For my second project, I decided to attach a sword to the AR camera in order to enhance the navigation process for the player. I thought it will bring the experience closer to a quest-style game. In order to navigate the environment, the user can walk around and explore the castle.
Interaction:
As for the interactions, I am attempting to install a particle system that indicates to the player that they should touch the treasure chest inside the castle, because I intend on having the special “teas” or potions to appear upon impact (signaling that the player achieved the final quest). Prior to getting to the treasure chest, however, the player has to kill the two trolls stationed in front of the castle. The trolls will disappear upon impact, as well as produce a monster groan as part of the feedback.
Testing the sword attached to the camera.Attaching the particle system to the treasure chest.
I’m looking at the property Murray speaks about as Digital Environments being Participatory. I think it would be a cop out to leave it at thinking about, well you know XR/VR environments are spatial by definition of most of its function being about the interface between the real and digital environments, and thus arguably can come to existence only once there is a participant. But in thinking about participation, what I really enjoyed was the way he described the functionality of “objects” and moving away from the typical branch based narrative that I’ve been most familiar with. Firstly there is the question of why we don’t have more of the approach Zork takes, which I associate essentially as opting for the game/experience to be spatiallyaware, and the “space” having objects that function with a certain set of rules. Comparing this aspect, what I find interesting is, in an almost pre-essential way, XR environments ( which I so far have only been able to look at from the context of Unity) exhibit such awareness and functionality. The link I’m seeing is that as a first step, it almost feels impossible to think of creating any sort of XR experience without thinking of the interaction between the user and the environment. The second the interaction aspect comes in, then the question becomes about what objects the user is interacting with. Immediately, this then asks for a set of rules the object/s function by, and thus the question of how the user participates in the experience.
If we were to rule out the aspect of technical ability (like I might end up not being able to make a box light up when the user approaches it), from an experience/user interaction perspective, I think XR for the most part exists with this pre-condition of being very spatially aware, and requiring the aspect of participation under a set of rules (and these rules ten affecting the narrative of the experience) .
Between page 94 and 95 Calvin talks about Adelma. It’s hard for me to not relate most cities to the lived experience I’ve had with cities I’ve be¡en in, but in many ways Adelma represents a bunch of things I find interesting when looking at/observing a city or a space of function. Firstly it’s the question of a ghost, or rather what it means to be a ghost. With Calvino mentioning the dad, and the appearance and flux of an individual exhibiting multiple persons, many of them dead, perhaps inappropriately I couldn’t help but think of the idea of a ghost and the city.
In some senses, I was thinking about the idea of haunting, which has come up a bunch this semester for me (in class/philosophical discussion). In this sense of hauntology, the question becomes less about the idea of a literal ghost, but one about (arguably) the materialization of ideas, aspirations, and futures that were not realized. While I could delve into the philosophy of this a lot, my interest was much more in then relating to this city, in terms of how it sometimes feels to be in the city. This is much less true now that I’ve been able to be more in the city and explore it’s spaces, innards, and people more, but especially in the first few years of being here, and in comparison to Dubai (which I used to call home), things felt… dead?
My father often used to say that this is a city of gloom, slowness, and dead people. I used to be annoyed at how he phrased it, and I still do today, but in an abstracted sense, I wonder how parts of this (conflated with the reflections the book has in looking at this dynamic-shapeshifting-face of the dead) might actually be true. Not limited to Abu Dhabi per se, but if there were a way to glue together A.D and Dubai, create an amalgamated city, I think it would feel a lot like Adelma.
Of course all of this has mostly to do with thinking of the person/individual, or even collective movement of people/existence of people (communities), but I think what Calvin is also trying to look into is to the environment that allows for such people to exist. Or even if he isn’t, it made me think about what the environment does or enables. Which is to say, Adelma can’t be it without being accommodating to the kind of people it inhabits, right? The things that aren’t in focus are things like (on page 95) “”climbed the steps in a line, bent beneath demijohns and barrels” and “a little toward that crowd that crammed those narrow streets”. Though it isn’t focused, I was enamored to question what it meant for a city to allow, if not make/support a lifestyle that enables it to become this kind of a dying, soul-cycling function of an existence.
