INTERACTIVE COLLAGE
NO AI WAS USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS PROJECT
(INFORMATION IS SHOWN BELOW IMAGES AS OPPOSED TO ABOVE)




WEEK 1: INTRO, IDEAS, MOOD

 
MOOD BOARD 1: style
The purpose of this mood board is to display the black and white almost hand drawn visual style that I think would be great for this project. (You don’t need incredible artistic technical skills to take a free stock image and threshold it, this allows us to prototype with visual aid very quickly which will be essential for our first project.)



 MOOD BOARD 2: substance
The purpose of this mood board is to display the iconic elements of Stephen King’s The Shining + ancient Chinese art style as this relates to both greg and I.  For me, The Shining was the first piece of media that made me want to pursue art and create surreal psychological work and for greg, his ethnicity is Chinese and we all admire the style of Chinese traditional work. We will try to incorporate Tristan’s identity into the project next.

WEEK 2: FIRST CONCEPTS

I am hoping to be responsible for the elevator scene. I would also like to take on the confusing responsibility of setting up the navigation functions to change scene + main menu



CONCEPT OF NAVIGATION/MOVEMENT SYSTEM

Interactions
  • START BUTTON PLAYS BLOOD ANIMATION
  • HANDS CHANGE POSE WHEN MOUSE IS OVER INTERACTIBLE
    (2 HAND STATES)
  • ELEVATOR BUTTON PANEL CAMERA CHANGE
  • ELEVATOR BUTTON PANEL FLOOR SELECT
  • ABILITY TO STEP FORWARD ONCE DOORS HAVE OPENED

Assets
  • HANDS (IDLE, SELECT)
  • ELEVATOR WALLS
  • ELEVATOR PANEL
  • ELEVATOR PANEL CLOSE UP (EMISSION SHADERS??)
  • EDITED VERSION OF BLOOD ELEVATOR MOVIE SCENE AS CUTSCENE
  • ELEVATOR DING, FOOT STEP, WOOSH, AND ELEVATOR DOOR OPEN SOUND EFFECTS


A quick intro mockup I made in premiere pro displaying a main menu, elevator, and intro cutscene concept in order to convey some visual ideas to the group.



WEEK 3: CONCEPT DEVELOPMENTS



MOOD BOARD 3The purpose of this mood board is to define and develop a potential art style for the project. All of these assets are made using digitally manipulated imagery from the movie in photoshop.






JACK FROM THE SHINING RUNNING FRAMES Imagery that could be used as a loading icon, character animation sprites,  etc.





SIMPLE FIRST PERSON HAND ANIMATION SPRITE SHEET14 multi-purpose frames that can be used for numerous interactions.





INTERACTION INDICATOR Sprite sheet for an ON HOVER animation potentially displaying as the cursor?


WEEK 4 : ASSET DEVELOPMENTS


Here is a video containing around 20 different first person hand animations we can cut up and use as potential assets for our interactive collage.


HAND EXPERIMENT


This is an animation video I have created using photoshop, premiere pro, and ableton live, to experiment with hands and movement even further.


Some resource images used in the making

WEEK 5 : REFINING ASSETS

INTRO CUTSCENE (ON LAUNCH)

WARNER BROS LOGO
AVG BROS PARODY LOGO 
(MADE IN PHOTOSHOP)



BACKGROUND AND UI CREATION



ITEM/INTERACTIVE CREATION
SOURCE IMAGERY (STOCK IMAGES)


  


HIGHLIGHTED OBJECTS (ON HOVER/READY)



SCENE CHANGE FUNCTIONALITY WORKING IN UNITY
WEEK 6: PAIN

THE SITUATION

In week 6 I ran into a major issue with the group aspect of our project. I had come up with the idea, plan for execution, and 90% of the assets so far. I didn’t mean for this to happen and I was overly open to any thoughts of changing these details. Though I was able to achieve all of these things up until now, I didn't have the technical ability to stitch all of our projects together to submit. Figuring out how to do this ended up consuming a HUGE amount of my time, but since it was the priority I had to focus on it. The result of this was not having enough time to finish my own scenes. I communicated with my team mates asking why I had to stitch the works along with all the other things I had done, but it was too late. They had already submitted their own works
WHY THIS WON’T WORK

I just couldn’t figure out how to implement the animations I worked so hard to create AND the interaction system for my own scene wouldn’t work as I have never coded in a game engine before (Only experience with RPG maker, and some game maker studio, Neither of which use C/C#). In reality my scope is too large, I was aiming for a 2D point and click styled game with First person elements which is way too obscure to find resources on. The issue is that I want to design games in a very experimental way. I am primarily an artist so it pains me to create very simple projects, both visually and conceptually. But this is necessary sometimes.
WHAT I’M GOING TO DO

I AM GOING TO DO DILIGENT RESEARCH AND PLANNING UNTIL I HAVE NOT ONLY THOUGHT OF A REALISTIC-TO-SCOPE AND VISUALLY ACCEPTABLE INTERACTIVE COLLAGE IDEA BUT EXECUTED IT TO THE LEVEL I AM HAPPY WITH. THIS IS MY FIRST GAME SO I NEED TO WORK INCREDIBLY HARD TO SHOW MY POTENTIAL, I CANNOT LET ANYTHING SLOW ME DOWN AS I SOMEDAY HOPE TO DESIGN A CATALOG OF VIDEO GAMES OOZING WITH STYLE, HOLDING CHARM, CHARACTER, AUTHENTICITY, AND OBSCURITY. I BELIEVE THESE THINGS ARE IN A DIRE DROUGHT FROM THE INDUSTRY IN RECENT YEARS.


