Project Description
Group Members: Nhi, Vince, Neyva
“Boxing with Ares” gets its name from the Greek god of war Ares, who represents violence. Ares was chosen over the Roman god Mars, due to the fact that Mars represents valor in war instead of the violent aspect we wanted shown in our project.
Within our project, we really wanted to use the motion of “punching” in terms of boxing. While originally this was going to be done with VR controllers which gave us feedback, we needed to scale it back to a mouse click within Unity. There was a loss in translation, but we were able to achieve the boxing animation that we wanted.
The boxing motion takes place in a dark, and bleak environment. Red clouds fill a back sky, and the character stands in a light fog. Small punching bags just beyond reach are spread throughout the sky, filling the space above the user’s head. An ominous soundtrack (which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm-El3qztgw ) plays on loop in the background. The hellish landscape contains nothing the user can interact with except for the one large punching bag situated in the middle of an open area.
The most important part of the project is the fact that once the user punches, white doves appear out of the bag. Since the project had to have an unexpected action occur from an everyday motion, we found the idea of doves emerging from a punching bag to be one of the least expected actions to occur. The dove is meant to represent the fleeting beacon of hope within the dark and hostile environment. Furthermore, the action of hope is juxtaposed by the violent action that caused the doves to spawn from the punching bag.
The thought was to create an alternate universe in which to situate this punching bag. We did not want to create a conventional area, such as a gym or forest in which this would take place, but created our own imaginary scene.
Process and Implementation
When we first began with the project, we thought to put the punching bag in a theater space.
Our thought process was that any kind of prop can be placed on a theater stage and it will look natural, and so we wanted to plop the large punching bag on the stage instead of using something like a gym environment. In the case of the gym environment, the emergence of the doves would then seem more nonsensical than not.
After talking to Sarah, we reached the idea of creating our own unique environment. An influence from this was the matrix scene (shown below) in which there is nothing to interact with in the space besides the necessary objects.
Building from this idea, we then began to look into imaginary dreamscapes that did not fit into a conventional kind of environment.
These were some of our earlier ideas, but finally we found one image which was a huge influence in our project.
We then took elements from this image, such as the lightbulbs being replaced by the smaller punching bags, and the fog. There is also heavy black and gray which we followed as well in our landscape.
Luckily, we were able to find a punching bag/boxing asset in the Unity store for free. It came with a large and small punching bag, plus a character wearing boxing gloves. This was the perfect fit for our project.
We then added multiple clouds that were dark red and gray in the sky.
Then within the floor, we created 2 particle systems to create the fog effect around the user. (This tutorial was the one followed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvKRGwCImJ4)
We used a sheet of textures in order to create the smooth transition within the fog, shown below.
The second particle system was a lot simpler, as it was just floating dust motes. This was done simply using the Unity Particle pack.
Lastly, as part of the main interaction, we took the character from the boxing package and mounted the camera on him. This would allow the user to feel as if it was first person. The boxing package came with the scripts and sound effects to be punched, and so from there we built a script to spawn the white doves whenever there was a detected collision between the user punching and the punching bag.
Reflection
I believe we were able to achieve an alternate reality, due to the fact that the setting was very ominous and was meant to seem like it came from a hellish dream. That, coupled with the music playing on loop and the only interaction being to punch a punching bag definitely allows the user to be in a completely new environment. I believe it was a good choice to follow the matrix scene example in which the only object the user can interact with are necessary items. The large punching bag being the only touchable object and placed all alone is a very clear indicator for the user to come and punch it, and also the hands of the player being boxing gloves is another clear affordance to go and punch the bag and see what happens.
Overall, we were able to create the project that we had envisioned originally, except for the feedback controller aspect. We thought it would have been very fun to punch in VR, and we felt the mouse click from our computer did not match this motion we had originally wanted. BUT, other than that, we were able to create the scene we had originally envisioned.
On Agency…
Originally, through the use of the punching motion through the VIVE controllers, the user was meant to feel satisfaction as seeing the punching bag move and react to their touches, along with satisfaction at seeing birds spawn from their actions. This could have been improved in our project with the mouse click being held in order to “charge a punch” and for that to have a kind of effect when punching. I also spoke above of the clear affordances in our project, as the punching bag was the only thing to interact with within the environment.