About
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Goals and motivation
Our goal in this project was to use Unity to develop a simple AR game about raising and taking care of a small dragon. We wanted at least two stages: egg and baby dragon. We conceptualised the game as an opportunity for the player to relax and enjoy some downtime while taking care of a cute Tamagochi-like creature. The project was an opportunity to develop new skills such as using Unity to develop an AR game, animation, and 3D modeling.
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Technologies used
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Unity engine (C#)
We chose Unity because it is a popular free game engine with a relatively easy learning curve.
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Unity's AR Foundation framework
It made sense to use the AR framework already built into Unity.
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Blender
We chose Blender for 3D modeling since it is free and tutorials for how to use it are widely available.
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Unity, freesound.org, and audiotrimmer.com
We used Unity's Audio Manager and found audio clips and music on freesound.org, as everything there is in the public domain.
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Github
We chose Github for version control as it is the most popular option.
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Discord
We used Discord for communication because it is flexible and allows for multiple text and voice channels.
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Contributions
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2D graphics
Animation
Gameplay
Testing
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Gameplay
Interactions
Game logic
Testing
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Sound and audio
Game logic
3D and concept art
Testing
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Challenges and obstacles
The challenges we encountered included (but were not limited to) technical and artistic expertise as well as time constraints. There were many difficulties when learning how to use Unity and Blender and create animations. Some of these difficulties lead to changes in the idea and design, such as the shift from 3D to mostly 2D: a choice we ended up being extremely happy with.
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Related work
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Tamagotchi, 1996, Bandai
AR Dragon, 2017, PlaySide
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Leite, Iolanda, et al. “’Why Can’t We Be Friends?’ an Empathic Game Companion for Long-Term Interaction.” Intelligent Virtual Agents, 2010, pp. 315–321., https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15892-6_32.
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Ohkura, Michiko. Kawaii Engineering: Measurements, Evaluations, and Applications of Attractiveness. Springer Nature, 2019.
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Lessons learned
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If you get a better idea after already having started working on a project, it is worth switching to it for better results, even if it means abandoning some completed work. Changing our graphics from 3D to mostly 2D improved the look and feel of the game a lot.
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People look for an overarching, complete atmosphere in a game before they focus on any details. Having a consistent style and cute character design is what most positive comments were concentrated on.
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Being passionate about an idea and thinking of many features to add does not magically generate the time and expertise necessary for execution. Project plans should have some time set aside specifically for learning how to work with unfamiliar technologies.
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