Week Three

Potluck Supper / Progressive Dinner

This week's creative practise focused on bringing together pieces that I have created through the past weeks into a more cohesive game. I started my practice by looking at the words solid, standardised and processed. Then, by forming iterative work starting from physical papercrafts to then creating digital versions and finally attempt at combining all pieces in a single space, I have tried to carry those three original words throughout my work. I have been trying to reconstitute what I have created, such as the tree shadow box being an interactive picture like I have done for the street photo. By using the works that I have made this week in different ways with each constraint has helped me start seeing all the directions that I can take for my project. Working with layers or pieces and being able to build them to create more or new experiments has been the process of how I have been developing my work, especially for this week. Taking apart previous works and bringing them into a cohesive game was my intention for this week's creative practice. As my work is all digital and is supposed to be interactive, I worked with the words situation and interpret as my contexts and virtual and participate as my distribution. Currently, my work is not suitable to be officially interacted with, so I thought it would be best to video the gameplay. This way, the audience would all get the same feeling of interaction and situational awareness if they played themselves.

Rationing constraints imposed (time/materials/methods/dimensions)

The time constraints were a lot more open this time as we had to create limitations for ourselves. As I had the idea to start bringing some of the artefacts I had made so far into a game space to trial, I wanted to leave the constraint open and see how far I could go within the total time we had. This way, I could see if I was using all the time to its potential and if I could do more next time. I also wanted to use the time restrictions to explore trials within my game that would generally take a fair amount of my time, and I couldn't fit in during the previous weeks time restrictions. I also wanted to focus on only working within Unity and Maya, except for a few concept sketches, to produce my work this week and fully push working on the start of a cohesive piece.

I wanted to quickly start my work this week with a to-do list and concept sketches. Up until now, I had been working based on any ideas I could come up with at the time, but this week I wanted to approach the artefacts with more of a plan that I could use in the further weeks. I didn't get to complete all of my to-do list, but it gives me the incentive to work on the tasks next week and try to generate more ideas from them. This week I wanted to start on the basic aesthetics of the house so I decided to sketch out the general idea of what I wanted the kitchen interior and outside exterior to look like. As these gave me a solid idea to work with I was able to start building in Unity.

Currently, this is the space I will be working with. I decided to use black walls which in the future I will disguise to create a separation for the landscape so I could utilise all of it for all parts of my game. The house I have been currently using in my practices has been a very basic test space but I wanted to start working on a more official house design.

To create my house I thought it would be best to create it in parts, so I started to build the basic form of the kitchen separate from the rest of the house. Creating my level this way gives me more leeway and freedom to change things in the future without messing with any other part of the house. To attempt to get the sizing right for the player compared to the house, I have used plain white boxes in place of kitchen cabinets and counters so I can try and keep the house's size closer in relation to the player and the height differences that real-life houses have. Doing this also helped me to design the right size for the window as originally in the test space, the windows and walls were very high and wide, making the character seem too small and took away from the feeling I want to attempt to create with the house.

My next step was to start adding simple details that would make the difference between parts of the house more apparent. I wanted to use black and white tiles for the kitchen as I find it quite familiar as it is a standard design for kitchens to have different coloured tiles, and the black and white would create a good contrast to the wooden flooring that I would be using in the other parts of the house. As I had created a good basic form of the kitchen I wanted to then start to build the lounge connected to it. I am building each room piece by piece so I can focus on creating the layout with much finer attention than a rough mocked-up space. Currently, I am keeping the overall look of the rooms very basic until I can start adding the items within the house that will bring it more to life and make it feel more lived in.

Adding the last of the walls to the lounge and kitchen I feel has started to give the look of a more official piece. I spent a lot of time adjusting the windows and walls to make sure that I was creating enough space without the player feeling like the house was way too big or way too small. I have been trying to keep the sizing as relative to the player as possible, which can be quite a challenge as space works very definitely when building compared to when it is being played. As the main part of the house has now been built I was able to start working on adding other works into the space that would tie in well to the house such as adding the street scene painting on the wall that then would place the player within the scene below.

The street walking scene I had originally made in design practice one since it was a very successful piece and I garnered a good response from it I wanted to make sure that I had implemented it officially into the proper game environment. Using the dividers on the level helps to separate each piece but gives me the ability to easily fix or maneuver any part I needed to without it having an effect on any other part.

