Topic: Nightmares & Dreamscapes
Project Duration: 3 Weeks
Submission Date: Monday 4th January 2021
First Idea: Oedipus
Proposals
The theme of unit 12 is Nightmares & Dreamscapes. First, dreams can be divided into two categories. The first is what I actually shape at night, and the second can be interpreted as what I want. to do or be in the future. I understand the theme as ‘interactions with viewers and players’. Through three weeks, I want to develop game which provide immersive and interactive contents to players. How to do primary research? Through this project, I will make my dream diary as my primary research source, or to interview with professors related to dreams and psychology. As secondary research, I can research some abstract artists such as Salvador Dalí or René François Ghislain Magritte who got inspiration theirs artworks from dream.
Who are your target audience?
The game player must over 15 years old. Due to the fact that story oedipus is sexual and bizarre. I personally believe everyone who encountered the story oedipus may feel appealing. Because normally the age between three to five, children encountered oedipus symptoms when warning father and love mother.
How have they influenced your idea?
I briefly read the book ‘Die Traumdeutung’ (dream interpretation) which was written by psychologist Sigmund Freud. The book says dreams reflect hidden human desires mentioning the story oedipus. Most of them were sexually related.
How will you engage with them?
Everyone has a secret. The deeper the secret, the more reluctant to think. As these secrets come true through dreams, desires are resolved. I think that expressing the most representative ‘sexuality’ in a dream through a game can create a more bizarre but dreamy atmosphere.
What research have you looked at?
In order to understand the basic definition of dream, I watched ‘Dream’ in Netflex’s explained brain. Through this, a dream is a phenomenon in which the images seen during daylife become phenomena in dreams. In addition, I learned about the works of the theme of dreams and dreams for the survival of animals. The interpretation of dreams differs from country to country and from time to time. By limiting the interpretation of dreams to regions, I intend to study by dividing the dream culture of Europe and the dream culture of East Asia. In this course, I would like to study the European psychologist Frued and the Asian Lao Tzu. In terms of time, pre-historic people interoperated the dreams as god’s revelation. However, nowadays, even still there are uncertainty of the existence of dreams, scientists believe dreams is for refresher for the daylife.
What contexts have been explored?
Ben gave me a such a great example of European dream illustration by Spanish artist Goya. Many observers believe that Goya intended to depict himself asleep amidst his drawing tools, his reason dulled by slumber, bedeviled by creatures that prowl in the dark. Such creatures that appear in this work are often associated in Spanish folk tradition with mystery and evil; the owls surrounding Goya may be symbols of folly, and the swarming bats may symbolize ignorance.
I compared Goya’s illustration to east Asia, especially Chinese illustration ‘Dreams of butterflies’. In the illustration, one man called Lao-tzu (famous philosopher) is sleeping on the stone dreaming butterflies. The illustration can be interpreted in two ways . First, Lao-tzu himself became a butterfly. The second interpretation is that butterfly found Lao-tzu sleeping.
How it has guided you in your plans for engaging with an audience?
To the audience, sharing my ‘dreams’ is not easy. However, I thought it would be possible to create more immersive contents using if each dream was directly experienced trough the media of the game. I’m planning to make one-person game using Unity or Unreal engines.
What is your idea?
Write a bullet point list of the different sections you will need
Create a timetable for the entire project
Week one – Conceptualisation & Proposal
I will research terms nightmares and Dreamscapes respectively using oxford dictionary. I will read the articles of dreams in both artistic and scientific perspectives. Furthermore, I’ll start writing my dreams diary to use them as primary research. After research, I will develop my concept designs.
Week two – Design
I will start developing my game using Unity or Unreal engines.
Week three – Realisation
As the most crucial aspect in unit 12 is interactions with audiences that I chose, I can let people to play my game and to get feedbacks.
Briefly explain how this will all be shown in the sketchbook and blog.
Explain if it will be animation, live-action, game trailer, character reel.
How long do you estimate it being?
As indicated in the project proposal, the project will last for three weeks.
Second Idea: Nationalism destroys individual personality
Proposals
At first, I tried to create a game based on the story of Oedipus. I thought that unique storytelling could make an interesting game, but I wasn’t able to make the story of Oedipus into a game, so I changed the theme. The new theme is’Nationalism destroys individual personality’.
Who are your target audience?
The players in the game are those of the overstated countries or countries around them. For example, South Korea and North Korea, and East and West Germany in the past.
How have they influenced your idea?
I read the book ‘The Wave’. Where does nationalism come from? Students were criticized by reflecting the whole Nazis as an example of how poorly individuals could be swept away by collective madness and adjusted according to the will of the powerful through the tricky play of power.
In my second book, I read Oliver Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’. The book shows that people’s choices and free wills in the world in the work and thoroughly brainwashed, and they are not even aware of it. People perceive it as wonderful new world, saying that even though the dignity, responsibility and ethics of life are neglected, they seem plausible.
Secondary researches – the wave, Brave New World
What research have you looked at?
