Category: Uncategorised

This is the fifth devlog of the Final Major Project, which is the last devlog of the project. This would mainly talk about the focus on the playtest, pities, reflection.

Playtest

The first fully playable demo of the game came out just two weeks before the deadline, I tried to get as many of my classmates and friends as possible to test my game, both in class and in private. Although I had been testing the project myself, when I let others test it, many problems arose, and over thirty bugs were found in two days. This again made me realise the need for playtesting in game-making and that we need to set aside enough time for it. At the same time, the game received a lot of suggestions, and based on the suggestions, I thought about them again and adopted some of them, but some of them were not adopted due to the difficulty and my own wishes.
Suggestions adopted

1. Add a button to run (players have reported that they spend part of the game walking around, but some areas are not interactive and the slowness of the process reduces the player’s interest. Players can now run in-game by holding down the shift key, which is 1.5 times faster than normal walking)
2. Add a quest panel (players have reported that there are few in-game hints that lack clear guidance. After talking about this issue, it was found that non-native English speakers, in particular, read the text more perfunctorily and would ignore clues in the dialogue, even if the clues were clear. In the middle of the project, I actually wanted to include a quest panel, but given that the main theme of the game is narrative, I was concerned that the presence of a quest panel would reduce the player’s interest in reading the text. In the end, I added the quest panel, considering that I was sometimes perfunctory with dialogue when playing the game and would seek reminders from the quest panel. The task panel can now be viewed in-game by pressing the ECS key, making it much clearer what needs to be done next)
3. Change the function of the keys (in the original design, the E key was to open a conversation and the F key was to continue the conversation. The reason for this was to prevent accidental presses when conversing. However, players reported that the independence of the two keys would feel awkward, so all interactive keys for dialogue were merged into the E key)
4. View size adjustment (within the ark, the view was resized to a quarter of the size of the rest of the map in order to give the player a better view of the internal structure. However, players reported that this size was uncomfortable and that it was easy to overlook information on the upper and lower sides of the camera, so the camera size was doubled inside the ark)

Suggestions not adopted

1. Add maps (considering there are only four main scenes, maps are not used much)
2. Dub the dialogue (considered dubbing the text, but couldn’t find a friend with the right tone in my head)
3. Skip dialogue (personally, I think skipping dialogue in a narrative game will directly reduce the content of the game and greatly affect the experience)

Pities

The background music is what I personally feel pity in my mind about this project. I personally believe that for all electronic media today, music is essential. A good soundtrack may not make a good game, however, a good game must have a good soundtrack. My personal love for music is second only to games. In the second semester, my easy is on game soundtracks. In this paper, the case study object, Nier Automata OST, was something I could not forget, especially because it used the Chaos Language, giving it a distant yet familiar feel. This soundtrack had a profound effect on me, and I hope to use them in my games. Next, Hans Zimmer is my favourite film score artist and his music Interstellar gives the audience a claustrophobic and deep, sad and fervent emotion. Finally, Low Roar is one of my favourite bands. Their work on Death Stranding is something I will never forget. However, Low Roar’s lead singer Ryan passed away in October this year and I had originally envisioned adding their songs to the final scene of the game to honour the memory of this wonderful musician.

However, I forgot the copyright issue of the music.

As a student of game design, perhaps in the future I will have my own intellectual copyright and will defend my rights. I cannot use them without their permission, even if perhaps it is a non-commercial project. After a copyright check of the music, the music from Nier Automata and Hans Zimmer had to be replaced. Also, the songs from Low Roar were deleted in consideration of the whole game’s music style.
In the end, I bought the license to use the music by Lorien to play them through the game. This package includes 12 original compositions in a fantastic and emotional music style.
This paragraph ends with a reflection on my own lack of copyright awareness, respect for the musicians who are willing to share their work, and thanks to all those who have contributed to the game’s soundtrack.

Reflection

Another point worth reflecting on after the project has been completed is to check the framework with that of the initial project plan. Through my previous research, I have come to the general conclusion that the adoption of myth in video games is mainly reflected in the narrative, character design and gameplay. Not only do the characters in the backstory form between the player and the game, but they also form a Through my previous research, I have come to the general conclusion that the adoption of mythology in video games is mainly reflected in the narrative, character design and gameplay. The characters in the backstory are not only formed between the player and the game, but also form a mythic structure of ‘departure, initiation and return’.

First of all, the game’s adopt of mythology is mainly in the narrative, but also in the character design, with the design of Nuwa riding on a cloud, which also reflects a bit of Chinese mythology. For the narrative, the game begins with the story of Noah’s Ark from Genesis and uses the Chinese myth of Nuwa mending the heavens as the main story line of the game. Unfortunately, the mythology is not adopted in the gameplay. In the very first design, the way to get the five phases is through five different mini-games and some oriental mythological elements could be used in the gameplay of these mini-games. In terms of story structure, the game’s structure is generally in line with the “Depature, Initiation and Return” , but it is also mentioned this structure tends to include “the protagonist tends to fail once before he grows”. In this game, the player does not experience failure. The reason for not including this plot is due to the limitations of the game’s length. It would have been more difficult to include a narrative that forced the character to fail and then grow within a 5-30 minute game. If not handled properly, it would have come across as an overly contrived plot. In the game, I wanted this story itself to change the player or rather Noah’s actions in the original Genesis text, and I considered this psychological shift as a motivation to drive the plot as well. At last, the use of explicit and implicit mythology. Although there is a distinction between primary and secondary quest within the game, and although the player’s explore has an impact on the game’s ending, unfortunately, only the narrative in the main quest employs more mythology, while the narrative in the side quests is more about shaping the individual characters with only a small message about the mythology itself.

