Interactive storytelling, Art game

YOUR STORY

Group project for Interactive Storytelling (2720GFS)

The intention is to create a multi-platform game (mobile phone, tablet, desktop, console) where the player creates/explores a life story through a series of senarios.

Each team member focused on:
Tristan Griffin(s5006448) – Role : Game designer
Orson Lord(s2894493) – Role: Art designer
Jacob Fuller(s2937942) – Role: Producer and Programmer
See pages for individual contributions, located at the top of each page.

LINK TO PROTOTYPE

Page contents
Tagline............................................................................................................ Tristan
Back story and context..................................................................................Tristan
Synopsis..........................................................................................................Tristan
Plot points.......................................................................................................Tristan
Characterisation and attitude.......................................................................Tristan
Scripts..............................................................................................................Tristan

Tagline

"Memories are special moments that tell our story"

Back story and context

We have all experienced those turning points in our lives. When a decision or event re-defines and shifts the course of our life. Never underestimate the smallest event.
A priest once saved a four year old boy from drowning, that boy was Adolf Hitler ( warhistoryonline.com 2015 )
The ones we choose are usually exciting and filled with anticipation: a wedding, a new career, a family started, a move made. All change the course of events in our lives from that day on and we step willingly into them.
It’s the other events that haunt us, the life changing events that we are plunged into without choice or warning. Individual crisis that most everyone eventually gets a turn at. The call that a loved one is dying, an accident that changes life forever, a diagnose, a breakup, a job loss all change the course of life from that moment on and we find individuals forging on in places they have not stepped willingly.
We can either keep on cruising on the same old track, or we can veer off path and forge our own trail. We re-define our future and write a brand new script for our life ? Sometimes you will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory. Because in the end all you really have is memories.
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Synopsis

The intention is to create a multiplatform game (mobile phone, tablet, desktop, console) where the player creates/explores a life story through a series of senarios. These senerios/minigames/events are based on Jungian archetypal events: birth, death, separation from parents, initiation, marriage, the union of opposites; And are categorised into the following storyline paths: Leisure, Family, Study, Relationship, Friendship and Career, which reveal and build the players story.
The game is structured around seven stages of life , toddler, child,highschool, young adult, adult, midlife, retirement/old age . It follows/creates the life story of a male character.
In addition to these senarios., each stage of life has a list of random events that have the chance of occuring after each choice is made which further enriches the story generation. These are generally events that would be out of the players control such as the birth of a sibling, parents seperation, sibling/child/parents death, getting fired from work etc.

During the course of the game players select from a possible list of 6 scenarios, one from each life path, depending on which stage of life they are in. After selection of a scenario a window opens where the player is presented with either a video OR an interactive scene. The number of possible selections is limited for each stage of life: 2 for toddler, 4 for primary school age, 6 for high school age, 10 for young adult/adult, 2 for midlife and 4 for retirememt age. The final scene at the end of retirement is the death bed, this is a variable scene where the player is shown with family and friends. Tho thoughout the course of the game the player is not required to make friends, fall in love or have children. So potentially the final scene the player could be alone.

This game takes place in 2015 in the real world, almost as though time has frozen, even tho the events are taking place throughout a life time. What this means is that all technology and locations for all the stages of life in the game are from present day Australia.

Plot points

There are several plot points in the narrative that are fixed. These plot points are based on the players age and acts as transitions between the life stages, for example:

your birth (opening scene)
first day at primary school
first day at high school
young adult
adult
midlife crisis
retirement
death bed (ending scene)

Its important to note that the opening scene varies in who you parents are ( one or two parents and older siblings) and the ending scene changes dramatically depending on the choices you made throughout the game. The young adult and adult transition scenarios vary depending on the choices made leading up to them. The young adult phase has two main paths leading into it, either completion of high school and graduation OR if they left school and took up a trade it will be them completing their traineeship. Also the adult life stage is accessed by either getting married OR by having a child.

Characterisation and attitude

This section will describe specific characters and key personalities in the game/ main story.
The key personalities/characters are based on Jungian archetypes : great mother, father, child, wise old man, wise old woman, the trickster, the hero etc

The family dynamic is generated at the beginning of the game, with a possibility of One or Two parents and or one or two siblings and the set of grandparents at the players birth. There is also a possibility that the parents will get divorced as part of the random events.

