Interactive experience prototype: Different Direction, Cool glowing place with nice sound

YEAR 1, WEEK 13 - safe - 04.12.2020

APPROACH:

Huge reduction in goals as with all my ideas my reach exceeded my grasp. (for right now) and have honed my sights on a much more obtainable goal, A 3D VR landscape with 3d sound and small instances of interactivity, meant to feel calming or soothing. these types of games are usually referred to as sandboxes, as there might not be a linear progression but allow players a variety of choice and experience.

CHOICES:

I talking with Maria Palazz, and game design professor Scott Swearengen I had come to the conclusion that making a full game would, of course, take a whole semester maybe more, especially since this is a growth area for me. instead, I need to make something that touches on.

interactivity

VR ready

3d space and sound

and capable of proving a meaningful experience

it works (this is the most important)

I've been able to abandoned my old terrain in favor of the native terrain builder in unity, it's much more responsive and already has the interfacing I need to make it a playable landscape.

REFERENCES:

being that I'm scaling back I still need these references but I get to actually take closer care that they are usable

flashlights for horror

3d sound in unity

CURRENT QUESTIONS AND THE WEEK AHEAD:

in the week to come, I'll just be focussing on making the game work properly and if that happens I'll add some real flourishes, like interactive grabbable objects that have small effects. that' really the only question i have right now is, if I can get it to work can I get to be fun as well?

Interactive experience prototype: Light in the dark Narrative writing

YEAR 1, WEEK 12 - Trapped - 04.05.2020

APPROACH:

Is I start to learn more and more of the application I'm working in (origin) In conversations with Maria and others, I realize that wanting a functioning polished game is just to goal oriented, and what I need for this project to be successful is not to make it good (WHICH I DESPERATELY WANT) but to learn how I can make something scary while having a strong narrative backbone (which I desperately need) and with all humor aside, my interest in horror isn't having polished well-designed market-ready games, (yet) it's figuring how to make them and make them well. so with that, I started writing out some aspects of my project that I've been ignoring, which is actually the writing.

CHOICES:

so I spent some time actually working this games narrative while watching some tutorials on how to make specific things happen in unity.

Spine of story small flavor text

“For whatever reason, you and your friends decided to play the midnight game on a camping trip, and one by one your friends began to vanish in the shadows until it was just you left all alone in the woods, surrounded by the sound of nature, and….something else, can you make it to the end of the night? Or will you suffer the same fate as your friends?”

You are stuck in the middle of the forest, after being chased by a monster in the shadows you find yourself in a small clearing that feels safer than most places. But you can hear it, small snaps of twigs and gently rustling of leaves on the forest floor that cut into the natural noises of the forest. Aimin your dying flashlight, you banish away what you feel to be the same monster but only for a short while.

Gamification elements

Goal = Survive until daylight

Challenge = budget battery life of your flashlight (wait could it be a phone? No batteries wouldn’t work ) (MAYBE YOUR DEAD FRIENDS PHONES?? PART OF IT COULD BE FINDING OUT THEIR PASSWORDS SO YOU CAN LIVE LONGER ←- too big for this project)

choices = using the light to stay safe/ not using it in a specific time to preserve the lifespan

Game flow

A player stays in a small circular area in virtual darkness with only a moon to light their surroundings. 3D sound will be triggered by a monster that is stalking the player just outside their field of vision in the dark. The player will have 2 abilities turning on a flashlight to see in the dark and remove the monster from the area, and reloading the light with another battery. In order to win the player must make it to the morning where the sun will finally keep them safe from what lurks in the shadows.

What does the creator have to do

How to keep the player in circle - bounding box? Make everything outside threatening or hurtful?

Control flashlight - use oculus controls to click a flashlight on and off

GUI for light life see if dimming light works better

Surround sound - figure this out

Turning with joystick - optional, do not focus on this

Mapping controls to the game

process

Make a Cube fps

Do unities first-person shooter tutorial

B are bones prototype standing in space- using a flashlight on cubes to make them disappear

Stalled resources

Abbey, joe chambers, Shadrick. Unity questions

REFERENCES:

so because I know more specifically what I need to make my game work as far as functioning controls.

simple flashlight controls

flashlights for horror

3d sound in unity

ammo and reloading

CURRENT QUESTIONS AND THE WEEK AHEAD:

My current thoughts are actually can I actually find scripts that have been made and shared already so I don't need to start from scratch? I've learned that this is too show that a concept is possible not that I know everything inside and out (yet) so that would cut away at a lot of time.

other questions would be about actually how can I actually make something feel scary, and I've actually started answering that question this week, I've started studying a new game (resident evil 3 remake) and logging their good choices, and analyzing why the choices felt good.

but as my time is limited I can't just study I must make! and that's the goal if the upcoming week, making game where a person points a light at a box and makes it die. and then applying 3D sound.

Interactive experience prototype: Light in the dark

YEAR 1, WEEK 11 - Trapped - 03.28.2020

APPROACH:

As I started to generate work for this new project I was able to understand a few things just from a few hours of research, and with that, I plan on making a simple game as a foray in understanding a small sliver of not only unity, and time permitting Unreal, but working in virtual reality. I plan on making a simple red light green style game with an overlay of horror. it is also my intent to layer in a small tiny narrative that might entice the player to stay in the game. at the moment it just telling them the story of the monster that is stalking them.

CHOICES:

I've chosen to start off by seeing if my models can move from blender to unity. why did I decide this?

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Blender and unity are both free programs that are accessible to everyone, and with that, they have the lowest price of admittance. I hope to also see the possible process of a creator telling their own story using the most accessible tools out there, with exception to a computer strong enough to run these programs.

in just dipping my toes in unity I found that there are some huge issues, one the pipeline doesn't have a streamlined process yet, all the models lose their textures and nodes, unity and blender are constantly updating and as such sometimes don't align with one another. (which can just be ignored if you start on one project with two stable programs, but if you just come into it, you couldn't be blamed from seeing that these programs might just not like each other.)

REFERENCES:

I've actually collected a huge collection of references just for this process, surprisingly with all these documented issues and work around there still hasn't been a solution offered by developers but that's understandable given both programs robust capabilities.

optimized oculus and unity

how to import the nodes from blender into unity

setting up a basic game in blender

CURRENT QUESTIONS AND THE WEEK AHEAD:

Current questions right now are actually how can I troubleshoot as quickly as possible from my VR headset to unity. and if I screw up on a model do I have to update one 3 things. and last I do wonder if I have a computer powerful enough to work on my game as time goes on, right not it isn't seem to mind, but I haven't started playing a game yet.

next week is just building my game environment and seeing if that will work 100% and if not scaling back and making something more friendly to a laptop.