Overall, the game is generally in line with the initial findings and direction of the production, with a few tweaks and a few lacks pieces on top of that.

Last thought

When I was very young, I remembered a lot of Chinese myths and stories. As the internet has grown, I’ve slowly heard plenty of stories from lands that don’t belong to me. I was confused at first why so many stories had the same beginning but developed into different endings, until I heard more voices, saw more sights, understood more attitudes and meet more people with different stoies. War and Pandemic might be the main themes of the past two years. In order to keep safe and survive, many people began to feel hostile to other people, built long walls to reject outside, and no longer accepted stories from afar.

This reminds me of a passage by Hideo Kojima:

Even if the earth were stripped of life and reduced to a barren wasteland,
Our imagination and desire to create would persevere beyond survival,
It would provide hope that flowers may one day will bloom again,
Through the invention of play,
Our new evolution awaits.

This is my motivation of making game, and I want to keep making games.
This is the last devlog of the project, and also maybe the last post as a student.
Many thanks to David, Maddalena, Zans and Richard.

This is the fourth devlog of the Final Major Project, which would mainly discuss the ending and some partial effects in-game.

Ending

There will be two main endings to this game. The players’ actions once they board the ark will greatly affect the course of the game.

If the player chooses to sleep five times and they will enter the first ending, which is primarily a reference to the story in Genesis, where Noah and the rest of the creatures calmly escape the flood on the ark, which eventually fades away and most of the beasts die due to the flood.

The idea of the ending is also made in the way of Noah’s diary, which is to echo Noah’s diary that can be found in the game and at the same time strengthen the integrity and story of the game. In it, I have taken some extracts from books such as

The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD is enthroned as King forever. (Psalm 29:10)

The rest is adapted from the Genesis account. (Genesis 7 to 8).

Meanwhile, according to the description in Genesis, the rain lasted for forty days and forty nights, so following Noah’s diary forwards for forty days, the fifty-first day was taken as the time of this ending.

Now for the second ending. The second ending will be triggered when the player has collected all five phases. The second ending is set for the twenty-first day, and unlike the other ending, this one will describe the aftermath of Noah’s success in stopping the Great Water. It is worth noting that this ending is actually split into two segments. The first paragraph has a different textual description depending on the player’s interaction within the game.
There are a total of five objects within the game that will each trigger a hidden message for the ending.

1. Mr Shark (by talking to the shark chasing you in the lake)
2. Uncle Ryan (by interacting with the cross in the confessional)
3. Rocket Rooster (by interacting with the cross in the confessional after gaining the ability to talk to animals)
4. Mickey mouse (after gaining the ability to talk to animals, talk to mickey mouse)
5. Bruce Bat (after obtaining the fire elemental stone, read the letter left by Bruce at the bottom of the passage to the right deck)
   The above five parts make up the first paragraph of this ending. The reason for this is to reward the player for exploring more in the game as well as trying to make the story of the game more lively.

The second paragraph of dialogue in this ending is not affected by other factors. The text is mainly a description of Noah’s situation and reflections after he has successfully stopped the great flood.

Particle Effects

There are many particle effects in the game, including different sizes of rain, falling leaves and fog. Here I would like to mention mainly the design of the rain. At the beginning of the production process, I always felt that even with the different frequencies of rain (as reflected in the number of particles generated per second), the rain was not impactful and three-dimensional enough. So I made the rain in the project three-dimensional. This made the effect making the rain falling on different z-axes so that the rain would cover all the different layers.

The main reason for writing this article is to remind me that we cannot be limited in our thinking and that we understand that since there is a different sorting order in two-dimensional games, some of the performance can be created from this point of view.

This is the third devlog of the Final Major Project, which would mainly discuss the project reduction and specific scenes in the game.

Project reduction

The game was abridged and rewritten based on its length, and David felt that a game length of 3 to 5 minutes would be appropriate for a better presentation at the graduation exhibition. At the same time, the approaching deadline and the unfinished content of the current project also forced me to remove parts of the game and shorten the time needed for the respective scenes. It was clear from this that there was a lack of personal time management and time allocation skills, as well as a lack of an accurate estimate of the approximate time needed to complete the project.

It was a difficult decision to cut some of the game’s content, as the game would have a narrative theme and my storytelling skills were not sufficient to express my ideas in a short playthrough. The changed vision is for the game to take about five to thirty minutes, depending on the player’s choices at key points in the story, and the decision whether to go and talk to more side NPCs.