How will you engage with them?
One of the characteristics of nationalism is that it always makes certain enemies. The Nazis, for example, placed the socially weak as enemies such as disabled people or Jews. In another example, most East Asian countries promote nationalism by holding back each other ex) South Korea enhances the power of the central government by criticising Japanese and Chinese controversial issues.
In my case, when I’m doing social network services, I tend to think more about emotions rather than thinking through the overall causal relationship of controversial problems. The game I’m going to make is to help me understand the world from a more diverse perspective.
Explain if it will be animation, live-action, game trailer, character reel.
What is your idea?
I will make First-Person VR game .
What contexts have been explored?
How it has guided you in your plans for engaging with an audience?
Write a bullet point list of the different sections you will need
Create a timetable for the entire project
Briefly explain how this will all be shown in the sketchbook and blog.
How long do you estimate it being?
Including Christmas break, I have five weeks. Originally I have three weeks.
Enemy characters design
I drew some CCTV robots based on actual CCTVs. The left robot was inspired by HAL 9000 of’Space Odyssey’ and Auto, the Axioms autopilot AI. Both AIs feature a glowing red dot in the middle, and both robots show a sober and merciless villain.
First, I created the basic shapes in object mode using a blender software.
The theme nationalism (nightmare) itself is depressing, so I wished the character looks funny. To make it look as simple as possible, it consists only of spheres and cylinders. Later, in order to create animation by inserting characters into mixamo much easily, I formed character’s overall body as similar as human being.
In order to freely move the body of the produced character, a process called ‘rigging’ is essential. Rigging is planting bones in a character. After the character is fully rigged, I can put character into Mixamo. Mixamo’s role is to find the bones of the uploaded character and make them move. In order for Mixamo to find the bones as easily as possible, I downloaded the bone structure from the standard Mixamo character and uploaded it to a blender. Then I extracted only the basic bones of basic Mixamo character, and inserted bone it into my chicken. After several attempts, mixamo recognized the bone. * If I export the file as OBJ format in Blender, there is no need for rigging in blender. If I export as an FBX file, I can implement the colors set in Blender in mixamo, but there is a hassle of making the bones myself.
Pictures above are when I exported my character as an OBJ file. The advantage of OBJ files is that I can easily rigging them directly in Mixamo.
I have a problem. The chicken is now perfectly exported to the FBX file in Mixamo, but the arms and legs do not fold, and the torso is missing. Moreover, the arms and wings were separated. To solve this, I need to export after setting again in Blender. First, I switched setting from Object mode to Edit mode in blender. Then I pressed Command + A to select the entire mesh. I clicked ‘Mesh’-‘Normals’-‘Recalculate Outside’. Then I exported the file to Mixamo again and the problem is solved.
Another problem was that the character’s arms and wings were separated in the Mixamo animation. To solve this, I simply tried to remove the wings. To separate the joined meshes first, I did the following: 1. Switch the Object mode to Edit mode. 2. Press’A’ to select the entire mesh. 3. Press’Command + P’and then’By Loose Parts’. End.
I rendered the final character using cycles.
Reasons for not making chicken fur: Hair making in blender takes a long time to create, and computer performance may be degraded when playing games. In Unit 10-Part 2, I applied hair dynamics to the game antagonist (tree monster), however due to time issues, I couldn’t implement it in the Unreal engine.
Human have different weights for each body part. For example, one arm of an average person will be lighter than the torso. If a person’s arm is as light as a person’s torso, the torso will distort when I swing the arm. Blender can implement this by using’Weight paint’ mode. If I change the tip of the character’s body from blue to red, the character will be able to move more freely.
Even though it takes a bit of time, but I decided to use Blender to create the animation rather than using Mixamo. Since there are no errors in creating Blender animations, I tried to plant as many bones as possible. After selecting both the bone and the mesh in the’Object’ mode, I pressed’Command + P’-‘With Automatic Weight’. As I was able to change frame by frame myself, I was able to express detailed movements. For example, it was even possible to express the direction and position of the pupils, the movement of the mouth, and the trembling of the chicken head when the chicken landed after jumping.
* In the photo above, the chicken sticker turned purple, because I was using Bootcamp to transfer from Mac to Window and the sticker JPG that was only on the Mac did not go to Windows. When making a game, the Unity system will change purple to white.
The advantages of animation using Blender over animation using Mixamo are as follows: 1. If the character is not a human being, Mixamo cannot find the desired movement. 2. It is possible to work more easily because there are almost no errors. 3. In Blender, I can modify frame by frame to make the most of the details, giving viewers the feeling of applying physics (est.
When the chicken jumps and lands, the chicken crests and feet sway slightly).
Once I have created each movement to be inserted into the game, I can export character animation to Unity in the form of an FBX file. Order: File-Export-FBX-Selected Objects + Armiture + Mesh + Other + Bake animation-Export FBX
From his YouTube videos, I learned basic VR settings, teleports, picking and throwing objects, Haptic (electrical signals felt in the hands through VR controllers), and body making.
