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Overview

Below is an outline of the user testing plan that we carried out for designs within sprint two. We integrated ideas from sprint one user testing and tailored it towards the design items created within sprint 2. This assisted us in finding out design flaws within our pixel arts and allowed us to iterate upon several designs before reaching a final graphical representation within each weapon.

User Evaluation Session Plan

• Session run by (Name): @NishaVashist0 and @PurrplePandaa
• Studio and game name: Studio 2, Atlantis Sinks
• Feature team name: Weaponizers
• Location of Testing: Google Forms (Online) and interviews
• Number of Participants: 5 - 10 people

Background

Currently, the game is semi-functional at this stage, allowing the player to walk through the map, equip, store and attack enemies. It also lets players visualise the skills and debuff/buff icons that will be functionally made available later in development.

To continue with the integration of the game, user testing needs to be conducted to validate the design. The reasoning behind conducting the test is that the design of the combat items has been newly brought into the game, which means there is no foundation for us as designers to go off. Hence the criticality of conducting such tests. Each combat item’s components, stats, colour, style, and shape need to be validated against the user to truly understand the expected design of the weapon within the game.

Aims & Objectives

• The attain information on the design aspects/ looks of weapon style
• Question about items relating to the weapon swing effects
  • To see if different colours should be used to represent the swing if the weapon contains gems within it
  • Conflicts with buffs and debuffs on the weapon
• Attain better insight into iterations that weapon designs could go through

Prototypes

Weapon	Prototype
Plunger
Wrench
PVC Pipe
Hera & Athena
Hera Animation
Hera & Athena Animation

Testing Approach

The testing approach we took as seen in the first section of this user testing document took the form of interviews and online google forms. Google forms were done on items that were smaller in terms of workload sizes. As for designs that required more user input, we decided it was best to complete a hybrid user testing guide through doing a mix of google forms as well as performing interviews on particular aspects of the animations.

Google Forms

The following lays out the questions asked on the google forms:

1. What do you think this item looks like?
2. How close does this represent a insert weapon?
3. If animation were to be placed on it, how would you apply it?
4. If there was anything you could improve on regarding the colours or the design of the weapon, what would you recommend/ change?

Interviews

Since questions within the interviews were posed in a such a way to attain more information on a particular aspect of the animations the layout was specified based on animation flows/ overall look of the frames as well as positioning. The questions asked were as followed:

1. What do you think of this animated weapon?
2. How well would you think this weapon animation fits in terms of weapon pathing?
3. Do you think that the swing of this weapon (weapon pathing) should be solid white or should it be highlighted with shadings of other colours and why?
4. Provided weapon buffs are going to be implemented, does this affect your decision to the previous question?

User Testing Results

Plunger

Wrench

PVC Pipe

Hera & Athena

Hera & Athena Animation

Interviews:

1. What do you think of this animated weapon?

   • Weapon animation looks great! I like the swing of it and how it moves around, creates sense of impact swing.
   • Animation looks pretty normal, though a faster swing might look nicer since the frames looks as though it's moving pretty slowly.
   • The effects looks sick! I find the animation of the swing looks like something out of a metal slug game kinda thing.

2. How well would you think this weapon animation fits in terms of weapon pathing?

   • 9/10 with 10 being the best. From previous games, it seems as though it's mimicking the same effects. There's not a lot of other pathing options out there for swinging a dagger and making it look like a natural swing if that makes sense.
   • I think the pathing is okay? Though I feel like perhaps you could maybe move the blades more to the right..perhaps to make it feel like the dagger is going out to attack someone rather than being centred in front of the person.
   • I think it looks good. Seems like how a dagger would be swung. I'm thinking that the red dagger swing may potentially look a bit awkward beacuse I'm just imagining the pathing of the hand but, to be honest, it's really quite difficult to know unless I can see the hand movement which you haven't provided.

3. Do you think that the swing of this weapon (weapon pathing) should be solid white or should it be highlighted with shadings of other colours and why?

   • White looks alright, I mean it feels pretty normal to have a white slash because of how other games do it... but then again, other games don't that have a white slash don't really utilise coloured swords etc. So perhaps changing the colours to a lighter colour or shade of the weapon could make the animation look slightly more appropriate?
   • I feel like changing the colours to represent the weapon colours would improve the design because it feels more realistic when swinging. It also makes more sense I guess, for example if you were swinging a fire pit like those people in a circus, you would see a orangy white trail when they swing it and not a completely white trail.
   • Yea, white seems kinda 'normal' but to me, it wouldn't be the best fit for your design. That's because like your weapons are tainted red and blue, so under normal circumstances, you should really just incorporate a light shade of those colours for the swing.