The specific cuts and changes will be mentioned specifically below.

Art

Some of the textures for this project come from the Internet, but to better suit my ideas, some are made by myself. Including crosses, beds, tables and chairs with wood texture, large crosses more in line with the theme, auspicious clouds floating with Nuwa etc.

Lake in Cave

A lake has been added to the right of the cave. Here the player will find the water elemental stones. The original plan was for players to be able to jump from the boat into the sea to find the water elemental stones, but in order to cut down on play time, the two maps have been combined into one.

In the lake, there will be a shark constantly chasing the player. However, the player does not die or end the game when he is caught. Here, I’ve used an unconventional design where the shark chases the player and opens a hidden dialogue about the relationship between the shark and the creatures on the ark and part of the background to Nuwa. The purpose of this is to make the creatures in the game seem more friendly and kind. Before the player come to the lake, the player might learn some information about the shark if they have previously spoken to a side NPC on the ark, to suggest that the shark’s presence is not a danger.

Ark inside

The ark will consist of five parts: Noah’s bedroom, the confessional, the storeroom, New Eden and the hidden access to the right-hand deck.

In Noah’s bedroom, the interactable objects will be Noah’s diary and a bed. Noah’s diary consists of seven days of the story of the seven days after Noah learns from God that the flood is coming. (Seven days because according to Genesis, God told Noah that a flood would occur seven days later). The bed is available for the player to rest on. After the player has rested for the first time, the player will find the arrival of Nuwa. Nuwa will then give a quest line for Noah. At this point, the player can either follow Nuwa’s lead to repair the sky or choose to go back to sleep and let the story unfold as it was written in Genesis. When the player has slept 5 times, they will enter the first ending. Specific instructions on the ending will be explained in the future.

The interactable objects in the confessional are mainly crosses and bats. Most bats would indeed dislike the sun, but bats cannot do without it and research has shown that bats use the sun to calibrate their geomagnetic compass to pinpoint the direction of their flight. Bruce the bat is a warmth-loving bat. He will show his urgency to miss his people in the game. The brave man will sacrifice himself in the later scene to refine the fire elemental stone to help Noah mend the sky and save his people. After that, players can find a letter left by the bat near the hidden pathway leading to the right deck. In addition, most of the crosses in the confessional are interactive and players can find confessions left by different creatures on them. These include Noah, Noah’s uncle and some of the animals.

The interactable object in the storeroom is the wolf. At the very beginning of the game, the storage room is closed. When the player accepts the quest provided by Nuwa, the room will be opened and the player can find the gold elemental stone inside. This hidden clue can be found by talking to the wolf.

The New Eden is inhabited by various animals. They were all conversable. However, at first, the player cannot understand what the animals are saying when he talks to them. When Noah first meets Nuwa, Nuwa will give Noah the ability to communicate with the animals in the hope that Noah will understand his animal friends better. All of these conversations with the animals are not necessary and are included as optional gameplay content to help the player better understand this one game.

The right side of Ark’s deck

When the player has collected all five elemental stones, the pathway to the right deck will be opened. The player will say goodbye to Nuwa on the deck and go up to the sky alone to repair the sky.

This is the second devlog of the Final Major Project, which would mainly discuss the first design, art and some scenes.

Design of Game Flow

The game starts in the forest and in this scene the player is instructed in basic manoeuvres such as walking and jumping. At the end of the forest is the ark.
The first time the player boards the ark, he meets Nuwa, who invites the player to join her in collecting the power of various elements to end floods and heavy rains.
The player can choose to sleep on the ark, and several nights of sleep will lead to the end of the game, which is God’s autonomous termination of the flood, but the living creatures are destroyed except Noah’s family.
Players accept Nuwa’s quest and will be guided to find the four elemental stones of wood, earth, metal and water in turn. (It should have been five elemental stones, still thinking about how to deal with the acquisition of fire elemental stones).
Players will be guided to the forest they have been to before. Due to the flood, the topography of the forest has changed and players find caves that go to the ground.
In the cave, the player needs to escape from the cave before the flood rises. At the end of the cave, players will find the earth elemental stone and the exit back to the forest.
Continuing to explore the forest will reveal wood elemental stones and materials that can be made into a rudder, which the player brings back to the ark to make it start to drive away. (The Bible records many interesting facts about the construction of the ark. According to Genesis, the ark had three levels, a window and a door. But the ark did not have a rudder, which some scholars interpret to mean that the ark did not need a rudder, that God was the captain of the ark, and that God did not need a rudder to guide the ship’s forward direction.)
Inside the cabin, players can find metal elemental stones and diving tools (which need further consideration), and the diving tools allow players to breathe freely underwater.
Once the diving tools are got, the player can dive underwater to find the water elemental stones.
The content related to fire elemental stones needs further design.
After collecting all the elemental stones, Nuwa will evaporate the rainwater with the power of fire, forming steam for the player to swim and levitate, and the player can enter the clouds through this channel.
On the cloud layer, the player eventually faces God directly and fixes the cloud, ending the flood early.

