For the gameplay interactions while the story is being written and processed I started to read through the False Knees comics and see any oppurtunities where interactions could be adapted for Virtual Reality as I have listed below:
Initial Storyline Ideas (adapting the content)
During our discussions over the week and our face to face meetings as a group we found that a great way to layer out the story and adapting the content was to actually use the comics as a type of storyboard/inspiration for the full narrative.
Using the comics as demonstrated below we divided the scenes and used the comics to show the narrative progression of which comic storyline we will start with and how it will progress including a fantastic idea from Yiran to use the Seagull flying meme as the means of transporation between scenes for the player to stand on another Seagulls back to avoid having to create a flying mechanic with the short time that we are given.
Ideas for Player Interactions
I also decided to write down some possible notes and interaction/gameplay oppurtunities that we could use to tell the story in a Virtual Reality format from being a third animal player while also being a bird watcher who observes the experience from afar watching the animals behaviour.
Last saturday myself, Iris and Lin had our first group meeting in the libray to discuss the project and to further develop our ideas and agree on our expectations and what we would all live to achieve with this non-linear narrative.
Story Ideas and Development
We all agreed that it would be very interesting to trying and show the main character of the plot at different stages and ages of his life. We began to find inspirations and discuss various media that had these types of stories or concepts in them. We discussed Video games such as To the Moon which allows an old man to relive his memories from different points in his life and Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, About Time, The girl who leapt through time etc. that all were quite similar in these kinds of topics
Narrowing Down the story concept
During the meeting we had many ideas and exciting plans for experience which would be great but we realised that we would need to dial it back to be something that is achieveable for us to create within the time that is given to us under our deadline. So we had the idea to have the entire experience set inside one single apartment that the player will explore over the chracters life at different stages in their life. This means that one environment can be created and replicated multiple times with certain differences to then create four different scenes or areas for the player to discover and explore.
We were thinking that perhaps their could be three or four different ages and this way we could tell and interesting and cohesive story because having less than this may not work very well as a full narrative if you only travel to one other time period. The environments being simpler as well means that we feel this is achievable and in the time frame given in the deadline.
World/Environment Layout
After out meeting and discussing the different ideas for the game I started to spend some evenings sketching out ideas for the enviornment and how the player could transition from one place to the next. I also wrote down some rough age ideas of the charactert starting at 70 and then perhaps being a child at 12, in his twenties and in his forties which is of course something that we will figure out and discuss over time as the narrative takes form.
Augmented Reality Idea (Cross Media)
This particular module requires us to make a cross-media experience which will require to different platforms to be considered. While we definately have decided we would like to work in Virtual Reality for the main aspect of the experience we started to look into how Augmented Reality could be incorporated as a cross-media element to our story.
In one of our classes this week we sat down with our lecturer to discuss our ideas and one idea that was suggested due to the concept of having the player being able to age through time was to use an AR face filter which would let the player see themselves at those different ages or points in life using a mobile phone. This could then work great to being a companion piece that can either be used during the experience or extra story, imagery or information could also be shown through this AR application for the story.
On tuesday morning of this week we had the oppurtunity to meet other courses who are also working on a collaborative unit to try and find team members for our project. I was able to talk to a lot of different people from many courses such as MA Games Design, MA 3D animation, MA Visual Effects and many others who were all very interesting to talk to and had some great ideas and interests in what projects they are interested in creating.
Initially i started by talking to some of the other students about a ‘Paper Man’ adaptation which some were interested in especially some of the MA Games design students who even discussed the possibility of mixing their interest of creating board games with Augmented reality to create a paper airplane game adaptation. I felt that this idea would be extremely interesting and very unique and was something I initially wanted to discuss further after meeting all of the other students. I also met quite a few of the MA 3D animation students who showed me a number of their showreels and the type of modelling and animations that they have previously worked on which was great to get a feel for the type of projects they are interested in.
Choosing Team Mates
For this project we are also required to work in teams from members of our own course in MA Virtual Reality. I started to talking to all of my coursemates and the ideas that they had but I am not going to be working with Yiran and Lin on a comic adaptation chosen by Lin for virtual reality. I had also began contacting some of the students that i met during the meetup this week such as the three MA 3D animation students but the others had also been talking to them as well so we will now be workiing as a team of five with Esme and Marianna from MA 3D animation.
