Gold

Week 4: Gold

During this week, we finalized all features of our product, and prepared a lot for the showcase.

We add many different kinds of food models to our scene, including meat, fish, conifers, and dinosaur eggs. We also add a panel to show information about the plants in both the Jurassic and the Cretaceous period. Players need to find the correct type of favorite food for each type of dinosaur: for example, carnivorous dinosaurs will not eat ferns or cycads. In this version of our product, we finally decided to include 5 types of dinosaurs in total, with 2 in Jurassic and 3 in Cretaceous. We found audios for each type of dinosaur to make the sound effect more immersive.

To make our UI more intuitive and more convenient to the users, we made a lot of improvements this week. One main change is that we've added a time-travel selection panel so that when users interact with the time machine, they can choose which time period they want to travel to. We've also added a mission system to the menu, so that players can see the tasks they need to complete whenever they want. In the menu, the player can choose from the dinosaur booklet, mission system, or photo album.

We've also added more content to make the storyline more complete and attractive to users. All existing panels were enriched with additional information, including descriptions of the climate, dinosaurs, and plants of both the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. When players finish all the tasks required, and go back to the modern world, a game-over panel will pop up with ending messages. Additionally, the user guide was also improved. We've replaced those texts with diagrams illustrating controller functions for better user understanding. Minor bugs from the last week were resolved so that panels would not obstruct line traces when they were not visible.

To prepare for the showcase, we've also designed and created a trailer, which includes all main features of our product. We recorded the voiceover by ourselves and found the background music online.

Possible Future Improvements: If we have more time on this product, we'll definitely add more types of dinosaurs and food in different periods of time. We might also enrich our storyline to add some kind of climax to it. For example, dinosaurs may fight with each other naturally: how do Triceratops defend against predators like Trex? These interactions will be very engaging, and players can learn knowledge about dinosaurs more directly.