Art

The first idea I had was to make a pixel-style game. Because in terms of difficulty, this style is easier to make scenes and characters. Some of the characters were designed regarding the pixel art in MapleStory. Also made idle, walking animations for them.

However, in the process of drawing the scene, I began to negate this design. In this game, I wanted to render more of an apocalyptic-like despair, but for me personally, my ideas about pixel art are stuck at the level of cuteness and simplicity. With this in mind, I started to think again about whether I should continue to take the pixel style or change it. That’s when I thought of one game that used to inspire me, You Will (Not) Remain’. You Will (Not) Remain’, which could give players a brief, quiet and deep experience. Its hopeless and Lovecraftian atmosphere helps the player to connect better with the main character’s feeling of emptiness and its interaction with the enclosed world where it lives.

In this game, the black and white colour palette renders the game’s apocalyptic atmosphere. At the same time, the purple objects play the role of guidance and hints in the game on the one hand and enrich the colour of the picture in the composition on the other.

In deciding to go to black and white as the main colour of the game, I remembered the game called Limbo. The game is presented in black and white. Lighting, cinematic grain effects and minimal ambient sound are used to create an eerie atmosphere usually associated with the horror genre. Journalists praised the dark presentation, describing the work as comparable to film noir and German expressionism.

This art style gave me a shock at the time, so I finally decided to redesign the characters and scenes in this dark art style.

Forest

Details still need to be enhanced, including background, and light.

Cave

Details still need to be enhanced, including backgrounds, and particle effects (falling rocks).

Ark

The ark is inspired by the movie 2012. 2012 as a flood disaster film, in part, is a homage to the myth of Noah’s ark in Genesis. I think the design of Noah’s Ark in 2012 is a good restoration of the mythical ark and incorporates modern technology.

Coding

• A* Path Finding

In the game, Nuwa is assigned to follow the player. To achieve this, an automatic path-finding algorithm needs to be introduced.A* (A star) is a graph traversal and path search algorithm that is used in many areas of computer science due to its completeness, optimality and optimal efficiency. A major practical drawback is its spatial complexity since it stores all generated nodes in memory. Therefore, it is usually preferred to algorithms that can preprocess graphs for better performance in real travel route systems, as well as to memory-constrained methods; however, in many cases, A* is still the best solution.

By importing the Pathfinding framework, the A* pathfinding algorithm can be easily invoked in unity. In addition to the scripts that come with the framework, I can create my own scripts to better fit this project.

• Scene Transition

• Pause Menu

This is the first devlog of the Final Major Project, which would mainly discuss the idea and related stuff about the game’s original design.

Chinese Myth

The idea of the game and the essay is based on my experiences this year about the intersection of different cultures. I’ve been living in England for 3 years, and I’ve seen many artworks here representing western culture. One day I was viewing the Graduation exhibition half a year ago, and I suddenly felt that there ain’t a massive number of works about Chinese culture but there are a lot of Chinese students. It’s a good thing that we came here and learn things here and then do work about the culture around us, but China could also have its own charm. I start to feel like I might have the responsibility to show my people’s culture and tell others our unique story.

Myth is a worldwide topic that could be fitted into almost all digital media. Among them, Greek mythology, Norse mythology, and Japanese mythology are all referenced in the game. From World of Warcraft, God of War, to Ghost of Tsushima in the past two years, I am very interested in these games that have a rich mythological background and allow players to explore in the mythical world. This was the inspiration for my thesis, and a deeper dive led me to set the research question for my case study, which is “how did world of warcraft: mists of Pandaria adopt Chinewe myth?”.

Conclusion from case-study

Through my research, I have come to the general conclusion that the adoption of myth in video games is mainly reflected in the narrative, character design and gameplay. Not only do the characters in the backstory form between the player and the game, but they also form a mythic structure of ‘departure, initiation and return’. At the same time, the use of explicit and implicit mythology enriches the content and fun of the game respectively. Among other things, the Mists of Pandaria shows how different myths can be combined to create a new one.

The most surprising found for me is that World of Warcraft has created a new myth by taking two stories that belong to the same mythology but are almost unrelated. Based on this, I thought about what would happen if two stories from different mythological systems, fused to create a new story. As an international student studying in a country with a different culture from my own, I have often felt the influence of different cultures myself. So can I bring the conflict and integration that I have experienced with different cultures to game?

Great Flood

There are accounts of the flood in various mythological systems. It is interesting to note that in Western mythological systems, floods are usually sent by one or more gods to destroy civilisations, often as divine retribution. As in the story of Noah’s ark in Genesis. Jehovah sends the flood to punish mankind for their sin, while giving Noah’s family and some of the creatures a chance to survive by building the ark, and later stopping the flood when the rest of the creatures all die. In Chinese mythology, however, the flood has a very different meaning. For example, the story of Nüwa Mends the Heavens, as recorded in Huainanzi, tells of the water god Gonggong and the fire god Zhurong fought and accidentally destroyed the pillars of the world, causing the heavens to collapse and the waters of the heavenly river to pour into the earth. Nuwa could not bear to see mankind suffer, so she made five-coloured stones to mend the sky, and mankind was able to live in peace.

