Hey y’all! Welcome to my twice a week updates of the progress I’ve made in this class. If you ever wish to get a deeper dive of what I am doing feel free to check out my weekly blog at https://skyewinters16.wixsite.com/skye-winters/blog!
Updates for Week 14:
For this week, Rae and I shifted to focusing on getting our game ready for dissemination. To accomplish this I completed the following tasks:
- Added a notification icon for app
- Analyzed playtest feedback from open house
- Added keyboard and controller support
- Created the website found at: https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/winters.353/LavenderGames/
- Researched what assets are needed for steam and provide list to Rae
- Researched Emily is Away due to similar mechanics and used it for inspiration of a new typing on keyboard mechanic
Updates for Week 13:
For this week, Rae and I focused on making our game ready for the open house on April 11, 2025. To accomplish this I completed the following tasks:
- Adding Time Stamps to Messages
- Incorporating Rae’s new dialogue into the game
- Creation of a splash screen system
- Adding clear indicators of new day texts
- Bug fixing and polishing
Updates for Week 12:
Date: 4/4/2025
So for this week my primary objectives have been to import an old dialogue system that I made in a past project and converted it to work with our Arceweave plugin. Additionally, I worked on making it so that when you hover over a UI element, you would see a selection indicator to represent the interaction and better communicate to the player.
Updates for Week 11
Date: 3/28/2025
For this final week, we put the final polish on the game so that it looked nice for our final checkpoint. To accomplish this we add a title screen, chapter title cards between the days, and a grow shrink effect for the colors.
After the critique, we then spent time discussing what the plan for the next phase of the project would be and created the following production schedule for ourselves.
Updates for Week 9-10
This was spring break and GDC so no work to report.
Updates for Week 8
Date: 3/7/2025
For this week we further cleaned up the UI by adding backdrops taken of real environments, adding a loading screen to simulate an app launching, and dynamic text box sizes to better fit the text instead of having deadspace for ones that are a little shorter.
Updates for Week 7
Date: 2/28/2025
For this week, the main updates were in terms of getting new UI into the game to help make the game look more like a phone messaging app. Additionally we added a home page to allow us to swap between different apps so that you could text your friend in one app while texting your love interest in the other one. Finally we added a choice system where you would click the text bar at the bottom to select which choice you would like to send
Updates for Week 6
Date: 2/21/2025
For this week, Rae and I met to begin discussing our intentions and goals for the upcoming project. After our discussions we managed to settle on creating a narrative story that would take place over a series of weeks following the journey of a gay man trying to find love on a dating app in the style of Grindr. For this version of the project we will focus on trying to make a compelling narrative only including a single suitor and a companion to help guide you along your journey. The game will include conclude with the player attempting to ask out their love interest and seeing what the end result is.
The mechanics of the game include being able to navigate a phone and swap between both a texting app for your companion and a dating app for your suitor. In addition, you will have a internal hidden score tracker tracking what the relationship status is as well as a minor branching narrative to give the illusion of choice. The goal of the project will be to explore if a parasocial romantic relationship (PSRR) will be able to increase queer acceptance through measuring changes on a players feelings of bias towards the gay community before and after playing the game.
Updates for Week 5
Date: 2/14/2025
Due to not having really much on Wednesday due to it being the conclusion of the first project, my discussions will mainly be on the new project. For the next project, I will be teaming up with Rae to create a Queer Dating Simulator which the goal to explore the research question “What effect does Parasocial Romantic Relationships (PSRR) have on increasing acceptance towards queer communities?” For today, my main focus was on creating the initial project files such as a discord server, a google drive, and a GitHub / unity project and then conducting an initial analysis of research being done in this area. Through doing so, I found 19 papers / books related to our topic area and will begin over the weekend reading through the ones who’s abstracts sound the most relevant to our research topic. Next week Rae and I will begin working on developing the game.
Updates for Week 4
Date 2/12/2025
Okay so a number of updates have been made since the last time I’ve posted. We have been super busy in the last week trying to put together the final polish on our game. So without further ado lets go onto the updates that were made!
So for the first updates, we managed to get the third person perspective up and running with the camera showing both the player’s character and the non player character (NPC) scene partner.
Next up was the importing of the art assets that were being created by Emma Burns behind the scenes. She managed to craft an entire theatre for us to set our imaginary play in and together we helped combine my code and gameplay with her scene. Below you can see the iterations we went through of first getting the scene in and then getting the lighting updated to better blend the characters. Lighting was a combined effort of Emma’s ability to select the best colors possible, my ability to set up realistic lighting, and Sebastian’s ability to get the spotlights to have a visible ray.
Next we went back to the previous method of displaying the environment text and realized displaying it all at once is not the most helpfullest of methods. So we separated each one into three chunks that will be progressively shown to the player with each press of the interaction button.
After all these updates, all that was left was to start getting some final polish in the game. To do so we added in the voice lines recorded by Sebastian and Rae, added some environmental cues for lighting in the first and third person perspectives and audio for all three. Finally, using Emma’s new art for character faces, we made a system where Rae could specify the animation clip frames and facial expression corresponding to each dialogue line so that I could then bring it into the project. Bringing this together we got the game to look like the demo below.
Finally, we made a new title screen and built it into a final project!
