Alright, well it’s been just over a week since the final version of my paper was submitted for grading.  With the end in sight, I suppose it is time for another update.  This update does presume some familiarity with the project, so reading the previous update and the project page is recommended.

The testing went reasonably well, many participants who played through the demonstration preferred the adaptive music to a more traditional passive approach.  The application also ran correctly in all cases; the adaptive music was consistently successful at matching game events with specific elements of the music.  The seamless transitions between sections of the music appeared to go unnoticed by the participants (as they should, since they are supposed to be seamless) and there were a wide range of positive responses to this.

Still, the testing revealed some weaknesses in the testing process.  Many revolved around the questionnaire, which had questions that may have unintentionally biased some participants and others that could have been more direct.  The possible bias was taken into consideration when writing the project’s conclusions and that participants could have been biased in either direction depending on how they interpreted the labels of the musical implementations.  Other questions, which were looking for participants to acknowledge the synchronization of game events with the music were too vague and received suitably vague responses.

These problems meant that the more useful results from the testing were drawn from the conversations with participants following the hands-on demonstration and questionnaire.  Some people found it much easier to describe verbally what they felt the difference between the two musical implementations was.  These results were more interesting.

The final pdf! Gotta love LaTeX.

For instance, although few people wrote about the connection between the colour changes (game events) and the music, most participants noticed it.  Many did not think to include it in their answer based on the wording of the questions.  These responses also reinforced the positive reaction to the adaptive music, whether or not the participants were aware of what the difference was.  It seemed that since the events were playing out during the music that was designed for them, participants felt some sort of subconscious enhancement to the game.  Some felt it was “faster”, “more fun”, and “more epic”.  So although they weren’t the expected responses, which may have been too technical in nature, these answers which concerned a more intangible feeling were valuable.

The colour changing events may have also been too similar to the player’s goal, which was to change the colour of the “goal cubes”, although this was never mentioned by a participant.  More variety, or no goal cubes, could have brought more attention to the connection between the events and music.

Anyway, the rest of the conclusions are in the paper and are too much to review here.  I have to make more changes to the project page to outline the project more clearly.  A great deal of future directions were proposed at the end of the paper, so those will be included as well.  Now, to wait for a response to my submission.

This website was created specifically to show off my own work and since my current project is my Master’s Dissertation, I decided that it was about time that I wrote an update.  I have been making small updates to the official dissertation page, but that mostly discusses what the project idea is about.  It has come time to give an update of the project’s actual progress.  For information about the goal of the project check out the aforementioned page, because I won’t be going over that type of thing here.

The first thing to note is that controlling the music and changing game objects based on the musical events are both working features right now.  The examples I have running are extremely simple, but more will come.  The first screenshot, shown above, shows the early level example.  The goal cubes are used to motivate the player through the level, changing the colour of each one by touching it.  The visual style is obviously minimalistic, and won’t be changing significantly, but it is all that is needed to demonstrate the project’s goal.

Variables for testing are shown in the top left corner.

The look is simple but I have a couple key moments planned.  In the screenshot above there is a lit and unlit “goal cube” leading up to the large pillars.  More important are the variables shown.  The camera position is monitored so that the soundtrack can be advanced as the player moves further through the level.  Also shown is the most recent marker passed in the song, both its number (#1) and name (Second), which don’t make sense beside each other.  More descriptive ones will be needed for the final audio.

The last variable in this screenshot is “Chosen”, which indicates whether or not the program has chosen to loop one section of the music based on the players position.  Currently it has not, because the camera’s Z position has not moved past 50, at which point it will loop between music markers 2 and 3 as opposed to playing the whole song.  Simple, and annoying in practice, but good for demonstrating that these parts of the program are working properly.

Expanding the level; this section will be timed with the music.

The final screenshot is of the current setup, meaning the last screenshot I will take before I go eat lunch.  With the music stuff working in an early fashion, I went to work trying to do something more interesting with the visual style.  This is what I had after a couple minutes and I don’t think it looks too shabby.  Plus, the archway changes colour as the music triggers events!  Still not as interesting and complete as the project needs to be, but it is progress.