Week Four
Cordial(ity): Sharing Your Work With Others and Responding to Feedback
As I am continuing with the design of a more official game space, I wanted to start to design a few more detailed pieces that I could include in the interior of the house. I created a door in Maya using music rectangular shapes and the extrude and bevel tool to create depth. This design is still very basic as I am able to add more details to it in the future and adjust it easily if it does not portray well in the game.
Currently, the windows in my game feel very blocky and basic with little to no depth. Using my window in my room as a reference for the depth of the window sill I used Maya to create a simple yet effective window. My plan is to treat the window in the game as a real-life window by using the window space as a place to hold miscellaneous items as well as creating a bit more depth and space between the interior and exterior of the house.
Carrying on from last week, I wanted to start designing the hallway as it will be the entry and exit point of the house. I started to create the house in the same way I had previously made the kitchen and living room by placing in separate from the main part of the house. As I had created the window before working on the hallway, I was able to put it into the space to see how the light and shadows worked with the space. I wanted to add a window into the hallway as it is going to be a closed area. Within the hallway, I will have doors that lead to inaccessible rooms so I wanted the space to feel less empty by having a window that would allow the light in as well as provide a small view of behind the house.
After creating three out of four of the man rooms I wanted to start to add small details to the rooms. I started off by adding more doors to the space and adding textures to the living room windows and doors so that they would look like they were part of the house rather than the stark white and grey I originally had them. Currently, I have put a dark brown wood colour to give the illusion of the house having more natural aspects such as the wooden floors, doors and windows. I feel the addition of small aesthetic details helps to start to bring the house together as a collective piece.
As the main rooms of the house had started to come together I wanted to add the final main room. Currently, it is empty save for the door that the player can pass through to get between the bedroom and the lounge. After adding the bedroom the floor plan started to look like it was coming together and resembled my original floor plans that I had designed in the first few weeks of design practice one. The layout I have chosen keeps a good balance of space for the player with the easy ability to add more in the future. I wanted to really focus on these rooms I have created so far as my ideas surrounding the narrative and the interactivity of the space has revolved around each room so far. At this stage I was able to add all the teleporters that would allow the player to walk up to a door and pass through it into the space it would correlate to. So far the only doors that a player can use are the doors that connect the lounge and bedroom and the door that connects the hallway to the deck and further outside.
Now with a solid base for my house, I was able to add a few more scenes that the player would be able to travel through from parts of the house. One of these is the black and white version of the house that the player is transported to from the original street walk scene. In order for the player to get back to the main house I created two different ways, one would be through the bedroom which would transport you to the bedroom of the house, and the other option is t walk through the street scene picture again and be transported into the black and white version of the street which would then lead back to the house. Through the overview, you can see the placement of each scene, I tried to keep the houses as symmetrical as possible.
Originally, I had decided that the player could exit the house but be restricted to the deck. After some thinking, I decided that I wanted to create more of an interactive landscape that the player can walkthrough. As it is in early stages of the exterior design, I am still able to decide if I want the player to be able to walk around or not. Even so, the exterior landscape of the house had always been important in my overall aesthetic within the world so for this week I wanted to start to work on it. Using pro builder I created an interesting grass area that I can expand on and create different levels of terrain and use different materials on. I also used pro builder to create the path, I do plan on attempting to create more organic shapes however it works well as a placeholder currently. Once the area is filled with trees and bushes and other flora, it will hide the harshness of the edges as well as the harshness of the materials I have used.
As previously stated in past weeks, trees and bushes take a long time to place one by one. I started off by trialling different trees and seeing their size in the space. Some of the trees that I used will be helping in further back areas as they are quite large as well as helping to hide the Blackwall exterior. When I created the exterior for the main house I had the idea to duplicate it for the black and white house. This way it creates the illusion of being in the same space but the immediate area around you is different. The black and white also creates a good contrast against the bright and detailed trees, further pushing the 2d aesthetic I am aiming for.
Week 4 Reflection
This week I further explored my project using the artefacts I had already created and built a more cohesive game environment. I still have long to go in building the base of my game, but I am at a good point to start showcasing some of the initial trials I have created that I will be expanding on. As this week ties into week 5, the artefacts I made this week were part of the created action plan. So my reflection on practice and action plan can be found under Week 5. Initially, I believed that I hadn't done enough work to show this week, but after working through a decent amount of my action plan, I think everything I have done up until now has been a good amount following the time constraints. As this week's work is also week 5's work, I will plan my next steps and look at the work needed for the final week and summative.
Week 4 Feedback
It's been wonderful seeing your work develop. It is really cool how you incorporated your physical work into a game. I love that you can walk into paintings. I hope you explore this concept further! For the environmental sound, I would suggest taking some field recordings for more natural sound. Hit up any sound culture cats for help if you decide to take this path. It could be cool to define clearer manifestations of "strangeness" (I understand it is quite subjective) Awesome work!
