Story
On Wednesday, I was unable to sleep due to a strong urge to create a new, different project. “Trying To Laugh At This” is a self-narrated, interactive experience about overcoming trauma with laughter. Players lasso fears into tiny tv’s, turn the volume down, and play a laugh track over them. As the game progresses, the fears become more difficult to maneuver and harder to laugh at.
Aesthetic
I began pairing cartoonish models with possessed particles to embody my sense of innocence lost and dull fury. Unicorns represent purity, and are said to protect virgins. In this story, I am considering recasting them as allies asserting a sort of purity that cannot be lost. I think the unicorn might need to be more realistic to convey sincerity.
Graphics
The core visual palette derives from a performant sandstorm of particles, which coalesces to form 3D animations and disperses again, as if with a mind of its own. I began with making a shader to collapse verts onto the floor:
To form particles, I began with converting the mesh topology to points. But this was not bright enough (it’s just rendering 1px per vert), too dependent on the machine (1px looks different on different machines), and too inflexible (I want to play with size easily).
Currently, I’m creating a new mesh of quads - one for each vert - on the cpu side.
Audio
Voiceover and sound design carries this story. The audio gives context to visuals, which embody memories and cognitive behavior. Sound design roots the player in realistic events which have been augmented with remembrance. A regular person may be represented as a giant whose voice shakes the land like thunder.
Psychological states express themselves as the weather, using a sea of particles and filtered sounds of nature to create storms and calm.
Distribution
I would still like to distribute this piece about conquering fears in high schools as well as via traditional online outlets. I would like to partner with school guidance counselors and speak more directly to overcoming adverse power dynamics in many spheres - engineering being one of them.
LA VR Time Machine, week 5
That morning energy is powerful. I'm trying to build habits of tapping into it, especially on hot days in LA with no AC. If you work from home, it can be pretty maddening. I've been grappling with that, resurgent back pain, a deadline for a separate game project, and going through the paperwork-intense hiring process for an upcoming job. Lots of work and challenges, but getting through it. This week will be good and make steady, tangible progress from the past week.
I love how we can have ideas of what a digital experience might be like in our head, but it isn't until we start constructing it that we quickly realize fundamental things about it. I've been looking around at 360 street view photos in Google Maps. Apparently it's hard to download them. But they're a good reference to try and pick a spot and consider what is visible and not and at what proportions in any given photo. Maybe this can help me pick out precise locations before going out to the field? Maybe I should just go and start shooting photos and not overthink it.
In the mean time, I want to make some tangible progress, so I thought I'd do a sketch of a spot in LA I want to include.
Left: 3rd st tunnel in 1901 Right: 3D sketch
Snapshot of the 3rd street tunnel today
OK, so I spent ~30 minutes and sketched out a 3D scene. I didn't want to spend too much time on detail since everything will probably change. What did I learn from this exercise? The proportions and perspective are gonna factor in big time. Do I exaggerate proportions to make it more interesting to look at from specific spots, or do I try to keep everything as "accurate" and proportionate as possible which might be a ton more work and not look as cool. Hmmm...We will see. I'm really gonna make an effort to go out and shoot some 360 photos this week. It's gonna be a heat wave, so I gotta go in the morning. Until next week.
Week 5
This week our HUMANO team are working really hard on the environments, lighting, and the train models.
We also started our characters design / 3D modeling / Rigging
Soon we will have everything ready to be programed and animated!!!
In the mean time, these are our reference photos.
This week our HUMANO team are working really hard on the environments, lighting, and the train models.
We also started our characters design / 3D modeling / Rigging
Soon we will have everything ready to be programed and animated!!!
In the mean time, these are our reference photos.
Step 1: pen and paper are my favourite tools to start with when trying to create something. This is a sketch I created of what our "campfire" scene could look like. Later I started modelling it ...
