INITIAL SCRIPT WRITING
Now that I had my idea ready I was ready to start writing the story and script for the full experience. I started by looking at different options that I could look into for the puzzles/tasks in the experience. Of course i need to remember to keep this short experience simple and short and so I cant have the puzzles too complex or difficulty to understand so i started with these puzzle options:
Puzzle 01 – Grab and Place object
For the first puzzle the user will need to pick between three different objects that represent their personality depending on their choice. When they have grabbed one of these objects they will need to place the object onto a panel next to the door to the next carriage which will confirm their choice while also opening the door to the next section.
Puzzle 02 – Button Sequence
The button sequence puzzle will involve the player having to press different buttons around the carriage in a certain sequence in order to open the next section of the carriage to progress. My idea for this is again based on the users personality of having to choose in order which seasons of the year they prefer from their favorite to their least favorite. (Choice between Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter)
Puzzle 03 – Pull Levers
The final puzzle will be for the player to pull down different hand rails or levers around the last section of the carriage in a certain sequence. The answer to this sequence could be shown as a poster or a visual queue somewhere around the carriage so the player will need to be observant of their surroundings.
Train announcer
I want the train announcer to be the main driving force for the full narrative and so I felt it would be interesting if the spirit entity that has put the player into this situation users the voice of the London Underground to guide the player through the experience. So the player will hear instructions of what to do in the same tone and voice of the London underground announcer with of course some subtle story and mysterious undertones so that over time the story will develop and make more sense to the player leading to them hopefully being curious and having their own interpretation of what happened to them and why.
STORY-BOARDING
After coming up with my initial idea for the Designer Immersive Experience project I started to look into different Unity assets that i could use to design and create this experience. Looking through the unity asset store i found a train carriage model which i felt would work very well which was quite detailed in its design and was also a good length to be separated for the different puzzles for the experience.
Below is my initial level design layout for the experience where the user will start in the first train carriage with with multiple interactive objects around them which they can use to trigger the pressure pad next to the first exit. The next train carriage will be divided into two sections so the first will be a button sequence puzzle while the next will be a lever pull sequence puzzle. After completing these tasks the player will be able to get to the drivers cabin and meet the antagonist of the whole story.
During this weeks sessions we also had our first lectures on storyboarding for virtual reality and we were encouraged to try creating storyboards in a VR software such as tiltbrush, Quill, Microsoft Maquette etc.
These are some of my initial sketches and drawings that i created using Google Tiltbrush which i did initially find to be quite difficult to use due to my lack of experience using VR drawing software. I feel that this is something that I am going to need a lot more practice on to try and create a storyboard that isnt just visually appealing but also shows the story that i want to convey.
After trying to draw the full train model i started to isolate some of the storyboard drawings into individual scenes and the images above show the lever pull sequence of my experience. I did feel again that these drawings were not the best and i would need to rethink and practice how i would show these scenes in this storyboarding format. So i feel that the next steps for the DIE project will be to look at VR drawing tutorials and look at different storyboards for both video games, Films and VR experiences to better convey my story.