RRCP

April 4th
Get emotive software installed and do a test run
Complete IRB Training
Lit review – what work has been done?
Install Sketchup and do a tutorial

April 11
Take Python training
Choose Google warehouse rooms to start from
Draft study design and questions
Draft IRBb

April 18
Test emotive + cave setup
Finish training on necessary skills

April 25
Finalize study design and questions
Finalize dates and times
Begin recruiting

May 2
Run tests

May 9
Iterate on test design if necessary
Begin writing report

May 16
Final polishing and submission

Contingency plan:
We’ve started with a fairly small core project design, leaving room to grow as time allows. If we experience problems, we’re actively logging possible avenues for assistance, including forums, DoIT technical training, and so on.

Team Vex Prototype

Team Vex:

Before break we split up the task of researching the different possibilities, we were considering for our project.

Giang – was tasked with researching Portal 2 level creation as an option

Cory – was tasked with researching Garry’s Mod level creation as an option

Jacob – followed up on the research to create a fully custom game

Accomplishments:

Due to existing commitments, the time left in the semester, and a desire to complete the project on time we decided to prototype a few levels in the Portal 2 level creator that would test the game concept and then to move on to create a full Garry’s Mod Gamemode using custom scripts.

Giang was unable to research Portal 2 level creation as the level editor requires the game. Jacob downloaded the level editor and made an example game.

Problems:

Are we still on schedule? Yes. The project is still on schedule.

Garry’s Mod may not actually allow the portals to be transparent.

Media:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/guitarboy667/myworkshopfiles?appid=620

Revisions from plan from March 14th:

At this point, it seems unlikely that we will complete a fully custom game, but considering the fact that I already completed a Portal 2 level, there may be some hope.

Weekly Plans:

4/4: Team members spend time learning to create Portal maps and
familiarizing themselves with Garry’s Mod Gamemodes. The latter involves
learning Lua.

4/11: Set up a basic Gamemode with the correct rules. Set up Oculus Rift
compatibility.

4/18: Work on including portals into the Gamemode.

4/25: Finish working on portals. Design and include different maps for the
game.

5/2: Finishing touches on the game.

5/9:

Contingency plans:

We already finished a Portal 2 level, so just turning that in would be a contingency plan. Ultimately, we can pivot to any interesting game on the Garry’s Mod platform.

Rapid room color prototyping

Project description: by using the cave to rapidly prototype colors and patterns in rooms, we can more easily measure the effects on people’s moods with the assistance of the Emotive and questionnaires.

Group Skills:

SOHEYLA: I am familiar with some computer modelling software and colour theory.

Caroline: I have experience in computer programming

Olivia: I have Design skills

Examples of room colors

Group To do:

  • Read about Emotiv

  • Begin to write an IRB

  • Take human subjects training here (about an hour)

  • Learn about IRBs

Team Vex

Team name: Vex (Virtual EXperience. Clever, I know)
Jacob Hanshaw, Corey Groom, Giang Nguyen

Equipment: Oculus Rift

General Description:

We want to build a multi-player virtual experience. Creating immersion through story and emotion is likely too complex for class and requires more assets. As such our experience will likely focus on action.

Skills:

Jacob- General Programming, Unity and C# Experience

“I’m confidant that I can design a good game, create environments, and use general physics.”

Corey- General Programming
Giang- General Programming

Challenges:

Creating realistic character models is a monumental task in and of itself. Animating them correctly and avoiding uncanny valley is a million dollar industry.

Online real-time multiplayer is one of the biggest challenges in computer science today. It involves keeping multiple complex physics systems in perfect synchronization.

Creating and using portals properly is something that a lot of the smartest programmers in the world (at Valve) spent a lot of time doing and released research papers about. Making a seamless transition from one place to another is hard. The portal must show the proper perspective to potentially multiple people looking at it. Without perspective differences it will be a painting instead of a window. Also, the transportation must be seamless or other players will notice the portal. This means that the player must be in two places at once while transitioning through the portal. If in one place or the other, then there will be a discontinuity in the player’s body.

Creating an FPS by itself means unique gun holding physics, gun animations and reloads, and shooting physics. Shooters in particular are hard for real-time online multiplayer games as they require precise timing.

What is your first step:

Research!

I researched these concepts and found that there are existing libraries that may help abstract some of the harder details of this project. Though experts with one of the tools said it would take 2 weeks to make a simple offline FPS level, so this project may still be significantly out of scope.

