Space Engineer: Public Testing

On the 10th of December, Space Engineer was showcased at the Emerge Immerse student showcase at the University of West England. There were various setbacks behind the scenes on the day, due to the APK being temperamental, and no USB C on the computer I had loaded the experience onto. This was solved by changing the intended target from Oculus Quest 2, to Oculus Rift S.

The showcase had mixed results during user interaction, with a few struggling to get past the initial opening sequence. Although this was caused by one of the assets having its collision corrupted during one of the last backups. To compensate for this the interaction element of the experience was removed and simply navigating around and redirection was implemented.

Climbing proved to be challenging, users struggled with the initial climb, and some even gave up early on. A solution this I found during a later test was to straighten the ladder, and bring it up to above the average waist height of the player, allowing them to climb directly up and simply push themselves off, users during the early testing of the experience did struggle with this, but were able to quickly pick up the interaction with some guidance. This initial interaction also caused some Guardian issues, as users who fell started to move closer to the boundary as shown in the below image. Some users also rotated whilst falling, or moved during climbing, this caused them to slightly move just enough that they had to be manually redirected to stay in the space. Users interacted with a Toolbox early on in the game, as it stands out on a table, no functionality was added to this toolbox, but users naturally took it during their experience. some even keep it as far as the second climbing sequence. This could be useful in terms of designing the user experience, as I can say with 100% certainty that users will attempt to interact with the toolbox. The Plasma Conduit located in the first section was largely ignored, and when interaction was attempted a collision glitch prevented interaction, though some users interacted on their first try, and were able to pass this section, though this was a small minority of the overall audience.

Users who did not move too much, or who were able to do to easily pass the climbing section, were successfully redirected the entire experience, although a known glitch at the end prevented users from completing the sequence. Although the cause of this is still not known, and on later inspection seems to result from the corrupt save that also caused the collision glitch with the Plasma Conduit model. users who progressed to the second climbing section felt intimidated by the environment, as the user has to climb over a plasma engine in a large pit. this caused some users to panic and have uncertainty progressing forward, most users who successfully passed this section enjoyed it and said it was memorable and scary. most users who fell didn't respond by falling over in the real world, and some found the effect amusing.

The last section of the game involved moving out into a space environment, and then fixing another plasma conduit, a bug prevented this from taking place on the third climbing section as noted earlier, however, users felt in awe looking at the environment in the virtual space. some users who have watched other users watched the version shown on the computer monitor that the experience was being run on were especially in awe of looking out into space whilst in the virtual environment.

Overall despite some bugs that occurred during the last few weeks of development, showing the experience to the public gave me some interesting feedback, and I was able to discover other ways to improve the experience in preparation for the demo's release in January.

In reflection, the Test day was largely successful and showed a wide variety of responses to the experience, although all said they had the feeling of being in a much larger environment, and those that we're able to successfully be redirected, felt that they lost the sense of where they were in the real environment.

Rough outline of multiple users path through Space Engineer. Red shows the areas that caused reorientation issue, and required some hard resets.

Space Engineer Website