentum a bit quicker.
I will update the hotspots and perhaps use an invisible bounding box to enclose each object this should make selection easier. Of course I do have a distance limitation on the ray sensor so you have to at least be close to the object to select it.
This demo is designed to be the basis for a template so the questions and content will be modified to suit the customer. As for the character I have some prototype low poly versions I am working on and I fully expect to implement them here. The woman will have a face as well! The undelying infastructure and code should remain the same with minor modifications.
Sound is a big issue with me. I have not been able to get sound working. I run a Linux system and this is an issue that has plagued me for years. No one seems to have a proper answer for why. There are a few threads about it but the solutions fail me. The final version will most likely be generated on a windows box so sound will be incorporated.
In closing I do intend to add extras to the project. Upon selecting the Telescope or other checklist object and correctly answering the question the user will be rewarded with an animation or interactive easter egg. An example would be looking through the telescope and seeing the night sky with the signs of the Zodiac highlighted. I do think that in a testing or evaluation situation the focus should be on the content and not so much on the “Bells and Whistles”. Also, I do not necessarily feel the user should be rewarded immediately for a correct answer, most tests I have taken only offer the results upon completion. But I could be wrong.
I will implement many of the recommendations and also texture some of the Scene. I also hope to reduce the file size considerably. Probably be a couple of days.
regards,
honeycomb
Hello
very nice!
Quite smooth view/character setup, almost perfect
This kind of “Template” its much needed
Thank you
Bye