In week two I created the shadow boxes I had initially designed from paper in 3d within Maya. This week was when I got to start trialling it within my game. I started by bringing in the 3d asset and altering the sizing to be a large enough size for the player to be able to pass through. I wanted to keep the shadow box in a relatively small box as I had the idea to fill the area with nature to go along with the scene I am attempting to create. I also wanted to keep it small so that the player would stay engaged in what they are seeing without feeling like they are injust a large empty space. After working on the size, I was able to start working on the aesthetics. My first idea was to place free textures over the top of each piece, so the last piece was covered in a bark-like texture, the middle a black shiny material and the very front in a leafy texture. For trial purposes it worked well enough however I noticed problems with the textures and my objects so in future I will be working on tidying these up as best I can and either finding better materials or trying to create my own. I also decided that I wanted the player to have a better pathway through the shadow box that would also connect them. Using a grey boxing plug-in from Unity called pro builder, I was able to design a rough path that the player could easily walk on and used a ground material to texture it. Unfortunately, trees take time to place one by one within a scene, I was only able to add a few which left the space a bit empty and a bit harsh due to the surrounding black walls and detailed materials. I will be coming back to this piece to advance it further and tidy it up since I believe it is quite a successful piece.

In order for the player to get to the tree shadow box, I had the idea to create another walk in picture as it was well-received previously for the street and worked well. This time I had the idea to create a small photo frame and place the image inside of it. I thought this would be a good way for a player to interact with a smaller object and when the house is fully furnished it will blend in well with other objects. First I created the frame in Maya and altered the size in Unity to fit more relative to the player. To create the image I started of with the original shadow box I had created a resized it to fit the photo frame. As they originally had space in between to create the 3d effect, I placed the pieces together as much as I could to make it look as flat as possible. As this is the initial test, I placed plain colour materials on each piece to create a more flat and simple image. For not it works well but I would like to mess around with it more to make sure it fits well into the space. Using the same approach to the street walk painting, the process of the player being transported by walking up to it is the same. In the future, I would like to try a different version where the player has to click on the photo for them to be transported in.

This is the overview of the current level. I am trying to keep everything tidy and easily adjustable. The reason why I am keeping all pieces currently in the same scene is that for the tests I am using simple game mechanics that allow me to transport the player from one place to another instantly without any loading problems and it is an adjustable and easily fixable method

From the perspective of the player, the house is starting to look much better compared to the plain test space and gives me the ability to paint a clearer picture of where I am headed with my project.

A current playthrough of my game, showing all pieces currently included and the day-night cycle.

Week 3 Feedback

Anthony Vidler > The architectural uncanny
Generation of 2D forms - what narrative of strangeness do you want to promote in this virtual environment
I liked the simple and short 'fly through' video presentation of the game. Who is the audience for the game/research? What does strangeness mean (to you) vs others? [Terminus] Jess Johnson/Simon Ward
it's really cool to see the things you made out of paper to be put into pixels. id like to know a little more clearly how you evoke strangeness within your scene. I know you will include 2d elements but how will they create strangeness as opposed to (for example) looking incomplete?
[In response to feedback sheet] Generated different areas through game design. Included screen grabs and recordings for a project that is completely digital. The constraints of manipulating 2d aesthetics in a game. Very detailed description on approaching both mediums. Game designers/gamers. Further test said UV unwrapping/mapping or testing 2d assets in 3d worlds (hybrid). Establish the items you want to change in 2d/3d - are they important to narrative etc? Would toon shaders help?
the walking into a photo is very interesting and negotiates the topic well. Maybe focus on one image-to-space relation and really experiment with creative possibilities. Can the 2d elements be generated in an analogic way?

The type of strangeness that I want to envoke is the uncanny and familiar Hopefully, creating an environment where a player can feel a sense of comfort and familiarity and then have the aesthetics and space around them changing will help to do so. I don't particularly have a specific audience in mind for my game; I am more interested in if it can be enjoyed by anyone and how gamers or other game designers may view it. I prefer making games the way I like and using my interests to bring them to others and try to share these interests and ideas. As everything is currently in very early testing stages and most of the artefacts I have made only have a small aspect of the game in mind, it is hard to show the extent of strangeness I plan to create. Unfortunately, I am finding there is an expectation that what I will be finding out through the final research year and the final project will be shown in some of the weekly artefacts. Due to time, I can only test minimal and limited aspects that I will extensively develop but may not show the true potential currently. I think there are a few things I need to look at a bit after this feedback, but I think I am still on the right track for what I am creating. I am just struggling to fit all that needs to be there in such a short time. If it were not a weekly assignment, I would bring in a test game that would hopefully showcase all the basic ideas I am looking at. Instead, I will work on making a test game in the last few weeks of this class to show more of an iteration process.