[University Project] Request for crowd source data collection

I'm doing my final project in my computer games development degree at university.

My project is an attempt to make procedurally generated directions for the player as an alternative to nav or quest markers.

I need people to play a tech demo so that data can be collected on the effectiveness of the algorithm, there will also be a short multiple choice questionnaire.

The project is made in Unity3d and I will make sure to compile for Windows, Mac and Linux.

I have a few final changes to make to the code but aim to 'release' on Monday (17th). I will start reading the data results the week after (24th).

I will edit this post with a download link on the 17th.

Download link.

Depending on the size of the file, I may be able to help!

Waitdev_, on 13 April 2017 - 10:58 AM said:

Depending on the size of the file…

Well the git repo is 203MB and the (Windows 32bit) test build I just made is 74.3MB, is that too big? _{I honestly thought it would end up bigger.}

Sounds interesting! I'll be waiting for the release :3

I've just "played" this a couple of times. Apologies for the repeated data point. I've noticed a couple of potential issues:

• It says "Turn arrived at the purple cube" and "Turn go at the purple cube". This doesn't really make any sense. There have been a couple of times where the only instructions were a couple of "Turn go at the purple cube".
• The instructions don't always seem relevant to the starting point: I've been asked to "turn go at the red sphere", despite there being no sphere in sight.

Otherwise, it seems like a neat idea and implementation.

SquidDev, on 17 April 2017 - 03:18 PM said:

I've just "played" this a couple of times. Apologies for the repeated data point.

That's not a problem, that's why the survey asks if you've played before. (And why I had to brute force Unity Analytics to accept multiple play throughs they way i needed.)

SquidDev, on 17 April 2017 - 03:18 PM said:

I've noticed a couple of potential issues:

• It says "Turn arrived at the purple cube" and "Turn go at the purple cube". This doesn't really make any sense. There have been a couple of times where the only instructions were a couple of "Turn go at the purple cube".
• The instructions don't always seem relevant to the starting point: I've been asked to "turn go at the red sphere", despite there being no sphere in sight.

Otherwise, it seems like a neat idea and implementation.

Limitations caused by the amount of time I had to code it and my knowledge of using Unity (I felt like I was fighting against the game engine a couple of times). Once I had an implementation that mostly worked I didn't change it for fear of finding another quirk in Unity which hated the change.

Lupus590, on 17 April 2017 - 04:01 PM said:

Once I had an implementation that mostly worked I didn't change it for fear of finding another quirk in Unity which hated the change.

Does "mostly worked" even apply, though? The instructions don't make grammatical sense. They don't seem to care whether there's a clear LOS between landmarks. Multiple examples of the same landmark exist within the map, with no way to differentiate between them, and on all but two occasions I was simply asked to "turn go" (whatever that means) at the same landmark type twice in a row (so which should've I gone to first?). On only one occasion was I told to "turn arrived" at a landmark… I have no idea whether I ever managed to reach your intended destinations.

If your goal is to test how well your own implementations are working, then I suppose your demo does that… but I feel you shouldn't need players to tell you that your landmark system is broken. On the other hand, if you're trying to test whether "landmarks are better than quest arrows", then it simply isn't fit for the purpose… because your landmark system is broken. :|