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Design Research for Alzheimer’s and Dementia patients

My course for December at Full Sail was somewhat of a turning point for my research. Our professor Dr. Shawn Stafford presented us with an interesting challenge: Using Design principles for a philanthropic scientific research. The reading material for this course was a book titled “Universal Principles of Design”. An extremely insightful study material, this book quickly found its way into my personal collection of Paperbacks and I would ask anyone reading this to refer to this book for a myriad of purposes ranging from Ideation to problem solving.

We were to choose 10 Principles from this book and correlate them to some form of Game studies or scientific innovation in design. Despite being a nerdy gamer, advances in medicinal practices especially in psychology, has always fascinated me. The human brain is the most complicated object in the known universe! We know the mass and spin of the super massive blackhole in the centre of our galaxy, but we are barely scratching the surface when it comes to unraveling the mysterious of our own consciousness. I always wanted to plan and design for facilities that deal with problems related to the brain. It is for this reason, i chose “Alzheimer’s and Dementia” as my topic of research.

I chose this topic because we still havnt devised a way to cure Alzheimer’s and many stages of dementia, nor can we exactly pin point their causal origins. Using principles of design however, we can use cost effective measures to ease the lives of those suffering from it. Not only this, but we can use innovative methods to peer inside the minds of the patients with this condition and gather data about their experiences using methods of Eye tracking, arousal, etc.

This has been a very valuable course for me at Full Sail and I hope to carry forward this research through the rest of my course and even in the future.

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My personal Post Mortem Report on Asset Management

Asset management (Month 9) at Full Sail University was a great learning experience for me from a design as well as a technical and management point of view. The Course entailed within four Lectures taught me how to manage team progress and assets needed to make a game function.

Personally, I want to learn the role of a Developer/Manager in small and large teams. Our team of 4 needed a reliable developer who can put together the framework needed to generate narratively driven games. I took this opportunity to create the framework for the Survival adventure RPG called – Three Minds. For this dialog heavy project, we decided to use RPG Maker MV as the platform for development, and I couldn’t be happier, as I have tried this Engine before.

The first week was mainly an ideation and concept creation exercise for the team. I chipped in some problem-solving ideas such as how to make events interactive and keep the flow of gameplay progress entertaining and engaging.

The second week for me was a rather uphill battle, as I struggled with some health-related issues in the family, and wasn’t able to make it to class for Lecture 2. I did however, meet up with the Producer of the team – Joao and helped put together a build for testing. This build had most events required for the game, but they were not arranged in any specific order suiting the gameplay progression. It felt more like an open-world sandbox at this point, making it difficult for the player to find which way to go without a lot of trial and error. This posed another problem for me, as we had previously decided to use Variables for this method (such as Variable 1 – Finding the Briefcase). The problem was that when Variables conflict with each other, it can sometimes break the game and prevent progression, even though the system was in place.

In the third week, I segmented the level and added feedback for the interactions and dialog using thought bubbles and playing around with the text box’s locations. I also implemented a ‘fog of war’ system through an edited JavaScript file I found on an indie forum (called RPGmakerweb). Segmenting the level solved 2 major problems:

1) The quests could be defined by area.

2) Events of one map did not conflict with other, as I replaced the Variable system with a simpler method of simply adding the quest objectives as ‘items’ for the player. So these items would remain in the inventory and could be used to solve quest objectives whenever required.

The fourth week was about polish. I linked together most of the quests to provide a linear gaming experience with all our assets in place. This included Art from Griffith, Narrative bits from Tyler and Joao and worked together with the team to sort out our priorities and get the prototype as close to completion as we could.

Overall, the Lectures, the working experience and the pitfalls of the project provided me with valuable insights as a designer and I aspire to internalize this experience for all future professional endeavours.

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Asset Management Course - Team Post Mortem Report

We began this month discussing whether or not to proceed with the tree-climbing game from our past class. Our biggest concern was the use of Stencyl, a free software for game development that gave us issues in the past. We decided to do a new project in RPG maker, as our best developer was far more familiar with this program than with Stencyl.