Introduction
These past few weeks have been about experimenting with WebVR, Aframe, and Mozilla HUBs server side WebRTC/Janus implementationsto create a starting point for own socialVR platform. The team now has a [relatively]clear idea of how to proceed; and the beauty of working with others is starting to show as individuals contribute their expertise to the project (and I see commits and pull requests on Git that aren't only my own). This week I have also started conceptualizing the "entry point" or "hub world" to our experience.
Past
This past while has been focusing on setting up the team's environments; and working with them to make sure everyone understands what they are/will be doing as clearly as I can at this time. This has involved setting up our communication and project management tools - and myself having lots of meetings!
Present
This week has focused on conversations with team members, some research, and lots of conceptualizations. I have worked to created a document that explains the impetus for this project, as well as the current direction. Asking team members for their advice on what I have created so far, and relying on their expertise for suggestions has been extremely fruitful - already they have found and fixed many things that could be done better! This has freed me to focus on ideation, and visualizing/documenting what the project over the short, medium, and long term will look like to help everyone better understand the general direction.
I have also started re-mixing the campfire scene we started with to start working out how the "hub world" will look, and what interactions will take place there. This was first time prototyping in Google blocks, thinking it would help visualize scale and composition for a VR project with VR creation tools. Since I am aiming for a low-poly look to keep WebVR performance up it seemed a natural tool to use. As an aside, I found blocks limiting at times, but also powerful in its simplicity. I couldn't see myself using the models it creates immediately in a real-time application due the many bizarre mesh issues I found (i.e. paint stroke separations and extrusion faces inside the model); but I was able to fix these issues in Mayaand it is wonderfully freeing to quickly "sketch" in VR.
Step 2: Starting in Google blocksto quickly prototype the scene I sketched out (beginning of this blog post).
Step 3: Bringing the Google Blocks generated .fbx (thanks Google for using standard formats!) and modifying, cleaning up in Maya.
Step 4: trying out the new world, after many tweaks, within the existing scene previously created by Markus Neuy and Dirk Krause.
https://twitter.com/PlumCantaloupe/status/1026509918080262144 ;
(video of two users moving around new campfire space)
Future
This next bit will focus on working with the storyteller to have a narrative we can start thinking about, and have some environments that our 3D modeller can start working on. Additionally, I will work with my front-end and back-end developers to start making the web platform a bit more concise and user-friendly, and I will continue to work on the hub world and start prototyping some social interaction ideas I have been ruminating on.
Lots to do, but the direction feels good.
Dev Blog - Week 5
Hello again Folks,
This has been a productive week of development on my project BHX1619.
This week I focused on my pitch deck, refining my budget, key art assets and designing the tutorial for my experience.
In my opinion, when creating a narrative driven VR experience that involves player interaction, it must be handle with care. The player/visitor must be taught the rules of the world and how to interact with it; without being preached to. When the tutorial is treated as an after thought, it could read as hand holding and can often break immersion. While designing the tutorial for my experience, I decided to integrated into the story. The player/visitor will experience the tutorial as a right of passage or a tribal initiation ritual. Only after completing the initiation you will be able to enter. This technique doesn’t work for all VR experiences but for the experience that I’m designing, I think it fits well.
Quick lighting test
Minimalist Loading screen
Goals for week 6
Finish pitch deck and budget
Play test with dialog and story pacing
Create VFX particle system and shaders for gesture based combat system
Create virus/enemy particle system and shaders
Design and development puzzle interactions
Mocap and character animation
Project Locomoto Development Blog #6:
Saving, Loading, Editing
Hi Launchpad,
This week has been about creating a saving/loading/editing system for Cosmonote to allow for rapid iteration of game mechanics. I also played around with a first pass at the logo:
Here's a video of the saving/loading/editing system, as well as me playing a few test songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TvIN88C-_8&feature=youtu.be
As usual, more information, including how I created this saving/loading system, can be seen on this week's Medium blog update: https://medium.com/@projectlocomoto/developer-blog-6-e3cafcba1cde
Thanks folks, see you all next week!
Charles Niu
