Project Overview
In this project, our group is making a 3D First-Person-Perspective two-player local online asymmetrical game.
The imaginary setting is based in the surrealistic game world. Player A's goal(Seeker) is to catch the opponent player B(Wanderer), while Player B needs to try all effort avoiding being caught in the limited time.
Screen shot of the scene setting from our game.
Design Inspirations and Concept
The game embodies a core mechanic of reversing gravity, allowing players to wonder around the scene of "Parallel Worlds".
Our inspiration of gameplay mechanics come from the sci-fi movies "Inception" and "Spiderman", and through coding we are offering the players a magical opportunity to fly and traverse through parallel/opposite worlds.
The idea of broken worlds puts our sensations in the imaginary world. The mesmerizing illusions alter our perceptions, and our team was intrigued by this idea of mine and we work collaboratively to bring it to reality.
Screen shot from Movie "Spiderman: No Way Home" with spectacular scene design.
The scene of broken worlds from the movie inspirations.
Collaboration and Development
As a team, Runzhe was in charge of sound and audio design with Unity, Jasmine was engaged with scenery modeling and Unity mechanics coding, while I was the conceptual organizing, Arduino controller mechanics, and assets modeling.
To present a sense of familiarity in the alternative reality, we decided to build our setting with a pixelized style. I successfully recreated our Univercity center building and it is the attention of the whole scene.
The scene was designed based on our cityblock located in the heart of Manhattan where metropolitan vibe plays a major role.
Parsons University buidling in New York.
Experimentation and Testing
Prototyping, playtesting, and improvement are crucial to the project as we able to make the user interaction smoother, more logical and simpler. Then we are able to use OSC connection to bridge the communication between devices.
Above is the screent shot prototying of rival players' POV with represented color themes.
Photo of playtesting, and yep that is me playing the right-side computer.
Basic physciall controller created using Arduino.
Improving the Design
The scene was well established and the gameply mechanism was fully functional at this stage of the process. However, our group decided to take it to the next step by casting a special filtering and lighting to the scene to make it more "dream" sense oriented.
The scene with twisted city from movie "Inception" became the direct inpiration of mine and I decided to improve the map scene by design in a similar way.
These are inspirations for our improvement for a better "solitude" mood for the audience.
These are inspirations for our improvement for a better "city" and "cyberpunk" mood for the audience.
Delivering and Play
To simplify the control complexity of the gameplay and keep the physical input as less as possible , I proposed to use only one joystick with one button. In this way it allows players to be more engaged with the scenery and interaction other than pressing countless buttons.
The mechanics of avatar movement, camera viewing, catching action, and gravity flick are all being modified to fit in to one joystick and a button interaction: "Joystick scrolling" controlls camera viewing, avatar auto-runs in the forward direction, "Joystick Pressing" controlls the capture action, and the independent button controlls the gravity flip maneuver.
Side by side screenshots from players' POVs.