Option B:  A God Among Men game without portals
Option C: A God Among Men game without portals or internet
Option D: Create levels for Portal 2 and play them on the Rift (Likely actually possible!)

Games:

Runner and Gunner

RunnerAndGunner

Runner and Gunner takes inspiration from Mirror’s Edge, Portal, The Matrix, and Inception to create a novel gameplay experience.

The idea is that there are two players:

A runner whose goal is to get to a predetermined location as soon as possible. The runner can see and turn off or on pre-existing portals placed around the world.

A gunner whose goal is to shoot the runner. The gunner may get trapped in a certain area due to portal placement. It is the gunner’s job to notice when they are trapped and take control of another person around the runner.

Potential features and difficulty adjustments could involve allowing players to place portals, making the runner’s goal a moving target, giving the runner multiple goals, limiting the number of portals a runner can use, changing the runner’s speed, adding camera shake to the gunner’s gun when moving, limiting the gunner’s ammo, showing the gunner the runner’s target(s) or not, allowing the gunner to destroy the runner’s target(s), etc.

Chill AKA Fiend AKA Horror Game
or
A God Amongst Men

HorrorGame

Other ideas are to create a game (Chill) to scare the Occulus Rift user. This design is more iterative as a scary game could be created, then another player controlling the scariness locally could be added, and finally the game could be made online multiplayer.

The final idea is that Chill could be slightly distorted to a mythology style game where players fight ginormous enemies. The optional extra player could then control the enemy, add extra enemies, or provide aid in the form of power-ups.

Music Visual Team

Name is TBD

We are playing to create semi-interactive 3D music video. We will have specific song that the visuals play to, an ideally have it loop multiple times. As of now we are hoping to build a series of shapes, displaying on a black/white/neutral background, that adapt according to the music. A possibility we are also discussing is having the music adjust according to the user’s movements.

General inspiration video: SYNESTHESIA

We have some experience in music production, hopefully enabling us to adjust our sound according. Overall we also know general programming, which will make the starting process easier. Also a background in design, which may make creating the patterns easier.

All of us are pretty unfamiliar with making 3D objects and using the CAVE and Rift systems.

UPDATE for 3/28

Song has been decided, can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/samarmus/hack-original-mix-soundcloud

Simon went through the tutorials for Open GL and feels confident about working with it but has yet to experiment with it. Wondering if we need to use Open AL for audio. We plan to experiment with the program on Friday (3/28)

Timeline:

Fri 4/2 – Have basic graphics introduced

Fri 4/9 – Music analysis programmed

Fri 4/16 – Have the basic model completed, following weeks will be spent adding on any effects

 

 

Project Posts

For class Friday, March 14, make a post containing

  • Your team name
  • A description of what you want to do
  • Concept art (at least one image)
  • Added: What equipment you plan to use
  • A description of what you think you know how to do
  • A description of things you are less sure you know how to do
  • What is your first step

After March 14, we will have weekly project posts.  These posts should contain:

  • What each individual in the group worked on over the last week
  • A description of the accomplishments made
  • A description of the problems encountered
  • An analysis whether or not the project is still on schedule
  • Plans for the upcoming week
  • Finally, include at least one piece of media related to your work (image, video, audio, etc)

Additionally, for class Friday, March 28, make a post containing

  • Any revisions to the plan from March 14th
  • A timeline of weekly milestones through the end of the semester
  • Fallback plans / contingencies (i.e. what will you do if things don’t go as planned?)

Project Brainstorm

Here are some notes from our class discussion today.  Please post comments as to which projects you would be interested on working on and feel free to add in more information.  We will determine project teams next week.

Idea 1: Alteration of Physical Spaces

Enable the rapid prototyping physical spaces, simulate visual impairments, and simulate different users (such as child height).

Idea 2: Virtual Experiences

Simulate virtual creatures such as from the film the Birds, virtual zombies, murder mysteries or to create the feeling of what it is like to be chased.  Could also be for education, such as with the Magic School Bus.  Finally, create the experiences seen in video games.

Idea 3: Create an Augmented Reality Visualization

Overlay virtual stats onto a virtual map.  Visualize large amounts of data in 3D.  Create immersive visualizations of music.  Create a GPS based AR game.

About the projects
The idea for projects for the class is to generate a working prototype by the end of the semester.  This means that the project need more be a proof of concept than a refined product.  We will have weekly progress posts that will demonstrate each group and individuals efforts and progress.  At this point is perfectly acceptable to aim high and scale back later.