If you have both Mother and Father
Stereotypical hetronormative relationship, father is working man (his job is never revealed) wise and calm, stay at home mother (motherly and calm).

if Single mother
Mother works late, but is still always there in times of need.

Older Brother
heroic type, stereotypical jock. Super enthusiastic, above average inteligence, rugged good looks.

Older Sister
Vain , bimbo who only cares about herself, this increases in her teen years and when reaching adult hood she becomes bitter and distant

During the course of the game there is a random event chance up until you are a young adult that a younger brother or sister can be born.

Younger Brother
He strives to play the role of the joker, always getting into trouble, seeking attention and putting himself and others at risk

Younger Sister
Very quiet, she manages to slip under the radar. But shes a genius, always achieving in intellectual persuits.

The best friend
Always happy, satisfied with the simple things in life. He gets picked on at school and as an adult is content in the 9-5 life. Getting married and having kids then grand kids. He is living the australian surburban dream

Love of life .. girlfriend or wife
Your meeting is by chance and sparks fly at first sight. Shes firey and full of life. Creative and ethincally exotic. Shes happy in the home with the kids and surrounded by family and friends.

First child
Takes after you older brother

Second child
Takes after your younger sister

The Boss
Ruthless and arrogant, but driven by some deep down need to succeed. You either want to be him or you hate him.

Scripts

At this stage of development the story has been constructed through the creation of the senario lists for each stage of life and the random event tables.

The following is a link for the downloadable excel spreadsheet which contains the outline for user story development
/uploads/6/3/7/6/63762205/story_line_continued.xls

BELOW ( CLICK IT TO INTERACT) : To view this story outline described in the above file you can dynamically interact with the below window (NOTE: The graphics are for test purposes only and are in no way represent the final product or art style )
RECOMMENDED To view full screen click here

ABOVE: click the "path" icons to proceed with the story, when a single option is given this indicates a key event OR a random event.
When you click on a "path" icon a larger window opens, the window currently only describe the scenario type ( which was inspired by the "Game of Life" action cards) some of the scenarios have further details regarding actions that can be made. These can also be found in the 'Storyboard' and 'User journey' sections of this website.

Page contents

Multi-platform form..........................................Tristan
User journey.......................................................Tristan
Interface ............................................................Tristan

Multi-platform form

This game will be designed for mobile, tablet and desktop/laptop in landscape mode, this will be achieved through responsive architecture. The final game will support for windows, apple and andriod compatability. The controls for the games menus, timeline navigation and scenarios are point and click, with keyboard directional buttons and ESC enabled for desktops and laptops. On mobile devices the menu will be accessible by pressing the back button or function button.

User journey

The following is a diagram which figuratively demonstrates a playthrough of the game storyline prototype from start to finsh with accompanying notes.
RECOMMENDED: view the playthrough in full screen, click the link below: http://artworkprocess.net/interactivestorytelling2015/playthrough/_

Interface

This section is a simple visual description of potential unique elements of the interface, including the thinking behind UI (user interface) and how this influences the design planning. These include the UI for the:

main menu
credits
scenario selection
timeline
scenario popup window
end game window

MAIN MENU (UI)

ABOVE: the main menu is kept as simple as possible, when "begin" is clicked that menu fades to black, and the "birth" scene/scenerio for the game begins. When credits is clicked, this menu fades to show only the background image and text.

Credits (UI)
BELOW: this window stays open for 10 seconds then fades back to the main menu, names are listed alphabetically

Ingame menu (UI )
ABOVE:To access the ingame menu, press ESCAPE on a keyboard , START on a game controller OR the back button on mobile or tablet devices. Selecting CONTINUE will remove the menu, selecting QUIT TO MAIN MENU will return the user to the MAIN MENU (UI)

Scenario selection screen/timeline (UI)

The aesthetic of the timeline and scenario selection screen is inspired by neurological pathways. Each decision and choice is creating/accessing a new pathway.
BELOW: Once the player clicks 'begin' on the main menu , a short "birth" video is played at fullscreen, which then fades to show the timeline scenario selection screen

Timeline (UI)
ABOVE:At any point while the timeline is viewable ( before scenario selection) the player will be able to scroll backwards and forwards to the choices that they have previously made.