Different cultures have told different stories about the flood. In the stories, the flood may have been a natural disaster or an accident. The gods may have been cruel or merciful in the face of the flood. This in turn reminds me of the film 2012, where mankind, when faced with disaster, may pray for divine protection, or may see it as divine punishment. There is also a very special episode in the film where workers build a new age Noah’s Ark, a shelter for the rich. There is an old Chinese saying: “Troops for the enemy, earth for floods: there will always be a correct way to deal with an opponent or a problem”. In Chinese culture, people don’t just pray in the face of natural disasters, they act against them.

The above is the inspiration for the story of this game

Game design

The game will be set in a flood sent down by the gods, where the player, with the help of Nuwa, collects materials to stop the flood and save innocent beings.

The first issue that needed to be addressed was how to introduce and integrate Chinese and Western mythology. According to previous case study research, myths can be introduced in both narrative and mechanistic terms. For the overall narrative structure the monomyth theory can be studied, i.e. the hero’s journey. At the same time, both explicit and implicit myths can be used for narrative and mechanism.

The player will be on an ark containing three levels (Genesis). In the beginning, player would have a flashback of Yahweh sends punishment in order to punish the sinner. After that Nuwa come to players to ask him save the rest of creatures on earth.

Player will be free to choose take acts or not. Depending on the player’s decision, the game may end with the vast majority of beings dying, as in Genesis, or with those beings being saved, as in Huananzi. The survival of the players themselves will not be affected by the decision. Also I don’t want to distinguish them as good or bad endings.

“The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord is enthroned as King forever.”

— Psalm

The player will need to gather five coloured-stones (red, yellow, blue, black, and white) (Huainanzi). Each stone could represent one specific element (Five Phases). Player need to face tests from creatures in the ark (Genesis) to get the stone respectively. Maybe five little games.

This is the third devlog of my third-term project, All Eye Shall Be Closed. It’s an autobiographical game, mainly talking about depression and my anxiety about being watched by others.

Human Model

First I have changed the low poly ghost model to a low poly human model. Compared with the ghost model, this one is a simple human body model with no facial features, which could be very helpful for later adding the eye features to make it looks strange.

The eye model is finally completely made. This model is inspired by N’Zoth in the World of Warcraft.

Events

The whole scene is mainly composed of two triggerable events, one is asking employees to help open the door in the school, and the other is picking up a drink in the store. There will be text reminders around the trigger, which are a direct message “press E” to remind the player that this is an interactive thing, and the other is textual psychological descriptions of the character’s request. When the event is triggered, the head of the character model near the scene will be replaced by an eyeball. At the same time, the mental description is replaced by the language of fear.

I deliberately did not write the mental activity statement in the first person. I put these statements into the game as a way for someone to tell the protagonist this information. The idea was inspired by my case study game this semester. In Hellblade, there will always be a voice that talks to the protagonist and guide her, but, in fact, this is just the illusion of herself. From a medical point of view, auditory hallucinations are also likely to be the mental language of mental patients. The patient’s mental activity is considered auditory hallucinations, due to some reason that patient thinks others are speaking to them. I hope to use this method to reflect the morbidity of the game’s protagonist.

Environment

First I change the skybox to a dark one and cancel the directional light. Now the scene starts to look kind of creepy. Also, with glowing texts, the scene wouldn’t be too dark to make players lose their way. At the same time, I add a rain particle system to make the scene more realistic.

Also, the event-related text has been added to the game, shown as followed.

There are post-image processes added to the scene, the globe volume including black vignette, bloom, and lens of distortion. The vignette could make the scene dark and make the field of view of the main camera more focused. The bloom help text brighter. The distortion makes the picture more distorted and morbid.

Also, there are two unsealed borders in the scene. I originally used some cluttered buildings to block the player’s movement, but I felt that too many buildings made the environment too monotonous, so I used the smoke made by the particle system as the boundary of the map.

Sound Effect

For the whole scene, I added the sound of rain. The rain sound will always play, and the playing sound and pitch are randomly selected between (0.7-1.1), which makes the whole sound effect more dynamic. At the same time, footsteps will occur when the character is walking on the road. When the event fires, a gradually louder sound of thunder is played.

More

I especially hide this in the scene. The first reason is to use the empty space. But the main reason is, while I do this project, I’m not sure about, what kind of message I want the game to convey. During playtests, the most common question I’ve been asked is, what do you want the players to know after playing this game. This game is designed as an autobiography game, and I think I put something that really makes me feel depressed into this game. But, this is not a game that tells people, I’m sad, or telling people to take care of the group of people who have the worse condition than me. I just want to show guys, I feel depressed and anxious sometimes. There is no meaning in this game.

All the eyes shall be closed.

Thanks.

This is the second devlog of my third-term project, All Eye Shall Be Closed. It’s an autobiographical game, mainly talking about depression and my anxiety about being watched by others.

Design

After the final decision of making this game in 3D, I followed decided the process of the whole game. In this game, there would be two main events, the first one is to leave the school, and the second is to buy some stuff in the market.