Downloading Unity Engine 
Oculus Quest 1
Changing scene to empty scene 
Importing XR Interaction Toolkit
First, I worked on a project with ‘Universial Render Pipeline’ in Unity Hub. In Scenes, I selected create-scenes to create a new project.
I installed Window-Package manager-XR Interaction Toolkit. Then, I downloaded Oculus and Windows mixed reality from Edit-Project settings-XR Plugin Mannagement install.
After completing the basic setup, I made a simple game. Each controller has a corresponding simple box hand. Rigidbody, sphere collider, and XR grab interactival were added as scripts so that the object is picked up when the’Trigger’ button of the VR controller is pressed. The trajectory and gravity of the ball were applied differently depending on the weight set on the object. In addition, it is characterized by being able to pick up the ball alternately with the left and right hands using the controller. The current shortcoming is that the player cannot move unless the player directly changes the position of his body. Therefore, the VR controller will be used to set the player to move its position or turn his gaze.
In a typical VR game, it is possible for the player to move positions using a controller. To implement this, the concept of laser was applied to the hand. The laser interacts with a set object or a designated land. At this time, when the laser hits an object, a sign was created to inform in advance that the player can interact with them. Aim the laser at the desired object and press the’Trigger’ button to move it or catch a distant object. In Half Life-Alyx, there is a same principle as Alyx’s Gravity gloves.
‘Teleportation Anchor’ allows the player to move to the designated area when aiming the laser and pressing the’Trigger’ button. It’s kind of like a teleporter, but because it literally moves the location to the set place, it doesn’t take time, and the peculiar dizziness to VR game could not be reduced. Half life -Alyx also has a teleport function by default, but the disadvantage of teleporting is completely different from the way people walk, so it was inconvenient or a little awkward to play.
To give a little more fun, I used the Unity particle system. If the player illuminates a space set with a laser, it is set to generate particles in a blue cylinder. I set the particle’s size, speed, and direction.
Players can now move freely using lasers and teleports. The small problem was that when the laser was lit on a red ball, the blue cylinder shape was deformed.
Now I can create a simple game based VR concepts . The basic idea of the game is as follows: A game in which the player becomes a first person chicken and frees other chickens trapped from the cage. To implement this, first the player must be a chicken. The chicken and chicken bones made in Blender were exported to Unity. The VR controller was set to chicken wings, and the chicken’s hand was set to move according to the player’s controller movement. I tried to set the chicken’s head to change according to the position of the headset by connecting the chicken’s head to the VR headset, but it failed. When moving the VR headset, not only the head of the chicken moved, but the entire body of the chicken moved. *The picture on the left is the coding made so that the chicken’s hand and head correspond to the VR controller and VR headset, respectively. The picture on the right shows that the written coding has been converted into a script and is normally operated in unity. There were countless errors, but most of the problems were caused by incorrectly entering the alphabet while coding.
It’s very simple, but I have a big problem in applying physics. In simple 3D object, physics was applied to spheres, cylinders, and cubes, so objects could be caught or thrown. However, the chicken coops and chickens that I made with Blender are complex 3D objects, so when I applied physics, they fell through the floor. To solve this,’Rigidbody’ and’Mesh collider’ were set, and physics was normally applied to the object. * The picture on the left shows that when the’Mesh collider’ is applied to the iron fence, there is a protruding part at the end, so it looks like the iron fence is floating in the air when playing the game. The photo on the right was modified in Blender to solve the problem and then exported again to solve the problem.
I did a basic lighting setup. An image of artificially warming the cold iron fence with incandescent lamps was implemented. In addition, to express a small, narrow, and dirty space, I designed as an indoor space with cement walls in the front and back rather than outdoors. I used a picture of dirt as a material to express the dirty floor.
* As in the VR video above, each chicken is designed to follow the given actions, but the arm movement unconditionally follows the player. Therefore, the chicken’s arms will all move or not move at the same time. Using these elements, I can create a third person chicken escape game. 1. Set the location of each chicken differently. 2. When the player plays, the chickens all move at the same time, so the role each chicken can play will be different. For example, there is no fence in one coop, so the chicken in that coop can remove side fences for other chickens after leaving the coop.
I produced the final game. In the previous prototype, the chicken’s lively expression was obscured by shadows, so a light was placed in front of the chicken coops. By applying physics and’XR Grab’ to the cage, I can now grab and throw the cage’s fence with a VR controller.
Regrettable point: 1. It is regrettable that UI design, one of the important elements of game production, and related game research were not conducted. 2. There is no specific goal of the game, moreover there is no beginning and end of the game.
3.The game was designed to end when the cage was removed from the chickens, but in time it was impossible to realise. 4. It is regrettable that the animation in the chicken coop and the animation after it is removed from the coop are the same. If there is time, I want to design the chickens to’jump’ if they move away from the coop. 5. I inserted 3D hand so that the player can check the position of player’s hand in his VR environment. But I didn’t apply animation to the hand though.
SEOKWON 