Author: Cal Thorndyke

Stutter – Starting Development

After creating my initial idea for this VR environment and discussing the idea with my Tutors i was really excited to begin developing the concept in Unity. I also felt that for now calling the project ‘Stutter’ will be a good starting point based on the concept for this VR environment piece.

The Gameplay

Over the passed week i started to think about how i could create this experience and i decided to keep the interaction fairly straightforward so that the words will float around the user and when they grab the word they can place the word onto a given area to then snap in place and create a full sentence over time.

Importance of Audio

Stuttering is of course a very audible and sound based impediment and so I think that this is going to need to be a major part of this experience. Personally i find that when i want to say a certain sentence and i find myself unable to while stuttering, I can hear myself in my head trying so hard to say the sentence because you know what you want to say but your mouth simply cant get it out. I think that this was also shown brilliantly in the 2015 short film ‘Stutterer’ by Benjamin Cleary in which the main character is shown struggling with speaking but you can hear his internal monologue explaining what he wants to say and how strongly he wants to.

Stutterer (Short 2015) - IMDb

I think that this was done very well and this is something that I would like to do with the audio for my Virtual reality experience. This means that when the user is playing perhaps over time they will hear an internal monologue of the sentence that they need to create but the longer they take (similar to talking in real life) the more the sentences in the user head will overlap and the pressure will be built up to make the sentence in a ‘socially acceptable’ amount of time.

Creating the Environment

I know that for this environment I wanted to keep the entire experience to be very typographic and of course based on reading, hearing and language and so i started to think about how the user will put words together infront of them. After looking through the Unity asset store I found a model for a table which reminded me personally of a typographers table that i felt would suit this experience very well.

Adding Interactivity

I started by downloading and importing the Unity XR interaction tool which is extremely useful due to the preinstalled assets and features it has included for Virtual Reality projects. I then imported the typographers table and placed a few blocks to represent the area that the player will try to place and create words.

To start testing the concept using Illustrator I created the word ‘Thankyou’ as a PNG that could added into the build as a Sprite. Each word has a box collider which the user can then grab and move around to try and create sentences. The idea for this environment will be for the user to grab one of the floating words and place it accordingly on the correct sentence block so if the sentence is only three words, then they will need to create that sentence on the table infront of them over that given them etc.

What to do next?

I feel that I have this project concept and idea in a good place to continue the development but i will need to look to start writing Unity scripts to fully achieve this idea and concept which I will research into and of course continue the weekly Unity classes in the meantime.

VR Experience – Initial Ideas and Development

For the creative portfolio module i saw an oppurtunity to create something that was more personal to me and the chance to create something abstract demonstrating my interpretation. I have had a speech impediment called a ‘Stutter’ or ‘Stammer’ since i was able to speak which not many people in the world are fully aware of, fully understand what is happening in our heads and why we sound like this which can lead to a misunderstanding and misinterpretation on how to talk to someone with a noticeable stutter.

My VR Experience Concept/Idea

I want to create my interpretaion of the mind of a stutter where a player can physically step inside the mind of someone with this speech impediment. This will allow the user to see how difficult it can be for us to process words in a ‘socially acceptable’ way and the amount of time in can take in different given situations or intense moments of communication.

The experience will take place inside the mind of a ‘stutterer’ in which they will see words floating around them and the objective of the experience is to attempt to grab these words to make a sentence that the mind is trying to say. A key part of this experience is going to be audio driven because i personally find that my mind will continually be repeating and fighting itself in an attempt to say a sentence which just isnt coming out and so i felt this would be an interesting way for others to experience this. So the idea would be that over time the user would hear the sentence they are trying to make on repeat which will start to get faster, overlap and start being more and more overwhelming as time has gone by without the sentence being completed.

Why Do I want to make this in Virtual Reality?

Virtual reality literally gives you the ability to embody a character or be apart of an environment and i think that this concept will be a great way for someone to step inside my interpretation of a ‘stutterer’s’ mind. The experience would allow the user to take on a physical challenge on themselves to create simple sentences while hearing the minds thoughts in the process. I hope that an experience of this calibur will give the user an insight or understanding of the speech impediment while of course not definitevely demonstrating a stutter due to this being my personal interpretation and experience.

Moodboard


Tutorial Feedback

In “INPUT DATE” session i discussed with my tutors the concept for the experience and how i could go about creating this in virtual reality. My initial thoughts simply involved the user attempting to create words physically to demonstrate how it can be difficult in the mind of a stutterer. I initially had the idea so that the player would either grab the different words in the environment or perhaps the player could look and gaze at the different words that are around them as a means of selection which would give the ability to a much more varied and spread out selection of words and phrases in the given environment. However my tutor very greatfully showed me a way in which this experience concept could be toned down to be achieveable in the given time available to create the project.

Next Steps

The next step after discussing with my tutors this initial idea is to start creating the experience in unity and further refining what i will need to create for the gameplay

Immersive Storytelling – Initial Ideas and Concepts

The Design immersive experience unit focuses on designing/creating a narrative driven experience primarily focusing on the story, script and storyboard for an experience of up to five minutes long.

Starting Point

For my initial starting point of creating a narrative driven experience that could be told in a short time frame, I began by concepting ideas through an environemnt. I have personally always found trains and subways to be very interesting and isolated places where sometimes you can feel seperated from the world during your journey or commute so I thought that this would be an interesting starting point for a virtual environement. A train can be used to create a linear experience by progressing up or down a train and finding different areas, objects or characters throughout different carriages and locations.

I began to note down different ideas for a virtual reality experience taking place on a train an i started to develop an idea of almost a supernatural experience on the London Underground (which i of course know very well living in London). I also always love video games which try to marry the story and the mechanics together as one which I then began thinking about the idea of an escape room taking place on the London underground where the player will need to complete different tasks on each train carriage to escape from the experience.

To then add a more supernatural or fun element to this experience i thought it would be interesting if the player started on the train as normal seeing other NPC’s around them but suddenly the lights would cut to black and when they turn back on everyone has dissapeared. The voice announcer of the train could then tell them to complete certain tasks within the train in order to escape which adds a level of mystery and urgency to the situation that the player has been placed in.

This idea could also be developed further to have different environmental changes in each carriage so you could start in a london underground train carriage but the next could be based on an old steam train, modern bullet train and so many more possibilities. The environment outside of the window could also change over time to transfer from an underground subway to an outdoor environment showing different weather and biomes.

Initial Idea feedback

After coming up with these initial ideas i discussed with my tutor how i could develop this concept further. We discussed that the experience idea might be too long for a short VR experience and could be further simplified by having multiple puzzles or tasks on fewer train carriages rather than one task per carriage. He also suggested to keep the train carriages more grounded and only have minor environmently changes rather than having major visual overhauls in each section of the puzzle.

This feedback was extremely useful and I look forward to developing this project further although my initial idea focused primarily on the gameplay, world and mechanics and I still need to further develop a narrative or story that perfectly ties all of these elements together.