4. Provided weapon buffs are going to be implemented, does this affect your decision to the previous question?

   • To be honest, I think you could just have the animations of a buff overlayed and not really have any colours follow it if that makes sense. I think it would still look just as nice.
   • Depends on the type of buff animation you would want to put on the weapon. If the animation was going to affect the swing then it would probably be better to just keep the slashes white and then animate it according to the buff effects. So for example, if there was a fire buff, you could animate it with orangy instead of white and people would be able to tell. But if you're not really going to have much effects on the buff, you could just keep it as is.
   • I think it wouldn't really affect my decision because normally in games, the buffs and stuff are affected around the player. If this is for a weapon, it would work in the same way. Like it would only really affect the looks of the weapon, I wouldn't expect it to affect the swinging colour of the weapon. Like a fire sword would have an orange swing, it wouldn't have a white swing yet it doesn't really have any buffs, it's just a sword lit on fire. That's just how a normal swinging pattern works.

Athena Animation

Interviews:

1. What do you think of this animated weapon?

   • Wow! The dagger swing looks so good.
   • I think it is perfectly fine.
   • It looks really good.

2. How well would you think this weapon animation fits in terms of weapon pathing?

   • If it’s going the way shown in the gif, the animation is on the wrong side
   • It was too bright to even focus on the dagger animation pathing
   • The pathway is good, but it kind of looks like there is some type of buff added to it as it’s brighter on the way up.

3. Do you think that the swing of this weapon (weapon pathing) should be solid white or should it be highlighted with shadings of other colours and why?

   • I like it as it is now, but you could add more of the darker blue of the static dagger image, so it looks like the sword is swinging.
   • As I said in my previous answer, it’s way too bright on the eyes. If you added the shading of the sword, it wouldn’t be so bright and really bring out the pathing of the swing.
   • The swing needs to have more of the sword colours. My reasoning behind this is that it will become easier to tell that the animation is showing the sword pathway of attack rather than a buff being applied.

4. Provided weapon buffs are going to be implemented, does this affect your decision to the previous question?

   • I think different colours could be used in the swing to show off the weapon buff.
   • You could visualise the weapon buff by creating waves outside the pathing. * Asked them for further information on what they meant by waves * When I say waves I mean like aurora that follows the swing. I think would look really cool and show off that the weapon is buffed.
   • What you currently showing me could be the pathing of a buff weapon

Future Directions for Further Testing

Currently user testing has been done in a manner where the user is given verbal description on what the game currently is to give background on the prototype that is being tested. Once this sprint is completed it is expected the combat item design and functionality will correspond with each other within the game. It is also expected that the game as whole will be further developed into the atlantis toliet theme. Due to this expected progress we hope to direct user testing into how the combat design and it correlating functionality fit within the whole game. This will allows us to confirm whether the ideas and decision choices behind our iterations match with the ‘game experience. ’This could potentially be done through a new testing method, Think Out Loud, as it is less guided allowing for user thoughts.

With respects to think aloud, it could be directed towards attaining qualitative feedback upon the animation attacks completed during this sprint. This would provide us with a understanding of whether end users approve of the animation decisions made.

In addition to all this, a different approach to user testing should be conducted at the start of next sprint in order to attain a common understanding of what users think before executing the designs. Currently, designs have been made just off research but within future sprints, it would be nice to get a confirmation that the research conducted suits our end users. Furthermore, we could also attain information on the different types of common attack animations that users would ideally like to see within the game. This could be done through market research. This is something that we wish we had done this sprint however due to the change in direction of how the weapon was going to be displayed on the player it was feasible.

Some methods we could utilise in order to gain achieve the above outcome might include:

1. Live demonstrations of the game interactions where users get to feel the components implemented during sprint 1 and 2
2. In depth analysis of asking users what they could potentially see needs improvements
3. The conduction of market research to understand the key basic user interactions within a game. Then use this research to consult with the user if this is there expectation for the game.

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Author

• Caleb Ang, Nisha Vashist
• GitHub: PurrplePanda, Nishavashist0
• Discord: 🅰nneyeong Haseyo™#8083, nishavashist#4270
• Slack: Caleb Ang, Nisha Vashist