Adaptatation of False Knees
After joining Yiran and Lin for the project i started to research further into False Knees which is a webcomic written by Joshua Barkman. The comic is shown as ‘an illustrated guide to animal behaviour’ and focuses on short black comedy sketches of the animals interacting with the world and other animals around them. This has the oppurtunity to create a very interesting comedic VR adaptation that could combine a number of these short stories to create a single longer storyline for a 5 minute long experience.
First Group Meeting
This morning the group had our first meeting to discuss more details and aims for this project. We met in the library and discussed the comic False knees and the different ways that this could be adapted into a virtual reality project while also assigning the different tasks and steps that we would need to take to successfully adapt this and work as a group. We also wanted to find out more of what the MA 3D animation students would want to work on and see the different skill sets they have in the range of both animations and modelling assets for the unity build.
During one of our briefing sessions and seminars for this project we were put together with different members of our group online to discuss the project and the different ideas that we initially had. During this session I talked to Lin who thought it would be interesting to create a detective story with brancing narratives which i also felt would be interesting having to incover secrets and mysteries around the environment. After this session I also began to talk to other coursemates to see what ideas they had and I have now chosen to work with Lin and Wanting to work on this project further based on some initial interests and ideas that we were all discussing. We have arranged to have a meeting over the weekend to discuss what we would all like to achieve for this project.
Project Ideas and Concepts
During some of our initial discussions over the passed few days we shared some of the different ideas or concepts that we have been thinking about individually to see what each other think of the different ideas. In one of the classes one of the ideas that stood out was Lin’s idea of creating a type of adaptation or idea based on ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ which is a story about a man who ages backwards and the full narrative shows his entire life from birth to death of that character.
While we initially started to discuss this topic, this then developed into an idea of the player being able to play through the life of a character and see different points of their life at different ages. This idea could relate really well to Virtual Reality because of the interactions and gameplay that could be involved such as moving slower than normal at an older age or of course seeing the world at shorter height if the character is a child during the experience. We all agreed to think further of these concepts to discuss later in our first meeting for the project.
This week we were briefed on our new project which is the Collaborative Unit in which we need to work with other course majors such as games design, 3D animation, Visual effects, Sound arts and many other options to create our XR project. The main objective of the brief is to create an immersive adaptation of a clip from a selection of sources such as a short film, animation, a cartoon or a short story etc.
My initial Ideas
We were given the options for comedic options for adaptations and some of the options were immersive bot stories which were created by Netflix using Aritificial intelligence that generated different types of movies. Among these options was ‘The first Holiday film written entirely by bots’ which i thought would be quite interesting and funny for a VR adaptation due to the silly dialogue and very strange and quirky interactions that the player could try. The whole film mostly takes place in a cabin as well which would work well for the initial time frame of this project.
Paper Man (2012 Animated short film)
Another idea i had for an adaptation is Disneys 2021 animated shoirt film ‘Paperman’ which tells the story of an accountant trying to find and gain the attention of a woman he met at the train station using paper airplanes. I felt that this is a nice and simple short story that could be very interesting to adapt in Virtual Reality. Firstly the art style would work very well by having the whole environment and characters shown in black and white with some minor hints of colour such as the red lipstick in the original cartoon. For the gamemplay and interactivity I felt it could be fun to create a type of minigame out of the paper airplane scene in which the character is triyng to throw planes through the window on the other side of the street.
This could be adapted for VR by having the player grab and throw airplanes across the street while also needing to do it subtly so that the boss doesnt see you doing this. The woman could also be moving up and down different floors so there are multiple target windows that the player would need to aim for over the games duration.
La Luna (2011 Animated Short Film)
La Luna is a 2011 animated short film created by Disney Pixar and tells the story of a young italian boy, his father and grandfather and their job of cleaning and arranging the stars from the night sky on the surface of the moon. I felt again that visually this would be interesting to show a light hearted and simple art style to the experience that would also have very little dialogue with a story told visually to the player.