Scenario has been selected (UI)
Below: Once a scenario has been selected, which is done by clicking on one of the four "blobs" in the center of the screen, a window will then open up in the middle of the screen where the player will be able to interact with or watch the scene. The type of interaction will depend on the scenario. The below is an example of the "primary school age" life stage, and "fun with family" scenario from the family path. Some scenes have no limit to how long you can stay in them, others are time dependent. This includes random events

End game scene
BELOW: Once the player has moved through all of the scenario screens, they are presented with a final screen, the players death bed. The characters in this screen will depend on the choices they have made throughout the game. IE family members( children, grand children, spouse) friends. There is also the possibility that they will be alone.
On this screen there is also the "social share" button located at the bottom of the screen. Once pressed the image in the center of the screen will be posted to the relevant social network, along with a brief description of their end game. Mostly statistics such as number of children, grand children, things they chose to do such as sports or if they focused on career etc. Its basically an obituary that gets posted to the social networks.
"PLAYER will be remembered... ("for living a long fun filled life" "successful career" "by his many children grand children" "as a family man" "as the life of the party" etc)" the write up will depend on the choices they made during the game. This feature may be removed in the final version of the game

Page contents
Design aesthetic........................................................................................... orson
Branding and design guidelines introduction.................................................... orson
Storyboard and Wireframes................................................................................................ tristan
Style guide, colour and font specs...........................................................orson
Media design styles..................................................................................... orson
Full assets list....................................................................................... orson

Design aesthetic

The visual aesthetics of this game is to create a well designed paper-cutout diorama boxes. It should look like a very neat adult had created this world for children, but that's what it should just look like, not necessarily what the content actually contains (it can be quite mature content).

The memories in this game will be made of a style of dioramas, the reason for this is it allow the game designers to add depth to the memory scenes, a key element in creating interesting worlds the player can enjoy looking at. One of the key elements that can make simple games look great is by giving foreground and background. If I didn't have the option to create a diorama there would be very little in the way of creating a foreground and the background and the scene's would look flat.

The characters in this game are designed very similarly to scribble-naughts or south park style characters in the sense that these figures could be animated traditionally with paper cutout pieces and stop motion. Instead of stop motion programs that use key frames similar to after effects can be used to speed up the process of animating. The reason we went with this character design is that we have to animate a lot of scenes quickly, that the player will only be able to experience a portion of these scenes unless they choose the game+ mode. So in this sense having to animate a large number of scenes, we had to make them as simple to animate as possible. These paper cutout models are by far the easiest and quickest to animate as it doesn't require you to redraw anything (most of the time), instead all you have to do is simply rig these characters and then you should be able to animate them quickly using keyframes or some similar style of animation.

The time this game is set in is 2015 from beginning to end, we don't necessarily want the game time period to change as this would cause a complex number of scenes to change over time.

Branding and design guidelines introduction

Branding throughout the game will be implemented by creating a unique and recognisable art style. This project will mainly be done on a low budget to no budget scale so all branding will have to be done for free.

Branding personality, we want this game to have a consistent tone throughout that everyone who played this game can recognise. The aesthetic we want this game to have is to look like a child designed the game while the games content can be very mature content at points. This contrast is to help evoke an innocence we all yearn for that is pushed by the reality of the world.

The target market for this game is university students of QCA, having such a specific target audience will make targeting our audience a lot easier. For instance, we know that to spread the game through word of mouth we simply need to situate ourselves around QCA campus to get the best coverage. Also, spreading our game through social media will be extremely beneficial in advertising our game, and for free.

Storyboard and Wire frames

This section is designed to be an extension of the user journey. The artwork style is not indicitive of the final product, but instead is to illustrate the functionality of the scenarios, which when the game is brought up to prototype level, will act as a guide for how they are intended to function. The pace and functional aspects of each scenario vary, with the intention to evoke emotions from the player. For example the high school award scenario is intended to evoke awkwardness, as the player is trying to shake hands and take the award at the same time. Every scenarios in the game has been designed to work across all of the platforms taking into consideration commonality of the "click/touch" function.

