Opinions needed! Maze research on Second Life

[simonaj]

I hope I'm posting this to the right forum^^

I'm a fourth year university student taking a media productions class where we do research on Second Life. My partner and I are doing a project where we will research game play in Second Life and we'll create a maze to reflect our findings on immersion and interactivity.

We're looking for people who have created mazes or have played in mazes in Second Life to answer some questions for us and help us with the design of our maze. If anyone has time, please send me an IM or message on Second Life (username simonaj) and I will send you the Information & Consent form and questions. 

Thank you!

[simonaj]

I checked it out, it was quite cool! I'm working on textures and building objects right now in Second Life, I still don't have much of a hang on it lol. How long did that take you to make?

[Lear Cale]

I assume you mean 3 hours to make the video.

Either that or you're a world speed record holder for building in SL.

[Void Singer]

while I haven't built any mazes personally, I've run through quite a few, and noticed that most of the problems in them are similar to RL positioning and planning... or pathing.

the best builds always take pathing into account, and a large part of that is ease of navigation... clear lines of sight within the immediate bounds (that doesn't mean seeing the whole thing, just the ability to easily pick out the environments boundaries), ease of camera manipulation (mostly no transparent obstructions, nor spaces so tight that they force camera movement). these are things that will frustrate and turn off most casual users. users should be able to navigate using at a minimum either first or third person views, and depending on the context, adding ease of navigation for camera only is a great boon (which is why many popular shops use open central layouts)

another ease of navigation issue is movement.... unless you are trying to train for particular movements, flat layouts with straight ramps are better than circular stairs, or requiring users to switch between walking an flying. the less the number of movement styles and requirements, the greater the ease with which users will navigate the area.

you can also factor in average behavior... when presented with a midline opening to a space, most users scan right to left, move right, and spending more time focusing left, but with less attention to detail there. when presetented with up or down options people tend to scan down to up but usually move up if those are the only two options. these behavioral assumptions have to do mostly with threat/interest assessment, and are overridden once a threat/interest is identified.

when building mazes specifically, I've found that the more difficult ones are the ones that present multiple branching options regardless of which endpoint they are run from... there is often a tendency to overload branching from the assumed start point, but the brain can sometimes detect this by back tracing it's route, which will be devoid of choices, and then factor in which branches lead to which areas, which allows culling of some area branches... not everyone is good at this, but if you track movements you'll see that a majority of people never take some of those dead branches, event without realizing it.

[Hugsy Penguin]

I used to make mazes when I first started. They were simple two-story 6x12 grid mazes that would fit on the 16m x 32m parcel. I used to have a building on a somewhat triangular shaped plot. On the one floor, I filled it out with a maze.

If you search the marketplace for maze, you'll find lots of mazes, maze parts, and maze generators. Most you walk through, but I have one where you sit at it. Then it moves your camera inside a miniature maze.

If you search the Destination Guide for maze, you'll find a bunch of places too. Looks like there's some Halloween themed mazes now I have to check-out here real quick. Also, search for 'amusement park' and look around those. I know Hobo Amusement Park has a maze and Pando has a fun house.

[Knowl Paine]

I've only visited the maze in Rizal region. It's a fun challenge, if you don't cheat by using the minimap or zooming out.

The walls should be as thick as possible. A uniform seamless floor/ground texture would increase the difficulty.

I only build, I don't script. A maze HUD that prevents players from zooming out or using the maps would be an interesting option. Residents to walk or run the maze for the best time. If the maze is large, multiple start/ finish points could be considered in the design.

  

[simonaj]

Thank you everyone for your input! It will be really helpful towards my project.