April 7th:
“Betray” is a musical bittersweet love story conveyed by beats, background music and key words that follow the story development timeline.
Project inspiration:
https://www.with.in/watch/lovr?autoplay=true
Storyboard:
April 16th: Memory Box
We paved our project idea into a love story using the theme “close the door” according to the feedback we got from folks and professor that the previous project idea doesn’t involve sufficient meaning for the user that a user might not feel engaged enough into the story just by watching it.
When the game starts, the user will be put in to a lover’s memory with a box in front of his/her (user can choose male/female version to hear different interpretation/stories behind the same paired objects), and the user will pair some memory pieces and put them into the box to complete the story. Once they pair is correct a story piece will be told in the voice message, otherwise the objects will be bumped out of the box and the user need to pair the correct ones again.
the story line we discusses is as following(the order doesn’t matter in this case):
Male Version：
Movie Ticket & Popcorn Box: I finally got the courage to invite her out for movie. Touched her hand when we tried to reach the popcorn at the same time
Paired Toothbrush & Cup: The first night she slept over, she brought her toothbrush with her. The next morning, she changed my toothbrush into a paired one
Dog Food & Dog Cage: She always wanted a pet dog. I brought home a cute puppy one day, and I couldn’t forget how excited she was: her dream finally came true.
Iron & Suit: First day of work after my promotion. She ironed my suit for me. Looking forward to our future.
Ring & Ring Case: I saved all my money for this ring, prepared for a month for this. Today is finally the day.
Passport & flight ticket: Leaving the country tomorrow. I guess I will have to put this memory in the box and leave it behind…
Female Version:
Movie Ticket & Popcorn Box: He finally asked me to hang out. I’ve been waiting for this for a month. He’s so shy but so cute.
Paired Toothbrush & Cup: I was like a kid after I stayed at his place. I paired our toothbrush up.
Dog Food & Dog Cage: Suddenly one day, he brought home a cute puppy. I was so surprised! I always wanted a pet. I guess now we are a family of three.
Iron & Suit: I want to make his first day after promotion special, so I got up early to iron his suit. Looking forward to the bright future of ours
Ring & Ring Case: I said yes.
Passport & flight ticket: His work left us no choice but to lock all these memories up, forever.
April 18th:
Renewal of storyline and objects because some objects are unavailable in asset store:
**The story will be understood regardless of the order – every single piece of a story is independent from one another however once the user finish all the story piece he/she will get the idea of what’s going on – there’s different level of love memories as well as the part the indicates the break up, however there’s no specific reason given why the owner of the memory break up, it leaves the space for user to imagine what happened, different people will have different interpretation of the reason based on their own understanding of the given objects and the story behind them.
Male Version：
Paired Toothbrush & Cup: Paired toothbrush is the first step to show we are a family, says her.
Candles & Plates: I finally got the courage to invite her out for a dinner. Candle light on her cheeks is the cutest thing ever.
Dog Food & Dog Cage: I brought home a new family member that day, and I couldn’t forget how excited she was: her dream finally came true.
Iron & Iron Board: First day of work after my promotion. She ironed my suit in the morning. Looking forward to our bright future.
Pen & Notebook: She used to keep all of our memories in this notebook … but it’s meaningless now.
Vast with rose: Roses die. So are our promises….Eventually it turns out to be a wedding without her…
Female Version:
Paired Toothbrush : Pairing our toothbrush makes us look like a family more…
Dog Food & Dog Cage: That day he brought home a cute puppy. I was so surprised! I always wanted a pet. I guess now we are a family of three.
Iron & Iron Board: I want to make his first day after promotion special, so I got up early to iron his suit. Looking forward to our bright future …
Candles and Plate: Can’t ask for anything better than a candlelight dinner for the first date.
Pen & Notebook: It’s been a while since he left me… i used to keep a diary everyday when we were together …. How stupid i was.