The reason for using RPG maker for a narratively driven game is the immense flexibility of the medium and the way ‘events’ facilitate several actions at once. This allowed us to brainstorm thoroughly, figure out the gameplay mechanics and quickly start the prototyping process. We divided the core responsibilities and distributed tasks to meet the general requirements of a playable build.

​We started on our title, “Three Minds,” the first of an episodic series with the idea that we could return to continue if we wanted to. Our game placed the player in the shoes of a plane crash survivor, a girl with her debate team as they returned from their class trip to Alaska. The game would feature the students who offer quests to the main character such as assistance in making a fire, finding food, etc. Initially, mechanics like day-night transition, hunger and thirst, etc. were also a part of the game, although implementing these would take significantly longer than our planned schedule and capacity. These features were later removed from the original plan of the game. By the end of week the first week, we were able to put together a rough build for the game. This build had several events and some of the characters implemented who would give expositions to the basic quests of the game.

​We started roughly. In our second week, one of our team members (Siddhant) became unavailable without notice. This left the rest of us guessing of whether or not our missing team member would return for the coming weeks or not. On top of this, our communication skills in our first and second weeks were inadequate, and this left our schedule and hours as a mess. Nothing matched up from our burn down to our schedule, and it left our project looking like a massive risk were we pitching to a developer. We were too caught up in our own personal deliverables, which led to some issues with project consistency

​While failure can feel defeating, it also opens up opportunities to learn. In our third and fourth week, our team realized the importance of official communication. We set ourselves time for three meetings a week for the last two weeks. We spent this time discussing the schedule and confirming hours to ensure that there were no more discrepancies with our hours. In these weeks, progress of our title also improved dramatically. We implemented most of the art assets into the build and created distinct maps for specific events. In this way, we were able to ‘guide’ the player through the game in an organized way, so that quests are clear and understandable. We also implemented Visual feedback to enhance the narrative experience.

​Our prototype took a stronger turn as the quality of the environment and the character interactions solidified. We ensured that visual feedback made every interaction with the world clear and understandable, and we connected all the events together in a game that could flow from start to finish.

​This experience was rough and challenging, but through our mistakes, we learned more about the importance of communication and teamwork. We also learned that we needed to understand each other strengths and weaknesses so that we can work together more fluidly and understand how far each of us can go while supporting each other.

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Postmortem Report - PTC (The Story of Tree Frogger!)

The course for month 7 titled Prototyping and Content Creation was a practical and hands-on approach towards making a game concept from scratch and creating a working prototype of the projected mechanics and functions. I was excited for this course as it was my first opportunity to approach game creation from a Developer’s perspective so far in Full Sail University. Learning that the four students of the class were to work as a team, I wanted to pitch a concept which was within our skills as a team while also highlighting the strengths of individual team members.

           My main goal was to create a simple yet challenging game which can be enjoyed by a casual gamer. I was aware that my coding skills are not very strong, so choosing the right engine for development was a top priority. I tried using Unity (the engine I am most familiar with), but it felt like a lot of preparatory work for a project so small in scope. I decided to try other prototyping tools for this project and finally found the tool called Stencyl which was very easy to use and had a clean visual scripting system. I decided to learn this tool through tutorials and community forums.

           While making the physical prototype, I personally had a lot of fun trying new techniques to create an action jumping platformer as a turn-based physical version. During our class presentation for the same, we learnt many techniques of simulating digital mechanics using simple objects and a rather tricky set of rules. Overall, this strengthened our Prototype and made me very confident about the ‘fun factor’ of the game. I studied the basic timing of jumps vs the speed of the water rising. Adding an enemy to the mix (the turtle) made the game challenging and the team was very relaxed and composed about the project after this presentation.

           The following week was a tough one, with the arrival of the Hurricane Irma towards the coast of Florida. Taking caution and heeding the advice of my parents, I evacuated to New York for the week. Although separated from the team, I continued working on the Prototype and by the end of the week had understood many of the functions and procedures of the tool Stencyl. Aside from this, I used another simple engine called Flowlabs to make a simple jumping prototype. I faced several issues with collisions and frames in this engine so decided to finalize Stencyl as the tool for development. I added a simple block as an Actor for the player and made its frames for jumping and sliding animations. I was able to test this build once before the school re-opened after the threat had cleared.