In the terms of interactivity and gameplay the player could row the boat to get to the moon, and the player could also walk aroud the moons surface using a sweeper/broom, to move around stars that could continously be moving and changing. A time limit could also be shown to the player or perhaps a competitive or guided nature with the other NPC characters that will be present throughout the experience.
Finding my team mates
Everyone in the course has been added to an online Padlet which has everyones contact details, portfolio/blog and interests to see options of who we can work with on this project. It has also been arranged for this coming tuesday to meet these students face to face so that we can discuss ideas for the project while also finding people with similar interests that we would want to collaborate with.
This week we were briefed on another group project for the Critical Practice and Exploration module in which we are required to develop a story concept and XR experience that explores a non-linear narrative structure through cross-platform immersive media. For the cross platform aspect of the project we can combine together concepts for VR, AR, browser based content or mixed reality etc. We are also required to work in groups of 2-3 members from our class to complete this project by the June deadline.
Initial Ideas for Non-Linear Experience
After we were briefed i started to write down some different ideas on my own to see what could be created for this particular type of project:
Concept where one person plays an experience in Virtual reality while another person interacts with the experience through augmented reality and possibly finding clues, hints and informaiton for the VR player to be able to progress through the rest of the experience or there could be branching narratives that can only be triggered or accessed through the AR component creating a strongly co-operative experience.
Science Fiction Mystery/Detective style story which utilises entering a digital VR space with using a AR based device to look at clues and hints to progress forward the narrative, possibly linking clues together which can result in different story paths or endings for the mystery and what happened in this situation.
Scanning different objects and items in AR around the real world environment which will trigger an even or choice in a Virtual Reality Experience.
The environment in VR could be based on reversed objects that changes the whole look of the environment and they can only be revealed through a cross platform such as AR or a browser so the player could unknowingly pick up or trigger objects that can only be seen fully through the external applicaiton. This could create a sense of mystery and choice where the story that has been chosen can only be revealed at the end
Mystery game which takes place in a metaverse or digital world where you need to enter through a computer as a programme to solve the problem and interact with other computer programmes and some characters to solve the solution so its like a puzzle game and you can use AR or a blog to solve the issues or problems – you can possibly communicate with an Aritificial intelligence
In vr the player steps through TV screens or film reels and actually enters a black and white film, or different films through the ages. Each one can be in different screen formats, have scratches, sounds and acoustics of the times and all sorts this could be a museum idea for curated old films scenes or a story could be told such as a person trying to learn who their grandfather was who was a filmmaker and finding out about their personalty and life through his films he made
Time Travel Story which lets you visit different ages of life and you can see how old you are using a face filter to identify the character current age at the time of the level
Time loop story where you need to explore and escape or find out the myster in a certain time frame otherwise you might die and you can view or see what you uncovered in virtual reality before you enter that area again to see what went wrong – similar concept to Twelve Minutes or 60 seconds – doomsday timeloop game – has to pass through 2 levels in the given time or theres one level and then spawn in the other
To start with i installed the XR interaction tool package that i had previouisly used into this experience and then scaled and resized it to suit the environment around the player. As a form of navigation the player can also move around using the left hand joystick on the left hand controller and also look around or rotate the camera using the right hand joystick on the right hand controller.
Door Animations
One of the biggest parts of this experience/narrative is the player progressing the the next area of task in the train carriage and so it would be suitable for the doors to open when the player at least approaches them during this environment build stage but due to time and testing constraints i was not able to fully add this in and at the moment the animations are in place within the file but there isnt a trigger for them at this time.
Problems with Interacitivity
After trying to add some general interactivity like being able to grab objects around the train carriage i found some issues with either the colliders or the reaction with movement. When i try to grab one of the objects that also have gravity it can result in this glitch when sends the player far away almost breaking the experience so this is something to keep in mind if this experience was to be developed further.
Gameplay Capture of the Build
Storyboard Capture
The video below shows the final storyboard capture for the Mind the Gap experience which has been refined based on feedback and any updates or changes to the script since its last iteration.
Storyboard Commentary
The video below shows the storyboard with my own commentary explaining the full experience as it is passed through.