Vast with rose: Roses die. So are our promises…. Eventually it turns out to be a wedding without him…
Ending: Initial idea was to do an “close the box” animation when all the objects are paired and destroyed to cater the chosen theme “close the door” by indicating that the owner of the memory space “I” close the door of the bittersweet love memory and leave the memories behind in the box to keep moving on. However, I worked on the scripts of animation but ended up finding that our box is not animatable, because the lips of the box comes together with the box body and can’t be animated separately. Therefore we came up with an alternative ending of the story – in stead of close the box, the box will be destroyed and the moment it disappear, it will be accompanied with the particle effect to show the sense of “vanishing” and an ending explanation in 2D words will be shown to suggest the end of the game as well to explain to the player what happened, by saying “Thank you for helping me recall those memories… Now let me just leave my love story in this box behind and move on….”
April 23th: Environment Design
Because our story is a bittersweet love story with a sad ending, I decided to use the wedding scene to indicate the background of the story – it’s about love, however, at the same time, this is the wedding where only “me” (the user) is attending and there’s no one else around, the odd and emptiness of the wedding scene creates the contract and indicate that even though this is a love story but it doesn’t seem to have a happy ending. The realistic wedding design with the non-realistic background (floating above the city) conveys the message that this is not the real world, it is something fictional and doesn’t match our real life experience. Hopefully user will get the idea that this is in someone’s memory world.
April 25th: Voiceover recording and editing – record the narrative of the story in both male and female voice.
May 5th: Background music and Floating effect
Added the wedding march to the background music to create the atmosphere of a “wedding”. The floating effect is added to the clouds to make the scene more “dreamy” and use it to indicate this is a fantasy memory world. In the beginning I wanted to create the effect that the clouds are moving at different speed so it looks like they clouds are floating around you, however, considering that it might cause too much movement in the background and therefore distract the user, I set the moving speed of all the clouds are the same, which result in the effect that it looks as if the platform that the user is standing on is floating instead of the clouds around them – since it’s relative motion. But this unexpected effect is so cool and achieved the goal to create the illusion of dream so I decided just to keep it that way.
public float amplitude; //Set in Inspectorpublic float speed; //Set in Inspectorpublic float tempVal;public Vector3 tempPos;void Start (){tempVal = transform.position.y;}void Update (){tempPos.y = tempVal + amplitude * Mathf.Sin (speed * Time.time);transform.position = tempPos;}
May 6th: User test and adjustment according to feedbacks
Add a collide box outside the player area to bounce back the objects that are thrown away by the users. / The city view background is kinda distracting user’s attention because it has too many details, the scene is too realistic and not dreamy/imaginative enough to indicate this is a fictional “memory space”- changed the scene into a universe space surrounded by clouds.
May 10th:Enviroment Design 3
May 12th: Design of the user interface :
May 12th: Coding and design for ending:
1.problem to solve : when the narrative audio plays, the background music volume down.
solution: attach other 6audio sources to the same game object (the player ),detect when other audios isPlaying, the background volume = 0.1f;
issue: one gameobject cant’t be attached more than 2 audio sources.
another solution: get audio sources from other game objects and detect if it’s isPalying.
2.problem to solve: close the box animation
issue: when all the game objects are destroyed in the scene, trigger the animation.
use of GameObject.Find(“”)
3.User test feedback: the floating clouds movement is too intense that it makes user feel dizzy; solution: 1.narrow the range of height movement and the range of moving speed. 2. scale up the red carpet where the user is standing on, so it will feel less scary and dizzy.
Ending: Initial idea was to do an “close the box” animation when all the objects are paired and destroyed to cater the chosen theme “close the door” by indicating that the owner of the memory space “I” close the door of the bittersweet love memory and leave the memories behind in the box to keep moving on. However, I worked on the scripts of animation but ended up finding that our box is not animatable, because the lips of the box comes together with the box body and can’t be animated separately. Therefore we came up with an alternative ending of the story – in stead of close the box, the box will be destroyed and the moment it disappear, it will be accompanied with the particle effect to show the sense of “vanishing” and an ending explanation in 2D words will be shown to suggest the end of the game as well to explain to the player what happened, by saying “Thank you for helping me recall those memories… Now let me just leave my love story in this box behind and move on….”