           Meeting up with my teammates and discussing some final aspects of the prototype, I started work on the digital version of the Alpha build for the game. Struggling a bit first with implementing graphics, I soon understood the error of my previous method and was quickly able to implement new Tiles, background and sprites. I also received the sound files and narration voice-overs from the team and implemented them into the build towards week 4. The last day of the week, I spent with my classmate Joao to polish up the build and tweak controls and jump distances to create a challenging prototype. Some new ideas were thrown in and we took the game in an interesting direction with some new additions into level progression. A new type of threat was created for the player as the Turtle would now occasionally shoot at the player which would require good reflexes to dodge. Testing this build with my roommates and some other friends revealed that indeed, we had a fun little build in our hands.

           This course was nothing short of challenging for me, because I had to step out of my comfort zone and take on challenging tasks with a new tool. I pro-actively learnt new functions for the sake of the team and of course my own experience and feel very confident towards using this tool again to make new games in the future.

           The final week was quite rushed as some of the deliverables from the team were delayed. I had to compensate for this by creating some extra graphics and sprites for the menus and background of the game. In the end, we were just focusing on meeting the requirements we had set for the build and it was a sigh of relief to see most of it come together at the end of the week. I feel I could have contributed much more to the project if I were efficient in coding, although I do feel the gratification of learning something new through trial and error. I feel responsible for the future of this project and want to make it a more complete flash game, which I could embed on a web-page.

           Finally, I would like to thank the University, our professor – Mr. Roy Papp and of course our dynamic team which worked hard to make this project possible. This was perhaps the most practical course of the entire program and I learnt a lot in this experience!

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Designing a Lunar Oddessey and more!

This month, I took a course known as Methods and User Experience. It was an insightful course about testing methods and deriving conclusions from user data. I have always been curious about the procedures of empirical observation and deducing remedies from statistical results. Reading through a book titled 'Human factors in Simple and Complex systems' revealed to me that any system or product is limited in design simply because of the ability of the users that operate it. V.R as a medium is no different and its applications are limited by how we choose to adapt to its experience. This month i focused my attention on studying VR as a medium and tested many different simulations inside and outside my university. Compiling all my VR research into something usefulnhas led me to initiate the design for a simulation for astronomy education. The simulation will have a gamified approach and will cater to a demographic of teenagers and young adults by making them experience a simulated landing on moons of the solar system. The objective is to deduce through user data, if the simulation is a better medium of learning as compared to 2D media like books and computer screens. I also started my responsibilities at Cellec Games from the Serious games capstone track of Full Sail University. I am appointed the role of a Game Designer and Producer and I plan to initiate this experiment as an inititative from my Capstone with the consent of the team and involved authorities. Overall, this month has been the most active month of my masters course at Full Sail and I know its not going to get any easier from here on. Lets just say that my problems now are all virtual, but the struggle is very real!

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Project and Team Management - Reflections

In May 2017, I attended my Project and Team Management lecture at Full Sail University. It was a remarkable experience for me for two main reasons. First, it was a great opportunity for me to learn something about Project Management...an art which was alien to me in the past. I learnt several intricate operations and functions that drive the process of project management, such as Risk Management, creating Timelines, budget, contingency and even Project Pitches. 

Although I am not new to pitching ideas, this class transformed my methodology into a more refined and scientific process. I am now aware of which points to focus on during a presentation. Secondly, it was the birthplace of my personal project - Swift Book. The encouraging guidance of my professor gave me the confidence to create the comprehensive PM plan for this gamifed educational app which I plan to release later for the mobile market.

I am thankful towards my professor - Mr. Lester Fredrick and my classmates who made this class worthwhile and memorable for me!

The materials we studied were insightful and thought provoking. It made me realize that the professional world is like a complex clockwork which functions through diverse and inter-dependent systems, driven by cohesive teams who have common goals and motivations. It is an important lesson for me, which I would apply when i greet the Gaming industry as a Project Manager.