Updates for Week 3B
Date 1/31/2025
So for today’s class, my priority was the create a solution to our dialogue linking with animations timing. To address this issue, I met up with Rae and Sebastian to discuss potential solutions. After discussing, we came to the conclusion that to stay within the scope of our project we would determine frame ranges that animations would play corresponding to each dialogue line and then specify those manually so that when a dialogue line is shown to the player the corresponding animation sub clip would play. From there, I then went about implementing said code which was accomplished successfully. Thus, the next task is now to go through the animations and determine when they should be played. Below you can see an example of what this would look like from the first person perspective.
Updates for Week 3A
Date 1/31/2025
So for this week two main things were accomplished. The first major task that was completed was the recording and cleaning of the voice lines motion capture for our dialogue in first person and third person. Rae and I met together on Monday with Vita and successfully captured all the dialogue lines a motion to play alongside them. Then I exported them from Vicon’s software to FBX files which Rae then used motion builder to trim down. With this completed we can now start exploring incorporating them into the gameplay itself. The second task was more on the minor side but none the less was still important. For the the task, I went through my code for the project and provided documentation to allow our project manager, Sebastian be able to understand it and give me feedback on upon his reviewing of it.
In addition to tasks I completed for myself, as a team we also spent time this past Wednesday discussing what the direction of our project was. We ended up agreeing to make it a four metric study with a 2 by 2 comparative table. More specifically, we will be aiming for a correlation focused study to determine the empathy felt towards the player character and the NPC character measuring the felt trait empathy and state empathy towards them.
Updates for Week 2A / 2B
Date 1/24/2025
Okay well this is going to be a weirder post since it will be combining the two posts this week but also separated into two parts since I felt weird posting twice in the same day. So to start I will talk about the before today post and then I will move on to the today post.
Part A
So in the first part of this week, the main accomplishment was the creation of a first prototype of the Text-Based game with it being a recreation of past project Rae and I worked on. Additionally, I was able to reach out to Vita and schedule a motion capture session for the 27th for Rae and I to capture the motions for our first and third person experiences. Finally, I gathered some reference material to purpose a potential UI layout for our game. With all these gathered together, I then met with the team last Wednesday and discussed the project moving forwards based off my purposed concepts. Working together, we refined the UI into a layout we could all agree on while also creating a new feature for the text based game that would be used to show off the different environmental descriptions that you would normally be able to see in a first / third person game. Moving into Friday, I was thus tasked with the goal of implementing said system so that we would be able to show it off for our critique.
Part B
Luckily, I did manage to successfully take Rae’s rough draft and insert it into our game with the addition of our new environmental description system. Overall, I think it has come together quite well for our prototype of the text based game and was glad to see many people didn’t have many issues with the actual implementation of the system / story. However, moving into next week, our team has taken the critique provided by Josh of us potentially having lost the thread of what a traditional text based game is which could impact our results to heart. As such, we have already spent time discussing how we will address this moving forwards and will be continuing this discussion into next week.
Updates for Week 2B
Date: 1/17/2025
Since the last time I posted, our team has been hard at work finalizing the production schedule for what the timelines will be. Doing so ended up being more difficult then we expected due to motion capture serving as a fixed point in our schedule due to needing to be completed before we work on the 3D game but also needing to wait for the blocking to be completed by the writing time. Additionally, its highly likely we will only have a single chance to record the animations so once they are done they will remain that way for the remainder of the project. Luckily, we did end up coming up with a plan to address this in the end which we all were able to feel satisfied with.
For my part of the project, I have in the past few days been reading several empathy papers regarding how perspective influences the way we empathize and connect with a character. As such, I have been able to provide insight into how others have tackled this issue while at the same time knowing some pitfalls for us to avoid. Additionally, I have gone ahead and made us a GitHub repo to use to make the game project.
Before our next class, my tasks will include
- Scheduling a meeting with Vita and Rae to do mocap recordings
- Import Rae and I’s Arc weave importer tool from a past project
- Create a basic UI that can interact with an Arc weave script and facilitate user input
- Gather references for how I will be designing the UI for the game
Overall things seem to be heading in a positive direction and I am looking forwards to seeing where this project goes next!
Until next time, logging off.
Updates for Week 2A
Date: 1/15/2025
Okay so the project has officially been kicked off! For the first project of this class I decided to team up with Rae, Sebastian, and Emma to have a pretty great team made up of a project lead, programmer, artist, and writer. Thanks to this, I feel like we are already starting off on a good fit!
So for our project our team has decided to make a conference paper proposal that would be focusing on analyzing the impact that a first person vs third person vs zero person perspective has, with the zero person perspective being a text based version. We each have our own reasons for wanting to pursue this but for me the main thing I am getting out of this is that it will enable me to begin to explore what influences our connections to the NPCs in games since I will be able to use this project to also explore how those different perspectives influence the way you view your companion your speaking with. So overall quite excited to get started!
My current work has been to begin researching different papers on the subject and trying to see what their methods have been and what their findings were to help guide our project. As well as to get a better grasp on where there is still room for exploration in this topic area. Moving into Friday, I hope to set up a basic unity project and begin developing the text based game first. For this I will need to review Rae and I’s notes on Arcweave and see what I can leverage from that plugin in our game and dig out some old code from last semester for a similar project exploring dialogue systems.
So yeah, that’s the first update for this week, can’t wait to see what y’all have been working on! Until next time, logging off.