Week Twelve

Week 12: Interaction

One of the most important tasks I am pursuing this week is creating more interesting interactions. I want doors to open, water to move, lights to flicker and radios to play. These components will make the game more interactive and change the players relationship to the space by making them have a greater effect on the space. I am using visual and sound effects that are triggered by the player position. Colliders are used to check if the player has interacted with an object and play effects related to the collision with that particular object. For example, the player knows they have collected a key because of the sound it makes and the kicked up dust where the key was picked up from.

I am also adding audio to objects within the scenes and using box colliders to trigger the audio when the player approaches a specific position within the environment. This triggered audio adds another dimension of life to the environment. I am using a combination of audio from free sound websites and public domain audio from internet achieves. I will be including the specifics in a credits menu that can be accessed in the game. The audio sources will come from objects such as a radio, television, fireplace, and water. These sounds will work together to create a more convincing sense of space.

I continue to add objects into the various scenes that will support the overarching narrative. I am struggling with being able to express my narrative to the audience without giving too much away and being too prescriptive. The ambiguous quality of the story may not come through as well in a video game as it would in another mediums so I am working on adding a level of specificity to the spaces. I am focusing on which details add the most to the narrative so I can focus my energy on those rather than unnecessary elements. My solution to this issue is using handwritten notes in the scenes that give the player a sense of what they should be doing as well as hints to the overall storyline.

This time next week I will be showing the project at the Bridging Disciplines Program Poster Session on April 18th from 2:00 to 4:00pm in Main 212 at The University of Texas at Austin (the building surrounding the Tower). I will have some of the oil paintings and photography I used for the materials in the environment as well as the game itself running on my laptop for people to interact with!