The following is a gallery of the scenarios which cover some of the choices available from beginning to end, this is not an exhaustive gallery, and is intended as part of a working project. Each frame is described with a line or two covering how the menu, navigation, functional boxes and clickable areas work as well as their placement.

click on the thumbnail to enlarge:

Style guide, colour and font specs

The style of this game is monochromatic black and white the majority of the time, this is too help insinuate that these events had already happened and you are simply playing out a person's memory. To help insinuate that these are memories, old photography film grain could be added. On occasions color can be used in a similar style to Frank Millers Sin City 2005. Examples of when to use selective color would be when clubbing light shades of neon blue and purple can be used, to give the player's partner gold hair to maker her more recognizable from all the other n.p.c.'s.

The Fonts that would work for this game are simple ones, either fonts like Arial, Arial Black or Cambria would work as suitable fonts.

Media design styles

Visual Assets
The visual assets (both characters and environments) used with in this game would entirely be created using digital painting and/or 3d modelling. The reason for this is to allow both a swift turnaround on environments and to give the game a distinctive style unique to itself. To help give the environments style and depth without blowing the amount of time spent creating them, the scenes have to fit into a holo-cube, which is pretty much a diorama box. If the environment would extend past the box's walls, the rest of the background can be painted onto the diorama walls.

Music and Audio
The music in this game is to be subtle and not too noticeable, almost ambient sounds instead of music. This is to help allow the player feel their own emotions as feelings towards certain moments may differ between players, if the music had to evoke some sort of feeling, the best one to aim for is curiosity.
Sounds with long decays and echos would be used when the character is walking between event (in the brain neurons). This is to help give depth to the scene around (as the neurons go on forever into the background). One way to emphasise this depth is to design the players footsteps to have long delays while walking through the brain, it gives the scene a feeling of depth and endlessness.

However, when the player enters a memory, the depth is immediately compacted down, the ambient music will usually be drowned out by the atmos noise presented in the scene (an office will have phone calls and printers while a bar will have noisy drunks and dance music). This helps momentarily break the character from the brain world and quickly set themselves in the memory world they've abruptly been placed in.

Full assets list

Adult person will consist of detachable limbs, The list of all limbs include:

Head
Hair
Face (to be animated then attached)
Neck
Torso
Upper Arm L
Lower Arm L
Hand L
Upper Arm R
Lower Arm R
Hand R
Thigh L
Calf L
Foot R
Thigh R
Calf R
Foot R

As can be seen in the concept sketch, there are small black dots that represent the joints/anchor-points/pins that represent where the pieces are attached together, these pins can either be added to the final art style or left out.

These Limbs are quite easily designed and are interchangeable so it can allow for a large and quick creation of body assets that can be implemented seamlessly. This can allow for two main advantages, one, it will be quick and easy to create other people, and two, it will not be entirely difficult to make the character change just as easy for instance, if the character gets a promotion at work, then maybe his shirt can turn into a suit jacket. only the worse asset would have to change.

Scene List:
This is a full list of diorama boxes that need to be created, as there is so many scenes, it would be quite advantageous to create a bunch of filler assets, for instance, the office (where you work scene) and the scene where you have to vote could be done in the same room but with different filler assets, e.g. the office is in a grey room with desk cubicles while the voting scene is in the same grey room but with red curtained boxes for people to vote :

Personal House, The house needs to be quite interchangeable, it will need to represent the players life choices, especially if he has family members and what their financial situation is like. As such the assets (such as wallpaper and textures) will need to be programmed in mind so that they can change based on players choices. The house will consist of several different areas including:
Personal living room
Personal backyard
Personal bedroom
Personal Garden
Hospital
Living Room
Beach
Park
Bathroom
Primary School classroom
School behind building
High School
College
Forest (for school camp) this may
office Area (for work and other formal meetings)
Fast Food Area (first time job as teenager)
Cinema
Several other person's houses.
The street scene, the street scene will be different from the majority of other scenes, instead of having a static background it will be have a rolling background which creates the illusion of movement as though the player character is actually driving a car or walking down the street. This can be used as either loading screen if need be or just used for scenes needed in a street , e.g. driving test.
graveyard
cruise ship