I am pleased to hear that painting/photo frame artefacts have been working well. I plan to trial similar ideas around walking into the painting, and I plan to include other previous shadow boxes that I made in weeks one and two. Field recordings would be a good idea, and in general, it would be good for me to pay attention to how sounds work within a house and outside. As I progress along with my project, I am hoping the strangeness starts to become more apparent.
You identify smaller based 3d objects and assets in your action plan, this could be a focus where you experiment, analyse, interrogate individual 3D elements, instead of bringing them altogether in a 3D world.
I do have a plan to do this, mainly as my story narrative will involve the smaller 3D objects such as the clock and mug, and I want to experiment with how I can apply them into the 3D and 2D combination ideas.
The design of your digital space is really coming into form, allowing us to imagine our own narratives and depict how your question will eventually be positioned/answered. There is an obvious theme within your work that gives a sense of journey - wonder which relates to your question's link to strangeness. Strangeness enacts a performance of discovery.
It is good to see a perspective around the strangeness that people are starting to see in my game and associating it with journey and wonder, which I hadn't considered. "Strangeness enacts a performance of discovery" is such an exciting way to talk about it and is something I would like to push within my work.
Very interesting to see how different surfaces effect the perception of objects. The house is now a place with heaps of secret portals in relation to the strong altered dimensions. Sound definitely adds a lot. Can you also add sound effects when passing spaces? And design different sound affects for each layers of spaces.
This week I wanted to put sound in to start giving more life to the game's environment; however, I didn't have much time except to play the bird chirping sounds, which seemed to work well for an initial test. My original plan was to have sounds that you would typically hear inside playing but would switch when you went outside, but I think it would be good to have different and maybe unusual versions of sounds in some of the other rooms/spaces.
Such a cool design and you can tell the effort you put into your craft. I think really utilising the time to just advance the designs would be the next step.
Feedback like this makes me feel like I am on the right track; there are always plans for me to do more within my game but knowing whether the initial works are working well is good.
The strangeness is definitely coming through! Each week your ideas become more alive in the work you show.
Each week it becomes more apparent that everyone views strangeness differently. Some feedback has asked for more evident manifestations, while others have enjoyed the strange elements already coming through. I see this as a good thing as it means I can do more, and as everyone perceives things differently, my ideas are still coming off well to some.
I love how far you've come in making a functional game! Going through the paintings is rad as f**k. I like the graphic design of that room (white with black lines) I think it would be good to continue this look further because it fits your research question really well!
I plan to work on the black and white rooms as I know these will be a solid focal point with the switching between the 3d and 2d rooms. And I want to start exploring more of that aesthetic with smaller objects and start the trials of switching those rather than just the entire rooms.
Strangeness in 2d/3d environment within games. Very good made, is it possible to add a transition when a player touches the photo frame on the wall? Maybe that can help give a sense of strangeness via visual language?
At the moment, the transitions between walking to the photo and being placed in the environment are pretty harsh, so I will try and look into the kind of transitions I could implement. However, I am not sure how successful it would be in adding any sense of strangeness, but I will look into it.
You've done well to add sound to it. It becomes disconcerting how loud the birds are when you're in the house, it's good! As you develop I look forward to you adding more and more strangeness. You may want to slow down the sun cycle because it seems a bit too fast with no colour change (otherwise if you can add that orange-y hue it is all good as it is). Doing good!
I think sounds are something I could play around with more, maybe in the different environments or scenes. Currently, the speed of my day to night cycle has been fast for showing purposes only, but I have had the idea around playing with the speed changing in certain environments based on other feedback I received.
Your work is quite accessible to understand - in terms of writing. You have done a great and honest reflection of practice, although by looking at the artefact showcased this week, I would have said that you have done plenty of work. Would love to understand more about the link of your question and the artefact. Forgive my lack of knowledge but at times thinking about 3D my mind goes into a different type of interface, could there be a new way to phrase your question? So keen to see how the game progresses! Would be cool to know about the rules and what the aim of the game is!
Unfortunately, due to everyone having different practice backgrounds, the meaning of words and processes within game design can be different to others and vice versa. I'm not sure what type of 3d interface is meant, so I can't fully comment on whether it would help to rephrase that aspect of my question. I need to start thinking about the precise aim of my game as right now, I am primarily focused on the project itself and view it mainly as a straightforward narrative type game.
I think that the fact that the shadows are moving quite fast creates a sense of strangeness especially as shadows don't move that fast/quickly. The use of bird sounds indicates to me that there are life forms and the lack of sounds from an urban perspective indicates to me that human's are not present and this to me also conveys a sense of strangeness.
As I had feedback before that mentioned the day-night cycle and was going too fast, this feedback thinks it adds to the strangeness factor I am thinking of playing around with different speeds in different environments. It is also an interesting perspective that the lack of other sounds from a more urban landscape creates strangeness to the viewer.
Question - strangeness in a game using 2d + 3d strategies. As you develop your final statement it would be good to understand how this "strangeness" has been manifested in the world you have created (the spaces/the objects/the sounds/the surface treatments/the furnishings).