WEEK 7+8: REDEMPTION

IDEA
I would like to keep the previous idea I had of collecting items in order to complete the game. A chest,  a key, and an axe is what I need in order to recreate the famous “HERES JOHNNY” bathroom scene. But this time I will use a simple pixel art 2D style, with point and click navigation, and a side-on-view to avoid unnecessary complexity. First I need to find or create a code base for my game.

NEW SYSTEM



With this tutorial, among numerous others I managed to LEARN AND EXECUTE the baseline of code I needed for my project to work. This process was also heavily supported by frustration, determination and coffee.


SYSTEMS IMPLEMENTED:

-MAIN MENU SYSTEM

-INTRO CUTSCENE

-SOUND FX MANAGER

-GO TO CLICK

-INTERACTABLES

-INTERACTABLE HINTS

-TAKE/STORE/USE ITEM

-PLAYER + ITEM ANIMATIONS

-SCENE CHANGE


NEW ASSETS:

-SPRITE SHEET

PLAYER ANIMATIONS
-IDLE
-MOVE LEFT
-MOVE RIGHT
-INTERACT
-SPAWN
-BREAK DOOR ANIMATIONS
-WIN GAME

MAP ELEMENTS
-LEFT ROOM IMAGERY
-RIGHT ROOM IMAGERY
-ELEVATOR
-PHOTO + GLOW
-AXE BOX + GLOW
-BATHROOM DOOR + GLOW ANIMATION
-TORN NOTE

ITEMS
-KEY
-AXE
-NOTE

NPCS
-TWINS FROM THE MOVIE + ANIMATIONS
-GIRL IN BATHROOM + ANIMATIONS

SOUND TRACK
BIT CRUSHED, BASS BOOSTED VERSION OF THE MOVIES OST WITH ADDED ATMOSPHERIC ELEMENTS
(CREATED IN ABLETON LIVE)
SOUND FX
BIT CRUSHED, BASS BOOSTED VERSIONS OF SOUND EFFECTS
VOX FROM THE MOVIE (ALSO CREATED IN ABLETON LIVE)

UI
MAIN MENU
INVENTORY UI

PLAY TESTING
I Then asked my younger brother Jordyn, who is a die hard gamer and professional hater to test my game and tell me every single thing that is wrong with it. I believe it is necessary to have other eyes and minds look at your work to show you pros and cons that you couldn't see due to creative tunnel vision. That being said, it is still important to hold onto certain concepts and ideas you feel are necessary in order to correctly convey what you are wanting to in your game.

BUGS/ISSUES/ADJUSTMENTS


ADDING SOUND
I had to make sure the length of all sounds were perfect. Doing this took hours

CORRECTING SPRITE SHEET
The sprite sheet absolutely took the most time + trial and error out of anything in this whole project. It was very tedious moving/ editing sprites by mere pixels in Photoshop, exporting the sheet, replacing the files, and playing the game again until the part I needed to see. only for it to be wrong and the process having to reset.

sorting the sprite sheet out was 80% of this project for me, so I need to focus on streamlining this process in future games.

CREATING END GAME SEQUENCE

DEVELOPMENT VIDEO


FINAL PLAY-THROUGH VIDEO


LIST OF INTERACTIONS:

Photo
Hint: “I AM SO BAD AT WRITING THAT I HAVE TO KILL MY WIFE”
Item Required: N/A
Item Given on Success: N/A

Hallway
Hint: “I NEED A GOOD REASON TO LOOK FOR HER THIS WAY”
Item Required: NOTE
Item Given on Success: GAME END

Elevator
Hint: “I CAN’T USE THIS ELEVATOR, IT IS FILLED TO THE BRIM WITH BLOOD”
Item Required: N/A
Item Given on Success: N/A

Axe Shaped Box
Hint: “I NEED A KEY TO OPEN THIS”
Item Required: KEY
Item Given on Success: AXE

Bathroom Door
Hint: “I NEED AN AXE:
Item Required: AXE
Item Given on Success: NOTE

Key
Hint: N/A
Item Required: N/A
Item Given on Success: KEY


FINAL REFLECTION



I am unbelievably relieved that I didn't give up and successfully created an interactive collage that has a full start to finish loop matching the theme we started with, featuring well over 5 Interactions, Items, Music and sound effects, UI, AND IT WORKS!

This is my first fully playable game so I learnt a ridiculous amount of information about not only unity, but game development in general. I am already experiencing the games I play very differently. The same way learning an instrument makes you hear sound differently, and how learning to paint makes you view colour and form differently. The feeling of the unknowing is what draws me to an art form. once I learn enough, the magic of unknowing fades. I know the techniques involved in achieving what i’m viewing. This feeling is addicting to me. I want to know how everything works and how I can do it myself. This allows me to accurately judge and view the media and art I consume and create.

I am pleased that this project brought me one step closer to this goal.

Unfortunately the team part of the project didn't go to plan which caused a bit of exhaustion but at the end of the day all of these things are learning experiences that we grow and learn from. In the future I will wait for one of my group mates to come up with an idea before we build upon and develop something, ensuring to include the ideas and efforts of my peers. And I will make sure that I do not take on too many of the tasks for the group instead, equally distributing the work load. I am very excited for the future.

Thank you very much! I hope the game is enjoyable

Ethyn :D




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