I just sometimes can’t remember to bring keys and cards with me. This caused a lot of problems for me. Every time I went to reception and talked to them that I ain’t bring my key, I feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t help thinking they might be mad at me and then hate me. Every time I would feel I bring a lot of trouble to them. This is the first idea of the events in the game. As an idea, the player wants to leave the school, but he finds he has no keys and then has to ask for the staff’s help to get out. Once the player asks for help, there would be some text showing up, showing how upset the staffs are. Then, the player would find everyone near starting looking at the character.

I’m afraid of crowds, and I think going to shop could be an example showing this. Because this is a thing that most everyone feels there is nothing to be worried about, it could be an idea showing I really have some problems when I do this. In-game, similarly, players could simply get into the market and buy something, then suddenly find everyone is watching.

Environment

I want the environment as real as possible. I think mixing a realistic environment with very abstract and strange elements that are unreal, could bring players a more interesting, curious, and uncomfortable experience. Because I live quite close to LCC, and there is a market located on the way I’m walking home from school, the game is set based on it and I’d like to follow the real location in my game.

However, there was too many useless building for this game, so I decided to only keep the position of LCC, Market, and my home, and deleted some building.

Model

At first, I import the ghost low poly from the unity store. The idea for the human model is, that I want it to keep simple and only focus on the facial features. At first, the white ghost on the right represents the initial state of the people in the game. Once players trigger the event, they would transform into the black ghost with glowing red eyes. At last, players would find a mirror, see in the mirror and realize that I’m the weirdest one, a ghost in between two states.

Playtest

I only have limited feedback, because at this time the project has just started. During the playtest section, I mainly talk to them about what is going to be done in the future and ask for advice, showing them the first-person perspective movement and the environment.

Regarding the model, someone mentioned that this model is too cute. They thought a more realistic mannequin could be used with exaggerated head features. For example, David’s proposal is that the head can be a camera. This suggestion is very useful because I also think that the current model does not fit the theme of the game, and the head features are not obvious enough.

About the environment, people are discussing the light and building’s location with me. First, the scene is too bright for this depression theme. I’m considering disabling the directional light, making the text glowing, and adding some area or point light to make the scene looks darker and depressed.

Also, as I have already deleted some roads and buildings before, people still think there are too many useless places. For example, the player would take a 1-minute walk from the school to the market. They suggest either continuing to delete to make the distance closer or adding something interesting along the way, like interactive stuff, etc.

This is the first devlog of my third-term project, All Eye Shall Be Closed. It’s an autobiographical game, mainly talking about depression and my anxiety about being watched by others.

First Prototype

At first, the prototype was designed as a 2D platform game as players control a character walking around, and with every step players take, the wall would close a little bit to reduce the players’ movement area, and eyes would appear on the wall and keep looking at the character. So, the idea is to bring oppression and helplessness to the players.

Then, continue doing this, I was thinking about making it a 3D game with a larger place and adding some interactive elements. Then I’d like to focus more on the eyes because I personally think eye contact is very important in daily communication. Still, I sometimes am afraid to have eye contact with other people, and I don’t like the feeling of some people keeping looking at me at the same time. So, I want to enhance that feeling, and hopefully bring that to the players.

I talked about this idea with a group of people, including some classmates, David and Maddy. David and Maddy quite like the idea of eyes would follow people as players move. However, they also point out that, making it a 3D game could take a lot of time, and advised me to think about it more because now the first prototype works, and only need to focus on adding some interactive stuff.

I’m thinking about this for a long time, however, I finally decide to make it 3D. Not because 3D looks cool, the reason is, as making an autobiographical game, I want to show everyone what happens to me in the real world. 2D could be too abstract, I can not make the event resonate with players without amazing ideas, which currently I can’t think of any. If making a 3D game, I could easily imagine some scenes like going to a shop and feeling like being watched, then I could easily transform this into a 3D world and then add more stuff.

inspiration

So, as I’m afraid of eyes, I’m also kind of obsessed with eyes. And I always focus on the eyes in games, movies,s or artwork. This makes me have a lot of sources that could be the inspiration for my game.

Also, there is a game called “When the darkness comes”. It’s a walking simulator whose glitchy and dark tale tries to illustrate the hardships of depression and anxiety through a variety of imaginary digital landscapes. I’m really into this game, and I like the art style of it.

This is the DevLog of the Collaborative Unit project, the phone booth.

Members:
Abhimanyu Chattopadhyay
James Grey
Yantao Tang
Filip Norkowski

Week 1 – 2, Team up

Absy wants to make a realistic phone booth, and the rest of us want to try something we haven’t tried before, and after discussing, we agreed that VR could be a good idea. And we then consider the objective of this project is to create a short narrative experience in VR that explores mental health and depression.

Week 3 – 4, First-phase preparation

We decided to use Unity to develop our project. This is mainly because we all have experience with unity and we can always ask school teachers for help. Then, we decided to use the Universal Render Pipeline over Unity’s Standard Renderer to achieve the desired performance for our game because it provides artist-friendly workflows that let you quickly and easily create optimized graphics across a range of platforms.

