Items that we need:

Projector

Speakers

Product

We created a creative and open ended game with a focus on the themes of creation and the transience of life. We used Photoshop to create and edit game assets, the Unity Game Engine to run the game, Darwiinremote to provide the user interface, and Github to facilitate collaboration between group members.

Intention

Our intention in the making of our project was to illustrate the dangers of 'playing god' through an interactive virtual environment, that with time, begins to fall apart at the seams.  We seemed to have been mostly satisfied with our idea, as it changed very little throughout the design process. We did have the idea of using the Kinect motion capture device as part of our final product, but this fell through due to time constraints. 

Context

Our group was inspired by pieces that blur the line between creator and created. "hello.World", a project featured in Carnegie Mellon's "Building Virtual Worlds" class (taught by the late Randy Pausch), was our primary inspiration. Other works that helped us determine a final product include the popular Flash animation series "Animator vs Animation" as well as a trailer for an interactive dance performance using the Microsoft Kinect. The final product is similar to such games as Minecraft and Garry's Mod, in that the player is encouraged to create as well as explore the limits of his power, while also having no explicit goal towards which to work.

Process

Christine: I wrote the input script (reading in the Wiimote input) and the game manager which controlled the entire game and decided what received which input. I also created the tree and building creators and actual trees and buildings. I caused the clouds to actually rain and put in the background music. 

Roger: I worked on creating the scripts which allowed the user to interact with the world with the wiimote. This included animating the clouds coming in and causing the screen to darken when you turn the controller. I also wrote scripts to cause the "rain" shapes to animate properly and designed the frameworks to allow for object selection and interaction. Lastly, I worked on the components that gave our objects sound effects, and made fine tuning adjustments for the final product.

Yijing: The environmental sprites in the game--the sun, trees, and buildings, were composed in Adobe Photoshop. I additionally used Unity to compile Brandon's animations. A primary challenge I had with this project was amassing a large number of art assets in what was comparatively a small amount of time--especially when I also had to work outside my comfort zone in terms of art style. I used a blend of real media and scratched work to create sprites that were detailed yet stylized, and that seems to work well with the overall concept of the piece well.

Brandon: I borrowed a Wacom Intuos drawing tablet to use in conjunction with Photoshop. I traced frames from a Mario spritesheet to make the character sprite. I then hand drew animations for the two states of the shapes: living and dead. I intended the living animation to give the impression of a heart beating or breathing. Other the other hand, I wanted to have the 'death' animation to give the impression of accelerated decay.

Collaboration

We brainstormed the conceptual parts of our project in class, and we set up times to meet and work together as a group outside of class on 11/22/15 and 11/23/15. We discussed in person how our project should work, and we were able to synthesize a multimedia performance by combining our skills.

Roger and Christine both worked on implementing the game itself. They both used Unity and a Wiimote and implemented the artwork and sound that Yijing and Brandon created.

Yijing organized (somewhat) meeting times and places, made the buildings and trees, and animated the sprites that Brandon created.

Brandon helped by making the animations for the player character as well as the various 'living' shapes he creates as part of the game. He also condensed the animations into spritesheets for use in Unity, and appropriated  the music.

Reflection

When we playtested the piece, we found that while initially impressive, the ability to change the world to our liking was a shallow experience. After the initial experience of seeing trees and buildings come into existence, we see that that's all we can do before everything decays again. Trying to keep the world interesting becomes less enjoyable and more of a chore--and this was exactly what we had intended.

If we had the chance to redevelop this project, we would have implemented more dynamic scenery for the player to interact with. For example, our light system is pretty one-dimensional, and we would liked to add better lighting to give our world depth. We also could have created custom music that suited our needs rather than take pieces from other works. Also, the Wiimote sucks, so if we could have used something else (like the Kinect), then we would have used that instead. However, the Wiimote was something that Christine already knew how to use, so it suited our time constraint.

Attribution

Textures used in sprites

Plants:

http://www.123rf.com/photo_20351680_green-leaves-wall-texture-background-fukien-tea-tree.html

http://ivangraphics.deviantart.com/art/Tree-bark-texture-pattern-208493997

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/757181

http://bgfons.com/download/220

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/378246

https://bisonwoman.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/photo-challenge-texture/

Skyline shapes:

http://www.clipartbest.com/free-clip-art-new-york-city-skyline-silhouette

Skyline textures:

http://www.3dtexture.net/img-skyscraper-297.htm

https://creativemarket.com/TravelStock/261573-Windows-of-a-Skyscraper-Texture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_State_Building

http://texturelib.com/#!/category/?path=/Textures/buildings/buildings

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/575334921119010042/

http://texturepilot.com/textures/512/Skyscraper

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Learning

Music:

http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJHJze0ui5c

https://www.freesound.org/people/blue2107/sounds/59978/

Mario Spritesheet:

http://www.spriters-resource.com/fullview/53664/