Difference between revisions of "Spaceship Shenanigans"
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==Characters== | ==Characters== | ||
Revision as of 10:32, 4 July 2008
Contents
Summary
This game resembles the arcade game Missile Command. Tests focus on the Posner paradigm, distribution and shifting of attention, and the effect of multimodal (auditory and visual) stimuli.
Premise
The colony is in need of raw material resources. You are in control of the colony's Resource Gatherer. Use its tractor beam to collect as many resources as possible.
Objective
Collect as many resources as possible. Discharge bad resources when they are detected.
Characters
Colony Resource Gatherer
Resource/Ore:
Specifications
The game screen is a semi-circle divided into a central (d1) sector and 4 intermediate (d2) and peripheral (d3) sectors.
(image link)
Control Panel
Sector d1 is a fills the player's visual field (1.78 degrees at a 50 cm viewing distance is 15.5 mm). This sector corresponds to the resource gatherer's control panel.
Resource Detection System
The d2 sectors make up the resource detection system of the resource gatherer. One of the d2 sectors will light up prior to the appearance of a peripheral stimulus as a cue to the corresponding d3 sector.
The resource detection system is fallible. 20% of the time, it cues an incorrect sector.
This aspect of the task combines a variation of a centrally cued Posner attention paradigm (testing effects of cue validity and cue-target onset asynchrony) (Posner et al. 1987).
Peripheral Stimulus
The d3 sectors are monitors of outer space. (The diameter of sector d3 is currently equal to the width of the game screen - 800 px in the demo)
Following the resource detection cue, a resource will appear in one of the d3 sectors.
The resource will slowly lose point value over time, disappearing over the duration of 6000 ms. A subtle particle effect will convey the resource as disintegrating.
Flashing
(update this)
Gameplay
The player is inside the control room of the colony's resource gatherer.
There are two main tasks for the player:
1 - The player must respond, by pressing the Down arrow, when a bad resource is detected and displayed by the control panel.
2 - The player must respond, by pressing the Up arrow, when an ore appears in any of the d3 sectors.
Phases
The peripheral task runs in three phases:
Phase 1: 100% of the stimuli appearing in the sectors are targets.
Phase 2: The same targets appear, but they are interspersed in time and space with many distractors (however many make the game feel right). Distractors are equally salient as targets, but distinguishable.
Phase 3: Same as Phase 2 but targets are paired with an alerting sound. (Maybe this alerting sound could be the manifestation of a sensor upgrade that the player acquires when Phase 2 ends.)
Scoring
Cash is awarded for each resource collected. (The cash values will be determined along with the Colony Simulator design)