At the end of January, we create a telegram group for communication, a GitHub project for collaboration without compromising the integrity of the original project, and a confluence page to manage the process.

Then, we split the projects into tasks, and everyone focuses on researching the different areas. James would deal with the VR interaction, Absy would focus on the dialogue system, Filip would look into the narratives and I would build the 3D model and research about the light effect. All the tasks are updated on the confluence page so that we could all manage the process of the project.

Also, before we officially start doing this project, we were looking for some games and other stuff to find some inspiration. For example, ‘You Will (Not) Remain’, which could give players a brief, quiet and deep experience. Its hopeless and lovecraftian atmosphere helps the player to connect better with the main character’s feeling of emptiness and its interaction with the enclosed world where it lives. Considering our gameplay would also happen in a limited space phone booth and the narrative theme of this game is similar to ours, we could get good pointers from the game.

Week 3, 3D Model of Phone Box

I never made a 3d model before, and I’m very interested in doing that. I chose to make it in Blender 3.0 because it’s free and powerful, and friendly to beginners due to a large number of online tutorials. Gladly, I found a tutorial about making a phone box model in Blender.

However, there are still lots of difficulties by just following that. The biggest problem is, the person who made this tutorial is using shortcuts all the time without any hints, this makes it very difficult to catch what happened. To deal with it, I need to read the user manual to get familiar with the shortcuts in Bender, to understand every function. The second problem is, this tutorial was based on Blender 2.8, and I’m currently planning to use Blender 3.0. The update brings a bunch of differences, such as UI and some functions being removed or replaced. This asked me to research more about modelling. But anyways, this tutorial provides lots of information about making a phone box.

This model contains a door, outside structure, inside structure and a phone pad.

There are unfinished ideas among them. For example, the material selection of the phone booth, I initially wanted to use a specific material to make the phone booth look more ancient, but considering that the same shader may be applied to the entire project and the art style of the entire project, so I did not implement it. Another unfinished idea is that I initially wanted to put some stickers on the phone booth, like “telephone”, or some icons like a crown, which is on the realistic phone booth in London.

Also, during this week, we further discussed the goal for our project, and we finally decided to make our project a VR narrative game, talk about the stigma around depression to bring awareness about taking care of this group of people around us. While playing this game, players would be able to call friends and family, then choose the conversations. And the results of choices would impact the environment visually.

Week 4 – 5, Lighting and online presentation

We want to build a scene wherein a dark street the player can only see the phone booth under the spotlight. In this way, we wanted to insinuate the player to the phone booth while creating a depressing atmosphere. So, making a volumetric light is necessary. Also, we want to make the VR experience more realistic, so I further decided to research the fog effect.

There is an open sources project on GitHub about volumetric lighting, including volumetric fog, area lights and tube lights. This project is not supported for the URP project, however, it inspired me that in our project, we could have a light beam with local fog and add global fog noise to the scene, to make our project more realistic. Also, this GitHub project points out that, the final outcome of light scattering in the fog depends on three factors: fog density, fog anisotropy and light sources, which is very helpful for further work.

Also, an online post helps me a lot make a volumetric light scattering effect. It mainly talks about the physics knowledge of light, the method of creating a custom renderer feature and adding the Render Feature to the Forward Renderer.

With those knowledgeable, we are able to make the light and fog effect based on the script template provided by URP and then custom it. We are able to change the colour of the light, the intensity, scale, and velocity of the fog (3D noise) as we want.

Although we achieved volumetric light, there are still shortcomings. The most obvious problem is that the noise is evenly distributed in the volume, which means that the brightness at the border of the volume light is almost the same as when it is in the centre, which creates a problem when the player walks into the beam, the brightness will change suddenly. We want this change could be slow so that makes the scene more realistic. The easiest solution is to stack multiple beams of varying intensity and volume to achieve this effect, which then increases the load on the scene considerably. The knowledge of light and the script of volume light should be further studied.

Week 6 – 7, Merges, first playtest, and sound

The most important thing in these two weeks is merging all the stuff together so that we have a playable version of the project for testing. An error occurred during the merge because we were working on the same script in the same branch, and GitHub couldn’t automatically merge the two files efficiently. It took us 1 hour to fix. This mistake tells us that we should work on different branches when cooperating, and at the same time, always pull before the push.

Then we had our first official playtest with a bunch of people. The feedbacks mainly are:

1. Players unfamiliar with VR feel difficult to control.
2. The UI is on the low side, making it difficult for some players to find the dialogue system. At the same time, the location of the phone is high, and it is difficult for some players to pick up the phone.
3. Once they figure out how to interact with objects in the scene, players will enjoy doing things like throwing their phone, picking it up, and pressing buttons on the dial.
4. People are prone to errors when entering numbers, and the process of resetting an input can quickly become tedious.

To deal with these problems that were made:

1. We needed the player to notice the Dialogue UI so we placed it within the player’s eye-line while they are interacting with the phone.
2. We spaced out interactable elements like the buttons on the dial pad so players would be less likely to make mistakes if they were not precise with their actions.