This reading really helped me (re)orient agency in terms of creation. Much of my thinking currently revolves equally around our class projects, as much as my introspection into theatrical experiences as my Capstone becomes more of a real thing over time. The things that stood out to me firstly was how Murray spoke about the idea of a world, the role of the player, and comparing it to participatory theater. Looking at what the role of the world might be, and then transitioning into thinking about the world design in context of mazes. To think about how the context of a maze could change wildly based on things like the story, and playing/non playing characters inside said maze. The example I found very exciting was to think about say, in replacing a cloudy happy visual of a maza with “Kafkaesque” characters and wordplay, all of a sudden the “player” could be transported to questioning, and more importantly experiencing an elevated introspection of things they might be already experiencing in their day to day societies.
Looking at the questioning of the story, it’s unfolding around the use was another aspect I want to take from this reading. Thinking of (under the pretext that gaming seems to be the most clear connection most of the reading takes to think of interaction with the user) how the question might arise as to who is the author, I particularly resonate with how Murray cautions us to not be carried away in thinking that this would make the user an author. That instead, what might be misinterpreted as authorship is actually (name of the chapter!) agency!
In the realm of agency the thing that I liked was also thinking of user interface modules. He speaks about how the object we hold in order to “play” the game also makes a difference. This also reminded me of the Robin Hunicke video we’d looked at w.r.t the difference of the body and it’s orientation. Murray spoke about how in playing the same fame with a different controller, the simplicity with which he felt connected to the world of the game immediately reduced. This also resulted in him feeling more disconnected, and having a lesser sense of agency.
We split the islands into the three of us and I came up with the idea behind the one I will be working on which is based around Gluttony.
The island is going to be a sort of maze/platformer covered with giant food. The player has to go through and resist the temptations of food, they can eat to make the stage easier to navigate through however if they eat too much they become overweight and cant move and thus have to start over. This is to relay the message of enjoying the things in life in limited quantities in order to be able to move forward and how gluttony and giving into too many temptations would cause harm in the long run. The player has to make it to the goal in order to continue to the next island.
I sketched how I wanted the map to kind of look like (subject to change since I might be making it smaller as I create it in unity depending on how it runs on AR)
I also tested out assets on Unity.
Finally, I found a free dialogue system for unity that works pretty well, just needs some tweaking and additional work to make it work with mobile.
4/19/2021:
Created the base final layout without the food parts of it (Just the islands and trees etc.)
Also coded and drew hearts for the health system (Still haven’t tested it if it is working properly as I wanted to work on getting the animations and placement of the foods)
4/26/2021:
Coded the movement of the donut pieces and figured out how to make it work with collisions. (Instead of using rigidbody on the donuts I just added a box collider and an “isTrigger”).
I also updated the health system by making it destroy the game object food when the player gets hurt so its like the player ate it.
I completed the navigation and prefabs/layouts. The only thing I couldn’t yet figure out on the base level is the game mechanics for the boss throwing food at the player and the player having to dodge.
I conducted a play test: (Please ignore the screaming child in the background haha)
Through the playtest I realized that the game has a lot of faults especially in terms of navigation. So I updated the hotspot locations and added a few new ones to make movement easier. I also discovered that the hitbox for the donuts was a little too large and I adjusted that as well. From the feedback, I also now know I need to add more simple instructions to let the player know what they’re doing in terms of every part of the stage; The ability to move the smaller food items, the maze being a maze, and to dodge and get to the hole behind the boss in the last area (I also need to get the mechanics for that down or come up with another simpler idea if it still didn’t work). I’m also struggling with getting the game over screen to work so I’ll have to figure that out as well.
Summary of things I still need to do:
Get the gluttony monster mechanic to work
Add sound effects and music
Add some sort of instructions
Fix navigation + game over/scene change
4/28/2021:
Added sign instructions, fixed some more navigation and collider issues.
Also got the game over scene + scene change to the next scene based on the box collider trigger to work.
for the project I was tasked to make the slow-motion and movement and shooting mechanics for the game. so for the first week I tested on how the slow motion mechanics work in unity and how I can translate unity’s FPS template into the VR game. I was able to able to make a first person camera and movement using Nav Mesh AI but the slow motion of mechanic was inconsistent and did not slow down things as I wanted to be. But overall I got a sense of how the mechanic will work and I can experiment for the rest of the week on how to make the slow motion system.
