My Contributions:
Cloud Save and User Accounts
Brain Agents is played by middle and high school students while they are at school, either on a Chromebook or through the use of a mobile device. This presented a problem, since students could not pick up where they left off if they had to use a different device, something that would be very likely to happen when using shared devices in the classroom. To combat this problem, I created a user account system using Microsoft’s RESTful Playfab API that could store any user’s save data to the cloud.
User Accounts
- Create accounts with username, password, and optional email input
- Username-only login option for use in a school environment
- Clear login and account creation error messages to give users helpful feedback
Cloud Saving
- Lets users continue with their save file on different devices
- Serializes and deserializes player save data for use with Playfab API
- Uses asynchronous programming techniques to only execute methods when the required data has been downloaded from Playfab
Customizable Player Cabin
In order to provide players with their own personal space in the game, I designed and implemented a system where the player could decorate a room that is connected to the game's hub level. Some of this system's features are:
- Allows players to customize their own room by choosing furniture, decor, and even background music
- Personal cabin layouts are saved and loaded using their account's save data
- More furniture choices can be unlocked while playing through the main game
Time-Based Feature Refresh System
Brain Agent's stakeholders were concerned that students would play too much of the game at once, and they wanted the game's content to be spaced out over the school year. To address this concern, I created a system that:
- Can refresh features every day or every Monday at 6am
- Supports the implementation of daily and weekly quests
- Is covered by thorough unit tests to verify functionality in edge cases
Player Data Analysis Tools
To better understand the experience that players were having while playing Brain Agents, I created a set of Python scripts that iterate through user save files and collects data about their progress. This data gave the Brain Agents team valuable insight as to which missions and challenges were difficult for players.
- Uses python's pandas module to import save data JSONs and export CSVs for data visualization
- Aggregates data such as amount of missions completed, time challenges cleared, and collectibles obtained