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Research in Team Dynamics and My mastery journey

My second course at Full Sail University was all about Teams and their functioning. We also learnt how to conduct academic research at a graduate level. This course augmented my skills for attaining mastery in my field in a variety of ways.

First, we studied a book by Spaulding about teams in game companies. The knowledge gained from this book has improved my understanding of how small and large teams function under different types of leadership profiles.I got many insights into team building, performance and motivation. We also learnt concepts of Validity based on Robert Kennedy’s paper about the 4 type validity model.

Another important assignment of this course instructed us to function as a team and create a working game within the scope of the month. It was a very important exercise for me not only for developing an understanding of Game Design practices but also to learn how to be a good and effective team player. I came to understand myself better and realized my skills as a programmer. I worked in a diverse team, with each member contributing significantly to the teams skillset. We were able to create a working prototype of an adventure game known as June Flowers and plan to release the same on Steam in future days to come.

Last but not the least, this course made me a better listener and a better presenter. I had an opportunity to work on my presentation skills and using the tool Power Point effectively to create several presentations for my team.

Overall, this course was a great experience i had in Full Sail and hope for many more of such hands-on classes, because nothing teaches better than practical experiences and efforts.

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Mastery Journey Timeline

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I find this picture quite inspirational, as it is the first photograph of man’s dream of flight turned to reality. I used Nelson Mandela’s quote with this photo as it is true for that time, as well as now and will be true forever.

Nelson Mandela. (2017). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved March 23, 2017, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/nelsonmand378967.html

Image credits:

Wright Airplanes. (2016). In wright-brothers.org. Retrieved from http://www.wright-brothers.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Facts/Airplanes/Wright_Airplanes.ht

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Barbaric

Just one piece of equipment remains to complete my latest Diablo 3 character. I drew this comic as it represents my frustration as I put more and more hours into finding The flow of eternity.

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Doodle: You are not prepared!

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My Logo!

I plan to use my Alias “Firefang” to name my first production studio. 

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Let us connect on Linkedin!

I am also taking this opportunity to formally post my Linkedin.com profile here so that we can connect on this professional network. I think it is very important to make new connections in this dynamic world of design. Every person carries within some rich insights, experiences and opportunities for each other. What better way to get an idea of someone’s professional background if not on the biggest professional social platform on the web!?

I wish to meet people associated with business, design, programming and art. Here at Full Sail, the atmosphere is just oozing with talent and aspirations and I wish to connect with as many people I can to enrich my own network. :D

https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddhant-kumar-48723498/

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My Feedly RSS Sources

Feedly is another important tool I discovered this week. I intend to use this resource to get important RSS feeds that are relevant to my industry and hobbies. I have lot of subscriptions which talk about Video Game Design and some other Communication design aspects like Graphic Design, Typography, Animation and UX.

I also follow gaming channels like Hearthpwn and Icyveins for news and updates regarding my favorite competitive games. Last but not the least, I follow channels like Metal Radio for my daily dose of Rock and Metal music, and perhaps some new tracks to listen to everyday.

Overall, I think Feedly will help me become better organised in terms of news and updates and I hope to learn many new things and meet lots of different users through this RSS network. :D

[siddhant316-blog]

My Personal Learning Network..

I created a profile on the popular bookmark managing online website called Papaly.com. Through this new learning network, i strive to stay updated on the various events and resources popping up all over the industry. My preferred categories are Art, Design, Gaming and Science. I have included links to several of my favorite ‘go-to-places’ around the web, like Gameinformer, Icyveins, Natgeo and several other sites. A few other links are basically tutorial websites and art journals which I periodically refer to as I go about my role as a Game Designer. :D

Link: https://papaly.com/sidfirefang

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One must understand that success is a state of mind, and not a physical goal that we have to achieve. Success can be defined as the measure of happiness in a person’s life. We must never forget that cultivating happiness is more rewarding than chasing success.

Albert Schweitzer. (2017). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved March 15, 2017, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/albertschw155988.html

Image credits:

Key. (2017). In Freeiconspng. Retrieved March 15, 2017, from http://www.freeiconspng.com/free-images/key-png-32736