Final Product Evaluation (2nd Project)

Final Product Evaluation

The demographic I was planning to aim this mini-game for were young drivers around age 18-24 and raising awareness to an aspect of road safety, with mine being about designated drivers.

I feel that my final product would have got the message across, as the assets provided and research done had helped me to come up with a tip for how important a designated driver is after have a drink out with your mates or colleagues so you can safely arrive home, as well as coming up with the idea of sorting out who goes where in the car.

In contrast however, there wasn’t much ‘movement’ in the game to help convey the danger of getting one of your drunken mates in the driver’s seat, and there is little variation in the scenario set in the mini-game that it may end up being like a chore to some of the demographic instead of being informative and come out as unappealing.

If I had more time to work on my mini-game, I would have added animations to the car by having it drive safely if the designated driver was in the driver’s seat or crash if otherwise, have the driver’s seat on the right side rather than the left and include the random variable of the characters appearing in different starting positions each round for added variety.

Analysis of Work (2nd Project)

Analysis of Work

On this project, I have not done as much work as I could have done within the last 12 weeks of work as there hasn’t been a significant improvement over the mistakes I’ve made last project.

Unlike the last project, I had forgotten to make regular blog updates but I have at least saved my documents, ideas and research in word format, ready to be imported into blogger.

As for my actual work, there has been a noticeable improvement as the ideas I’ve had for this project were reasonable to make within the time frame given and there are even more sources for me to get ideas from such as the Road Safety app. From the drag and drop mechanic from the seatbelt mini-game to the how success’ and failures were presented in the drunk driving part.

I feel most proud of my final product of the game because to date, I have put the most amount of effort into it despite the fact it still has various flaws and bugs (such as the disappearing characters and score displaying incorrectly along with the driver’s seat being on the left side, a huge oversight) which I didn’t have time to fully iron out without breaking something else.

I had also made good use of the assets provided from the original app to help simulate how my own mini-game would fit into the app, using the mascot, the fonts and the graphics for the lives and start/game over screens.

Improvements that need to be made are: to do the research segment of future projects better, make sure there is enough time to iron out any common/uncommon bugs or problems in the game to make it more polished and always triple check through work or ask someone else to check it.

Road Safety Research

Road Safety Research

Drink Driving:

Drink driving accounts for 13% of all road fatalities.

The alcohol limits in the UK are:

·      35 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath

·      80 milligrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood

·      107 milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of urine

And getting caught over the limit has severe penalties, from a 12 month driving ban to an endorsement on your licence, leading to potential job loss, getting a criminal record and increased car insurance costs.

Speed Limits:

Speeding is one of the main factors that lead to fatal road accidents, with a difference of 10 mph determining whether there is a 4x increase on the risk of death or less.

The general speed limit is 30 unless there are road signs that say otherwise.

On the other hand there is slow driving that can also be fatal especially on the motorway as every other car on it can drive up to 60 mph leading to a crash from behind for being too slow.

Distractions:

Distractions that take your awareness off the road can often lead to road accidents, due to being unable to recognise hazards fast enough.

Many distractions include: using your mobile phone, playing music at an unreasonable volume and sometimes the passengers in your car.

By holding your phone while driving, you’ll get 3 points on your licence increasing insurance costs and a fine of £100.

Country Roads:

Most fatalities occur on country roads, accounting for a staggering 60% of them. These are also highly connected to speeding, as there are sharp bends, blind bends and even unexpected hazards which average around three deaths a day on these roads (11 times higher than on motorways).

Fatigue:

Tiredness on the road has caused many accidents on the road, mostly involving commercial vehicles.

Peak times are usually in the early hours of the day and after lunchtime, with these sleep related incidents accounting for 20% of all major road accidents.

http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/

http://think.direct.gov.uk/

http://www.roadsafetyknowledgecentre.org.uk/

Target Market Research

Target Market Research

The target audience for this project are young drivers around the ages of 18-24 to help them become more aware of road safety and those are the people I want the mini-game to appeal to.

Multiple road safety problems are associated with quite a few younger drivers such as drink driving, speeding and having plenty of objects to distract them from the road.

With mobiles being widely accessible and having a higher usage compared to other devices, making the game for a mobile device will allow for the message of road safety to reach a wider demographic.

For young people in general, what attracts them the most to road safety notices are ones that are colourful, while also getting the message across with maybe a single questioning line.

Simple designs using shapes with contrasting colours also prove effective.

Taking a sample of 100 young drivers around the Kidderminster area, I showed them the mini-game ideas I had and asked which situations have they not encountered the most and these were the results:

Being a good passenger: 42%

Road Hazards: 1%

Designated Driver: 57%

As you can see from this sample, the young drivers were least aware of having a designated driver for having a drink out followed by being a good passenger in another person’s car and they were most aware of being careful around road hazards.

With this information, I will be basing my mini-game on designated drivers to help raise awareness of it to more people.

http://www.brake.org.uk/info-resources/info-research/road-safety-factsheets/15-facts-a-resources/facts/488-young-drivers-the-hard-facts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/27541618

https://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/toolkit-guide-young-car-drivers.pdf

Game App Research

Game App Research

Angry Birds

A simple designed game using a pull and release control with the goal of defeating enemy pigs with as few shots as possible, adding replay value in hopes of attaining a high score. 

The way I could implement this into my game is to make the layout of my game varied by having the characters start at different different points with each loop of the game as well as allowing a limited amount of moves.

Temple Run

A three lane endless runner with the goal of getting as high of a score as you can whilst avoiding the numerous temple traps and collection coins to purchase various upgrades and cosmetics. It's simple gameplay, high replay value and leaderboards are what make this game successful.

I can use this 3 lane concept to make a mini-game based on driving on the motorway and simulate when to switch lanes, if you need to be a certain distance to the vehicle in the front or if you should speed up so you don't block the other drivers.

3D Impossible Parking Simulator 2

This game app is a parking simulator for cars and trucks with intuitive controls for gas, reverse and steering. Each level gets progressively harder and harder.

I could implement similar control inputs to create a parking mini-game in which you have to keep driving until you find a suitable place to park or pay a fine. Locales would include car parks, the sides of a street and a garage.

Candy Crush Saga

Candy Crush Saga is a connect three puzzle game using a limited moves rule to make players think strategically about which move is the best one to hit the score requirements to win the level. Has an addictive replay value in which there are score tiers for each level along with many gimmicks to keep players engaged and generates a staggering amount of revenue through mircro-transactions to gain extra lives.

For the rising difficulty of my mini-game, I can add a small new gimmick or potential distraction after every 3-5 loops such as indicating that all the characters have drunk different amounts of alcohol and the designated driver is the one that is under the legal limit.

 

100 Floors - Can You Escape?

This game is a room escape puzzle game in which you have to interact with the surrounding environment to unlock the door and move on to even more rooms with varying designs and elements so each way to proceed does not become a tedious task. Additional levels are included with updates so people who have cleared the game have more to go for.

A small puzzle element could be used in turning the ignition and the changing of gears to proceed, as well as checking for potential hazards.

Doodle Jump

Doodle Jump is a platformer game with the goal of ascending as high as you can, using a multitude of randomly generated platforms and power-ups.

As Doodle Jump has different level themes, my mini-game could increase its variation by having different backgrounds, and different visual assets on determining which character is the designated driver or not, such as who has a drivers license or if there are child passengers.