For this project, me, Vinh and Ellen aim to create a narrative experience based on the destruction of Octavia, one of the invisible cities. The reason why we want to depict Octavia in our experience, more specifically its destruction, is because it is described as a city in a precarious situation. This is because the city is suspended in the air between two mountains by ropes and chains.
Calvino writes: “Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long.“
We narrowed the experience down to one inhabitant’s quest to escape the city on one of the ropes (that holds the city together) into the mountain. But first, the inhabitant must find his daughter in the city. This allows the user to experience our interpretation of the city and the realities of the inhabitants facing their city’s doom, incentivized by finding their loved one lost in the city’s streets.
We want the story to illustrate how the city’s dangerous location has shaped the culture of Octavia’s inhabitants. As of now we are leaning towards using the destruction of the city to show their grief of losing the city, and perhaps their lives, but we also thought about giving the city’s inhabitants a more fatalistic attitude towards the city’s destruction. As Calvino writes that this is something that the residents of the city are aware of, we thought it might be possible that the city’s inhabitants would not necessarily resist death and destruction but rather embrace it. This is still something we are considering and we want to portray the destruction of the city as something that causes different responses, just as any disaster would.
We thought a lot about how the user could move using the Google Cardboard. After exploring a few titles with the Cardboard and realizing that most of the interactions of this title did not involve movement to create a powerful experience, we are now leaning towards having a visual cue in front of the user in the direction in which they can walk. When the user hovers over this cue (an arrow, for example) this will bring the user forward. As a result, we currently see this as following one straight path, going through a street in the city until they eventually find their daughter, and then leaving the city on a footbridge to conclude the experience. We intend for the button on the Cardboard to be used for calling the daughter. The user can move along the prescribed trail and look around and press the button to call for their daughter.
Update 4/29:
We have started work on designing the scene of the experience. Vince has taken charge of character animation, Ellen with scripting interactions and movements with Cardboard and me with designing the environment and the destruction of the city.
The style we decided to follow was that of a medieval town. We have one big stretch that contains most of the city as well as other floating components that add to the environment of Octavia.
I have worked with a few destruction scripts I found online that allow objects to be destroyed into many pieces. I also have a game timer that allows me to script when each destruction animation occurs. The difficulty now lies in the exact effects that will happen when the city gradually becomes destroyed. Here are a few screenshots of the scene so far:
Update 5/9:
Over the weekend I worked on adding sounds to the scene. More specifically I worked on getting the sound to be ambisonic, the further the camera is from the game object that is the source of the sound, the more quiet the sound is. For now, we have it attached to the daughter as a prompt for the user to search for the cries that cut through the other environmental sounds (wind and fire). I also added a loud earthquake-like noise that plays as the user crosses the bridge into the mountain, as a prompt for the user to look back and see the destruction of Octavia. I also finished scripting the destruction of the city. To do this, I separated all the contents of the scene into eight different game objects. When the player would cross the bridge, this would trigger the placement of a rigid body on these game objects which would prompt their descent into the abyss.
Apart from the falling objects that are triggered based on the current time of the game, I also made some objects fall when the user gets into a certain distance of the object, making the city’s destruction more immersive and real.
We also worked on importing the Google Cardboard reticle functionality into the scene along with the ground that the user is supposed to walk along.