ADAPTIVE INVADERS - (testers needed for my thesis, please!)

[pahatma]

Hi, this is my first post here. I'm currently working on a thesis about dynamic difficulty adjustment, and while i was searching for a good game engine/framework i found love.

As a part of my work i need to apply dda (obviously), but before that i need to measure some data. For that reason i would like you to play this game and answer some questions

Adaptive invaders is like a little geometry wars. You move with wasd and aim/shoot with the mouse. You have to play 5 rounds (stages) and rate it based on fairness and fun.

Once the game is finished there will be a file called "aidata.txt", the file will be found in a directory like:
- Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Love\ai_save\ or %appdata%\Love\ai_save\
- Windows Vista and 7: C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\LOVE\ai_save\ or %appdata%\Love\ai_save\
- Linux: $XDG_DATA_HOME/love/ai_save/ or ~/.local/share/love/ai_save/
- mac: /Users/user/Library/Application Support/LOVE/ai_save/

If you play the game please send me that file to i.vvant.out@gmail.com, i will really appreciate it

DOWNLOAD

PD: English is not my primary language =P

[BlackBulletIV]

Nice work. I've e-mailed the data. Here's a few thoughts:

• Despite rating difficulty at higher levels three times, the difficulty increased two times (dramatically so one time) and slightly decreased one time, leading to frustration.
• I'm not sure what to answer on "fun meter" when I'm frustrated; frustration certainly isn't boring, and at the same time it certainly isn't exciting. Therefore, I just gave it a 4 or something when I was frustrated; perhaps it was focusing more on this gauge than the one for difficulty.
• The ships (at least some) were being drawn over the GUI's text.

[Ensayia]

I like what you're trying to do with the data, but I think the mechanics are a bit boring to judge the 'fun' rating at any given time. When it was too hard it wasn't fun and when it was it just frustrated me.

Data sent.

[BlackBulletIV]

I like what you're trying to do with the data, but I think the mechanics are a bit boring to judge the 'fun' rating at any given time. When it was too hard it wasn't fun and when it was it just frustrated me.

Yeah, you ran into the same problem as me. There probably should be three meters for the user to judge boringness, fun, and frustration.

[kikito]

Data sent.

The changes in difficulty were a bit surprising. I either got very easy matches or incredibly difficult ones.

I think a small message with the variables used at the beginning of each level would help. Something like "entering level with enemy_spaw_fequency: high, enemy speed: medium, big_enemy_frequency: low, Estimated difficulty: 5". Maybe coloring the changes from one level to the next. Otherwise it's difficult to tell what is changing from one level to the other.

Appart from that, I like the idea. I hope you share the results!

[pahatma]

Thanks for the feedback. About the points

- My first goal is to determine the level of correlation beetween fairness and fun. Because of that i need some rounds to be frustrating, in the game the 3rd and 4th round are random.

- I think that i wasn't clear about the "hard-meter", this is supposedly to measure the frustration, where 9 is like "uff unfairly hard" and 1 a "are you kidding me?". I changed the word "hard" for "fair" (in the game and post), hope that works

- Originally the game was more complex, with more enemies, power ups, a little more of "ai" and a stage rather that a infinite enemy spawn. The problem was that the analysis became too complex and i'm really short in time.

- I'll put a message of the variables at the beggining of each round

Depending of the results i'll share all my work, i don't want to share a lot of crap XD

[The Burrito]

Pretty interesting, although the collisions felt a little bit too big. I found myself a bit frustrated on the harder levels because I would die trying to squeeze through gaps that looked big enough.
Also I now have the urge to play some Robotron 2084.

[pahatma]

Ok, i updated the game based in your opinions

- GUI text is drawed over the ships
- i added arrow keys to the controls
- enemies's collision shapes were fixed (previously they rotate, i didn't notice that)
- the rounds are less randomized (only a little)
- before each round there's a message with the number of enemies and his speed

[BlackBulletIV]

- I think that i wasn't clear about the "hard-meter", this is supposedly to measure the frustration, where 9 is like "uff unfairly hard" and 1 a "are you kidding me?". I changed the word "hard" for "fair" (in the game and post), hope that works

I got that point, but then what am I supposed to answer for the fun meter? When I'm frustrated, I'm not bored, I'm not having fun, and I'm nowhere in between, it's different altogether.

[pahatma]

- I think that i wasn't clear about the "hard-meter", this is supposedly to measure the frustration, where 9 is like "uff unfairly hard" and 1 a "are you kidding me?". I changed the word "hard" for "fair" (in the game and post), hope that works

I got that point, but then what am I supposed to answer for the fun meter? When I'm frustrated, I'm not bored, I'm not having fun, and I'm nowhere in between, it's different altogether.

mmm. Maybe the problem is my english

Think the question as, "how much fun did you have", if you're frustated thus not having fun the answer will be a low number, forget the "boring" and "exciting" words

"how fun" isn't the same as "how much fun"???