11/4
I was able to figure out how the slow-motion can work in relation to the Nav Mesh movement system (unity forums helped with 70% of the code). I download some assets and animations from mixammo and SketchFab. I also found an low poly human asset that was made of several parts that could be moved around individually so it made for some good shattering effects. I was able to achieve a lot this week as the most important and weird thing the slow motion worked and the rest was just following YouTube tutorials to implement others things. so by the end of the week I was able to make a small working demo of how the game will work like that included enemy AI, Special effects, shooting and slowmo mechanics and fun trickshots.
19/4
for the third week I started working on my level. since it was the third and last level of the game wanted to portray it as being grand giving the sense that you as the player have reached the deepest files of the computer. to start the level off I downloaded some assets from sketch fab that looked like a big obelisk. after that I wanted to plan a way for the player to reach the obelisk from the starting point. I started by making a bridge from where the player spawned to the entrance to the obelisk. This along with giving the level a nice linear design allowed the player to soak in the details of the level.
Afterwards I refined the way the player would move across the bridge by adding enemies and making a section where the bridge would fall and the player would have to traverse the broken part my going on a platforming section. this allowed me to break the constant shooting the player had to do and allowed for some room for creativity. for this I imported more bridge assets from Sketchfab and deconstructed them to make them look like a cluttered mess the player had to navigate through to reach the other side of the bridge.
After completing this section I felt that the assets did not go well with the design of the level I wanted to portray. therefore I started looking for something that might tie in all the assets as one as well as give the final level a DOS type feel to it. after a while I found two shaders that would help me achieve this. one was a wireframe shader that displayed the raw mesh of assets and the other was a shader that only showed the edges of objects. I combined these two by first making putting the wireframe on the assets I wanted and second by putting the edge detecting shader on a cube, making it transparent and putting it on the camera so that the shader is applied to everything the player looks at. with this I was able to achieve the results above.
25/4
After making the bridge section of the level I wanted to make a section where the player would go up the obelisk to find the data there. I stated my making a staircase where the player would go up while encountering enemies to reach the end goal. but after making the stair case it became apparent that it make the section uninteresting as the player only moved up the stairs and shot enemies. instead I made the staircase into two segments with floors in between them. this allows easy placement of enemies as well as a more defined approach to the level.
30/4
I spent some time refining the level by adjusting the position of enemies and assets as well as polishing and removing bugs from the level. I also added a trigger function to the level which deloaded the previous segments of the level and loaded in the new segments of the level to reduce the amount of recourses being used by the level
As in our presentation, we’re planning to make an FPS game, like Superhot. We’re planning to use the time-moves-as-you-move function and use hotspots to travel. Our idea is: you’re a virus in a computer that has to steal an important file. You must first work your way through other files (or levels). I’m the first level, Vee is the second and Muhammad is the third. As mentioned in our project idea presentation, I’m planning to have a sphere shaped terrain. We’ve decided to have platforms to change height levels and I think this is a good idea for variety. I imagine this will create some difficulties for my level but I’m excited to start.
ENTRY 1
Since my environment is a sphere, I need to figure out how gravity will work- objects need to be attrracted to the centre of the sphere, not just downwards.
I found some code to make the gravity work properly, but so far the objects just fall through the environment, but the direction of gravity is correct. I’ve also found some assets that I can use for my environment, such as buildings. These seem easily customisable to my colour scheme etc, so I’m pretty happy with them so far, though I might have to model some on my own as well.
ENTRY 2
I managed to get the gravity working on my project.
Now I’m working on designing the environment in the colour scheme (blue, purple, grey) and the hotspots for travelling. I’m still looking for proper assets and might have to make some on my own, but I’ve found a couple that I might like.
I think I’ll add hotspots at the top of buildings to get a good vantage point and also have a bridge for variety. I’m also thinking of having rain (using a particle system) but I’m not sure if it’ll help with creating the atmosphere I want.
I plan to figure out my environment and then make it a prefab so I can add it to our Unity Collab project.