Character Lists:

Mum
Dad
Brother 1
Brother 2
Sister 1
Sister 2
10 primary students
10 high school students
10 college students (basically adults but make them look more hipstery)
A Large selection of adults, these can either be randomly generated or a large asset list of them can be created, as an estimate, we are looking at around 70+ adult character models).
An interactive pet will need to be created, this would either counts of a cat or dog or both.

General Asset List:
These are general items that art designer can drop into scenes or onto characters so that they don't have to make everything from scratch. Interchangeable colours mean the assets will have to be easily programmed so the general colour can be changed with a minimum of a few clicks).

Flowers (that can be added to gardens or vases)
Chairs (with changeable colours for different materials and scenes)
Tables (with changeable colours for different materials and scenes).
Table Mats
Computer (one pc and one iMac version)
Soccer Ball
Basket Ball
Hospital Bed
Regular Bed (with interchangeable colours on sheets).
Photo frames
Clouds
Shirts
Pants
Dresses
Hair
cutlery
bottle
cup
phone

Page contents
Technology platform vision................................................................... Jacob
System architecture........................................................................................Jacob
Underlying magic in the technology.......................................................Jacob
Service build infrastructure.....................................................Jacob
Device methodology........................................................................................Jacob
User management..................................................................................Jacob
Content management, back-end and server............................................Jacob
Coding and builds...................................................................................Jacob
Quality assurance testing.......................................................................Jacob

Technology platform vision

For this project, we plan to make it compatible with multiple platforms; including PC, Mac and Mobile. The PC version will be completely web based, allowing users to play it without having to download anything and making the experience far smoother for the player. We plan to have complete functionality across all platforms, making sure that it is accessible to everyone within our target demographic, with only a small change to controls to make sure mobile and tablet can properly use the intended mechanics.

System architecture

For this project, we plan to use the Unity engine in order to create and power the game. The reason that we have decided to go with this is because it cut down on both time and complications when making the game. Therefore allowing us to provide a more reliable experience for our users.

Underlying magic in the technology

This game is meant to inspire our players to think deeper about the varied process of life. Deepening their personal lives and giving them a greater appreciation for others life choices. The platforms this game will be available on will not change much besides the method of control, however the control is unique in that it is continuous and simulates the constant march of progress in real life. This allows the player to connect with the story in a way that helps them grasp the true consequences of that story unfolding in front of them and makes them enter the world of the game.

Service build infrastructure

This will be available on Windows and Mac for the PC and available for Android, Apple and Windows phones and tablets. Unity the engine will be used to make all the various options possible, using a combination of two custom scripting languages is what we will use to have the game actually function. They are C# and Javascript; both are the Unity custom languages that our programmer is experienced with. We will use social media such as Youtube and Facebook in order to gain attention for our project.

Device methodology.

We plan to have a virtual gamepad to allow the player to move the player object through the choices. This will be off to the bottom of the left side of the screen, allowing them to play the game without the controls getting in the way of the experience. This will allow the players to have the same experience no matter the platform, which is important to the project as it is meant to be available to as wide a range as possible without a focus on specific models or operating systems. The game will also be light enough to run on even the more basic phones, allowing those without the funds to get a better device to play it easily and therefore expanding our potential demographic.

User management

The user will not be providing us with any data about their playstyle as this will be meant to be a very personal experience and we feel that it would be going against the core of the game to allow any sort of comparison to others. We do plan to encourage players to compare their experiences to others, in order to help them get a feel of the depth of the game and also to help gain a perspective on the decisions that they made.

Content management, back-end and server

We do not plan to collect information from the player, this is meant to be an experience that is personal to the player, and we feel it would be intruding on the experience to monitor the choices made. We also plan to use Weebly for hosting our information and the game itself, though using Dropbox for file hosting may be a possibility. We also plan to use the various app stores for each operating system as that is the easiest method of distributing for those platforms.