I continued to have the exporting/animation issues that I had over the christmas break and was unfortunately not able to find a solution to this problem in time so to meet the deadline i chose to use the original model that I had created in blender and animate this model in Unity.
Image Target
I spent some time trying to choose a more visually appealing image target and the images below show some of the options. I wanted to use a lotus flower style image but unfortunately all of these images didnt work too well as an image target during general tests.
So after testing these different images I went back to one of the original cartoon/drawn images of a pink lotus flower shown in the bottom right image above.
Model Updates
I went back to the original model that i used during some of my initial tests and changed the colour to more match the pink of the image target. Using this model i measured the size of the new image target and created a ‘Vase’ sphere to properly measure where exactly the flowers should bloom which took some time for trial and error to get the placement correct.
Updated Animation
After placing the models i started to experiment with how to create the flower blooming animation in Unity which results in the video capture below:
Arranging Around the Vase
After creating the animation I went back to trying to perfect the positions of all the flower models around the Vase and to also see how the animation works together which overall resulted very well.
Adding Interactivity
It was suggested that i could add a but more to this AR piece by experimenting with some interactivity even something as simple as pressing the screen and triggering an animation, effect or model. I started by adding a canvas button which when pressed could trigger an animation so initially I added the standard button into the scene as you can see in the image below.
I then went into the options for the button canvas and removed the text and made the button transparent so that it would fill the whole screen this way the user can press anywhere on their mobile device and trigger the animation.
Colour Change
After succesffuly triggering an animation with the button i decided to add a little more by having an altered blooming animation with a colour change. So when the image target is initially scanned it will appear in the same pink colour as all the other flowers but when you tap your finger or click the screen it will trigger a new animation and ‘grow a green flower’ instead as you can see from the images below.
Adding Sound
I decided after i tried to record some sound effects that the equipment i had to record wasnt working too well so i wanted to record a different sound effect. The main premise of this piece is flowers growing and blooming and so i felt that a pouring water or watering sound effect would work well for this and so I went out and recorded these exact sounds.
After finishing all of the updates for my AR Ceramics project i then tested exporting the project for mobile and tested it both through an emulator and also on my own android mobile device. The results are shown in the video capture below:
Image target size issues
The project successfully works through the emulator using my webcam on my pc and the project also works when using a large A4 version of the image target on my mobile device. However this may be an issue with the phone I have and the camera focusing but it could not focus to detect the smaller image target on the vase which is unfortunate for the testing phase. If i had more time i would test out this on different android devices or try and use a larger vase with a larger image target to see if a phone will be able to pick up the image better for future versions.
Over the christmas break i spent some time trying to test and find any final bugs or issues but there were not too many that needed fixing and overall it plays how i wanted it to at this point of the project.
Environment Updates
Overall I am very happy with the environment and looks very typographic, sepiatone and dark in nature as i originall pictured it but i wanted to add a last few details to finish it off. I started to add some extra books and pages around the environment to add some final touches to the experience as seen in the images below.
Playable Build
After making the final changes to the project i was able to succesffuly export the project as a playable build which thankfully works without any known bugs or issues and plays easily through an Oculus headset (Meta now…). The gameplay capture videos below are from the playable build file.
Gameplay Capture
Gameplay Commentary
User Testing
Some of my friends were polite enought to try out and test the final build of the game and i asked them to give some of their thoughts which are written below:
Tester 01:“Firstly I really enjoyed playing the shutter experience. The darkness of the environment with the trees created a very good sense of claustrophobia. The gameplay is simple yet very effective and how it ramps up difficulty in each section is well done making the final level quite stressful compared to the first 2. An improvement I’d suggest is a recentre button as the table height was very low even when sitting. Also I noticed in the introduction level if you drop “Hello” it starts rotating around a different point and can be lost through the floor but I don’t believe this happens in other levels”
Tester 02:“Overall I really enjoyed the game but felt the position of the table was a little low and I did not like the font at the end. I get that it’s trying to be harder but don’t like the changing fonts”
Tester 03: “The VR experience you’ve made is really interesting – big fan of how the audio itself stutters as you’re trying to grab the words. I like the environment too.”