ENTRY 3
I started making the environment, with a blue-purple color scheme. I used a metallic material for the planet so it looks a bit like hardware. Inspired by the statues in Lord of the Rings, I added statues to the starting point of my level.
They help indicate the starting point as well as direct the user about which way to go- between them. I thought this would intuitive since you start right behind them, and the most obvious path is forward, the way they are facing.
I also figured out how to make the player walk on the planet, since I couldn’t use the Walk on World script we had for our previous projects. I’m glad I got this sorted out because it’s one of the most important parts of navigating my world, apart from hotspots, and it really gives the effect of being on a curved surface. I also added rain, but I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.
I added rain and all the other assets as well. My project has shifted away from data visualisation as a theme, and is now more like a jumble of different structures. I like it. Since Nav Mesh doesn’t work on a sphere, I need more hotspots.
I didn’t add the bridge since it seemed too “complete”. I’ve picked assets that look broken, so it looks like a folder on a computer that contains a lot of random things- a Recycle Bin.
I have a bunch of random buildings, modern and ancient. I feel like this kind of ties in with the other levels as well, since Vee’s is medieval Chinese and Muhammad’s looks super futuristic.
Kind of stressful getting shot at in the first few seconds.
Reduced enemy sphere collider so don’t get shot at just as you arrive. I don’t have as many enemies as the others since I’m the first level, and more hotspots so users can explore more.
Add sound, seems kind of jarring with only bullet sounds’
Added sound for suspense
Background is plain, doesn’t look good.
Added Skybox for lights and sky effect.
Teleporting was fun- I added more hotspots.
I think hotspots are the most important for me so I need to make the experience as interesting as possible. So I’m adding various assets which look interesting and are sort of interactable- like buildings I can go into.
Related to this, the terrain itself as an element is super important so I need to make that as varied as possible- I’m going to have as many platforms as possible.
Shooting enemies is fun and watching them get destroyed is cool, though it’s not the most fun thing for me- but I have to keep in mind not to overlook it too much since it’s an important factor.
I need to use the above factors to make people feel tension and also maybe some wonder because I want people to enjoy the environment as well as finish the level. The sound is suspenseful so that helps.
ENTRY 5 (after submission)
I’m pretty happy with the way my level turned out. I like how jumbled it looks, and how you can go beneath the metal structures and explore a bit. I’ve added a lot of platforms, to vary height so you can get agood view of the entire terrain.
I’ve toggled the sphere colliders on the enemies so they have varying ranges and they are concentrated at different points to increase and decrease tension.
There are multiple ways to get to the final hotspot and you can use one or more of them. I have a total of 40 hotspots and maybe 15 enemies.
I had a lot of issues because of my level being a sphere but I’m glad I stuck with it- it’s almost like a roller coaster, and I like how you can’t always see very far away because the terrain curves away from you. The nav mesh didn’t work but we fixed the user experience by explaining it in cutscenes, so it worked out. I wish I could have had rain all over the place but it looked a bit too confusing, and made the whole thing heavy. So now it’s only over the statues- still looks cool. I made my level a little easier than the others since it’s the first, and it’s better for the user to get used to the medium. We had problems with building to Unity, but with professor’s help we managed. I had a lot of fun with this project.
03/28 The first week of developing the project idea started out slow. We have met to discuss the potential narratives for our world and brainstormed different ideas. We have decided on the general structure of the world which consists of 2 scenes connected by a portal. I have sketched this general structure layout.
03/31 I have downloaded a bunch of different low poly asset packs (plants, rocks, etc) for the project file but haven’t yet started populated the scene with them. I have continued looking for visual references for the world’s aesthetic and assets style. I keep collecting images for our mood board (some examples below).
04/03 I wanted to start modeling a few objects for the scene because the low poly assets are all very pointy and edgy, while I wanted World 1 to consist of smooth rounded shapes. However, I have a problem with accessing Maya. My 1-year license has recently expired, and I was not able to renew it because Autodesk was not accepting my school documentation to get a free educational subscription. I am hoping I can get that fixed soon.