Also, We had a meeting with students from the Sound Design course at LCC. They are happy to work with us to add a variety of sound and music to the game to make it an enriching experience.

Week 8, Shader

For the past few weeks, we’ve been discussing which shader to choose. In the beginning, we chose the Flat Kit shader because we thought the outline script it came with would be a good way to help us outline the shape and appearance of objects. We tried various visuals and styles, but nothing came out of it. Finally, Absy proposed to use the Quibli shader in addition to the flat kit with his amazing ideas.

So the material on the objects is of Quibli shader, and that shader has a very binary interaction with light. So even in a little light, it looks clear and bright and colourful. But with no light, it’s super dark. And the player can’t see anything. Then on top of that, we are using Flat Kits Forward Rendering to do the outline effect with black colour.

So when it is unlit everything is black and dark so is the outline, the player can’t see anything. But the lit objects like the phonebooth are visible and have colour, then when players are inside the phone booth and look outside, they are looking at the objects through that fog effect from the light beam. And that fog effect has a yellow/brown colour, and because players can see the outline through the fog effect, players would see the environment when they are inside the fog.

The outline is always there it’s just that they can’t see it because everything is the same colour. But when players are in the spotlight and looking through the layer of fog, it becomes visible.

Week 9 – 10, Second playtest, presentation on Collectives

From the last two weeks, we decided not to prevent from making a big change in our project, but focus on improving what we’ve done and fixing the problems we haven’t solved or forgotten such as removing the teleport function.

We had our second playtest, and also we took our project to collectives, gave a presentation for other courses students. We received a lot of good reviews, mainly talking about the visual effect and functionality.

At the same time, we realised that nobody pays attention to emotional expression, which should be the objective of this project.

Conclusion

First of all, I am very happy that the four of us successfully completed this project and gained some recognition. In this project, we conducted research in areas that were both unfamiliar and interesting to us. We learned about VR, physics, lighting, modelling, storytelling, and shaders. At the same time, we have also gained experience in the production of team projects. We learned to manage the process of the project, to more effectively complete a job with multiple people, and to share the knowledge that may be used. At the same time, I am also very grateful to my three team members for their dedication to this project, and give me help when I need it.

We got some good reviews for this project, but we also feel pity that we had some ideas that we didn’t achieve. First of all, from the feedback from the test, everyone is very interested in the visual effect, art style, and functionality of this project. I personally also like the style of art presented in this project. Unfortunately, our original intention for this project was to hope that people would pay more attention to mental health, and our scenes and lighting were designed to accentuate the depressing atmosphere of the story. The truth is, the narrative of this project was not that good because we were not good at storytelling and we didn’t spend more time researching and writing stories. Narratives can be studied more in later studies. At the same time, in future projects, the narrative can be divided into more time proportions.

Anyway, I am very happy with this collaborative unit, we at least successfully completed this project. I also tried things I hadn’t tried before, like VR and modelling.

Finally, thanks again to Absy, James, and Filip.

It’s the fourth DevLog about the 6 prototypes, mainly talking about the last prototype which is a game with only 18 cards.

Prototype 6, a game with only 18 cards.

The idea of this game is to get drunk. Different alcohols contain different levels of alcohol, and different alcohols can be drunk in different ways. The same thing is that they can all make us drunk. It’s not just pure drinking of alcohol, cocktails or some combination that makes people unknowingly drunk when they meet people’s taste requirements.

The game contains only 18 cards, 1 menu and 17 drink cards. The menu shows different combinations of alcohol and soft drinks. The recommended number of people for the game is 2-4 people. Players draw one card from 17 drink cards each round. If there are 2 players, draw cards until 1 card remains. If there are 3 players, each draws a total of 5 cards. If there are 3 players, each draws 4 cards. Each card represents a kind of alcohol or soft drink and shows the base score it carries. For example, alcohol is basically scored from 1 to 3, and soft drinks or ice cubes are scored 0. Among them, different combinations will bring bonus points. For example, Yamazaki whisky is 2 points and ice cubes are 0 points. When a player has both cards at the same time, they can be combined into “whiskey on the rocks”, resulting in a total of 3 points. At the end of the game, the player with the highest score wins.

The

The name of the combination, the recipe and the corresponding points are written on both sides of the menu card. The front of the drink card consists of 3 parts, the logo on the top, the name of the drink on the bottom left, and the basic score corresponding to the drink on the bottom left. The back of the drinks card is blank.

The playtest mainly reflects two problems. The first is about the combination of alcohol and drinks in the game. In the game, a drink card can often only be combined with 2 to 3 other drink cards, and the game also contains a combination of 4 different cards. This makes players spend a lot of time navigating menus at the end, looking for combinations to check if they may already have one. Especially players who are not very familiar with alcohol will spend more time on it. The second is the balance of scores. Especially in the case of a 3-4 player game, since each player has a small number of total cards, it is difficult to make a combination between the cards, which makes the score gap between players large, and it is easy for players to obtain a decisive result lead. Ways to improve this problem may lie in balancing the score or reducing the number of players.