Coding and builds.

For this project, we plan to use a combination of the C# and Javascript scripting languages present within Unity. We will have one main build for each of the desired platforms, as well as others if we need to test how any mechanics might be improved by adjusting them. We believe that for full functionality across all platforms, 20 weeks total will be required for this project however there is a possibility for that to increase or decrease depending on work rate as well as if we decide to add in any more features.

Quality assurance testing

For this project, we plan to have other colleagues at the QCA test play the game. This allows us to have testers among many demographics, including our core. It also gives us the benefit of having users experienced with both games and electronic devices so that there will be little errors in communicating what is a problem with the game specifically.

Page contents
Goals...................................................................................................... Orson
Success indicators.....................................................................................Orson
User need...............................................................................................Jacob
Target audience and marketing.............................................................Orson
Business models............................................................................................Jacob/Orson
Projections, budgeting and timelines.................................................Jacob
Production team...................................................................................Jacob
Status and next steps...................................................................Jacob
Copyright, IP & licensing.........................................................................Jacob
Summary and calls to action...........................................................................Jacob

Goals

The goal of this game is to give the audience a surreal, immersive experience of a person who is living their final memories while dying on their death bed.

Success indicators

Success will be indicated by how many people play this game, to judge this we will be looking at how many people play this game, share it on social media, and comparing this to the audiences response of whether they found this game an enjoyable experience.

User need

This project fills a gap left by most of the mobile industry, the need for games with smooth gameplay with powerful messages that are also not overly focused on the same gameplay. There are other games with deep stories but all have elements of gameplay affecting the user enjoyment of the story. We believe that this project bypasses that with how simple and free flowing the gameplay is therefore giving us an advantage in the market space.

Target audience and marketing

The target audience for this game will be people who question their own immortality or people who wonder where they will be in the future. So this game could target young adult audiences the strongest.

Business model

This project will mainly rely on advertisements on the main menu to generate profit. As this allows us to develop it and distribute it for no cost to the potential demographic but also allows us to put in enough time to make the game polished. We plan to have the ads none-intrusive in order to not interfere with or take away from the core experience.

Projections, budgeting and timelines

Professional Budget:
The budget for this game is based off of the development costs for the team as well as other fees associated with distribution. Since our main demographic is one familiar with online interactions, we plan to use social media to reduce our advertising costs. Since the project is scheduled for 20 weeks in order to get it up to standard with each week having each developer working 20 hours, and assuming $20 per hour for each of the developers on the team, we work out that our wage costs are $24,000. Add in another $250 as the cost for distribution among all desired platforms and we have a total cost of $24, 250.

University Budget:
This budget is based off of the amount that the development team would have to pay in order to develop this game while attending university. Since this would be more of a side project, the team would not take money for developing and instead the budget would be centred around the cost of distribution. The project would have to be scheduled for 30 weeks in order to get it up to standard with each week having each developer working 20 hours. For the cost we have $250 for distribution among all desired platforms and we have a total cost of $250.

Production team

We have Tristan Griffith acting as the creative director, write and programmer for the html version. We have Orson Lord as the art and animation director for the game. Finally, we have Jacob Fuller who is producing the project and programming the Unity version of the game.

Status and next steps

Right now, the prototype for the game is finished, allowing us to see if there will be any patrons interested in this project having more funding if need be. Our next step will be to raise awareness of the project by spreading it on social networks and possibly speaking to influential members of our target demographic.

Copyright, IP & licensing

The copyright for the game is shared between all current members of the development team, this ensures that there will be no one getting too much control over the project as well as making it easy to find someone else if a member can no longer contribute to the project. There is currently no interest in the IP of our project, and we have no interest in selling it either as we all are invested in the making of this game. It will be licenced under a standard commercial license.

Summary and calls to action

This project is one that truly brings games as art to the mobile and even computer space, giving it a sense of value not regularly seen by most players. It also has gameplay and story not dependant on walking a main character and listening to dialogue which are the main competition in art heavy games. This game is worth it as it has strong themes of life and all the available opportunities present within it and all members of the development team feel proud to work on this project.

Friday, 11 December 2015