04/05 Good news is that I got my Autodesk license back! Submitting a school transcript had worked for me. Bad news is that the program itself does not open at all on my computer and keeps crashing, I will try to reinstall. I am hoping to start modeling assets this weekend. I think the next important step is to finalize the details with Sree. We still do not have an exact storyline for the world except its general structure, and I would like to design characters for both worlds soon. I have also started to populate the scene with some assets, and so far it is definitely far from I would like World 1 to look like. I think it is more of a draft to see where I want objects to be and how they could look like. As I mentioned earlier, Asset Store downloads are not exactly the style I want (not the smooth geometry as in the examples above). I am generally stuck with what I want to do, and we haven’t met with Sree yet to polish our ideas and decide next steps. I hope next week we will be able to catch up with this project, because lately I have just been really busy finishing up my capstone that is due Tuesday.
04/14
I have played around with modeling rounded geometry and created a new scene to place it on. I think this has potential to fit the style I originally envisioned. However, I do feel stuck a bit with what I am doing 😀
04/21
On my side, I have continued designing World 1. I was able to create more models in Cinema 4D, a few animated characters and adjust materials and lights for a lighter and more pleasant look. I also converted the project file to AR and tested it on my phone. You can see on the video below that it is working well and looking cute. Next step would be to implement interactions with creatures and maybe UI things from the last lab. We are still behind on the schedule, but hoping to keep up. I will also move on to laying out World 2 to stick to our original idea of exploring duality. There, the aesthetics will take an opposite look, colors will be cooler, geometry will be sharp and pointy, etc.
04/28
In the past week, both worlds of our project grew. I have continued polishing the layout design and adding various other effects in World 1 and, finally, created the “opposing” World 2. Although earlier I wanted it to have pointer and sharper geometry, I decided to compromise on that use the same set of models (so that I do not waste time modeling new ones) with a few additional downloaded low poly assets. Similarly to World 1, it is also surrounded by walls in shape of cartoonish mountains with 2D backdrops for an additional artistic touch. The videos at the end of the this entry show updates in layout, design, lighting, navigation, a few animated special effects, etc.
Based on user feedback, World 2 is obviously missing characters as of now but also it needs more contrasting features compared to World 1. So far, the key differences are in the color palette and brightness. The second scene is visibly colder and a little darker (although I could not yet achieve a better night time look). Sadly, I could not perform user testing because the main interactivity feature of our project (the portal) is still in development. On my side, I would also like to add simple interactions with the characters in World 1 (bounce the around with sound effects in response), and populate World 2 with “grumpy” characters that follow the player with their eyes but do not move.
Other next steps for our project include finishing the portal function and adding sound. I believe the latter could help us achieve a better contrast between the worlds.
This is an exploration of what a “newCave” might look like. We’ve thought of caves as a site of inhibition, and ancient remains. I’m interested in explroing what a cave in the present would look like.
With ancient caves we look at its walls and artifacts to figure out what happened then, if we were to construct a cave right now what would that entail. What would be the things on the walls for me.
How’s it different from the one we live in I’m definitely thinking of this space dream like. It is different in that the interface and way it exists would not try to be “realistic” at all. The main purpose of this space would be using abstraction as a means of reflection
What do you do in this world As I was just mentioning, ideally, the world would allow for the user to wander and introspect. I’m not sure how the layers will add up, but I would like for the user to be able to explore the space, and ideally find a bite to my life in it.
inspiration:
I’m really inspired by the Street Hawker shoes. I love how it explored the various layers and textures of food which allowed for an exploration of various locales and their food in China.
Concept/Narrative: A character wakes up in a village, unaware that they are in purgatory or that they have died. The character then talks to some villagers, and decides to go on a quest to different places in that world in order to unlock clues about their death. The user will have to defeat monsters or perform certain tasks in order to reveal the clue.
Inspiration: We drew inspiration for the idea from a wide range of resources. I was personally interested in how different cultures perceive the afterlife and/or purgatory and wanted to explore depictions of that in our environment. We also found parallels with the video game Final Fantasy and it’s construction of worlds in a light vs. dark theme.
Environment: The world will be spherical and suspended in the air. Attached to it are 3 or 4 other smaller globes which are connected to the mainland with wooden bridges. The world will include a village and forest in a low poly style, and will be populated with some villagers, and monsters that will inhabit the smaller spheres connected to the main world.
Character(s): Main player, villagers, monsters, guide
