During Covid-19, people started to adapt their way of living requiring social distancing. As the lockdown eased, people were allowed to meet again. Many games people used to play involved body contact. The task for this project is to explore how people can engage with the environment.
I am aiming to create a non-contact game that practice social distancing with AR.
I interviewed few people online about the impact of lockdown. In figure 1, the data shows the main impact on people is making them depressed as they are not able to social with others. 25% of the interviewers indicate that they felt more tired when they are not able to do outdoor activities. 16% of them felt lonely during lockdowns.
Figure 2 present the impact of interviewers' health condition during lockdowns. Half of the interviewers gained weight because they exercise less. 30% of the interviewers who have health problems got their symptoms worsen due to the difficulties of visiting the doctor.
Result: Most interviewers have negative impacts on them while having the lockdowns. I decided to created a simple game so people can have fun together but also follow the rule of social distancing to keep them safe.
I started with building 3D characters in Blender. I created 4 characters. Next, I added the 3D models to Unity and used Vuforia to created image target for the AR. Then, I add the explosion animation to the image target. When the camera detects the image, it will show the explosion animation. I added the sound effect to the animation, so all the players will know when the hunter wins. I designed the interfaces and prototyped in Figma. HuntAR is more than just a game. It is also a platform for people who want to make friends and enjoy the game together. In the app, users can invite others to play in the city. To play the game, users have to go to the app and print out the images of the characters. The app shows the users the rules of the game. However, I want this to be a flexible game. The players can simply decide their own ways to play the game.
I tested the game with few people. During the test, I found out the images I set in Vuforia get confused by the app easily. So, I redesigned the images and they get detected more accurately.
❌ All the characters have the same background. Sometimes it will confused the camera and detected to the wrong character.
✅ I redesign the backgrounds so they can be easier to detected.
HuntAR is a multi person game that’s based on the famous game “Tag”. Unlike the original rule that people need to tap someone to win the game, the AR version does not require body contact. All but one player will have an image of a ghost stuck to them. 1 player will be the hunter, this player uses this app to scan the image on the players when they are running around. Once the hunter scans the ghost and get the explosion animation, the hunter wins the game. The player who got scanned becomes the hunter and starts the new round.
I tested the game with my friends. I got some good feedback. The game is pretty fast and easy to play. However, the camera of the phone I was using have problem with focusing. Therefore I have to get quite close to the image to get the AR working. Furthermore, I think I can add more characters or items to increase the variety of the game.
