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Asylums in Games

Manhunt 2 - Dixmoor

REFLECTION ON THE TRAILER

This trailer is showing a lot of flashing images and i know its only for the trailer and the game doesn’t have that but it is kind of portraying insanity in some ways as it is showed in a way that the person watching is insane or is in insane’s persons head and you can see all of his/hers thoughts flashing and going through their mind, and its mostly traumatic events, as they have shown on the trailer people have been experimented on and that got them into even more insane state. In conclusion the trailer was very well made to portray that kind of illness but also it is quite terrifying because of the screams of people probably being experimented on.

Manhunt 2 - BANNED

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-463117/Violent-Manhunt-game-banned-UK-casual-sadism.html

The game Manhunt has been banned from UK as it has portrayed a lot of graphic violence and i guess it has encouraged violence, sometimes the games that aren’t suitable for other countries get scenes taken out of them or different parts of the game but it is said that it couldn't be possible with Manhunt 2 as the whole game has been violent and to take out all of the things that are not suitable probably 80% of the game would have been removed.

There has also been a controversy that a 14 year old boy was stabbed to death by a 17 year old and parents suspect that the game Manhunt has had some effect on their child. But later on lawyers and police could not see that the game has played a part in this murder.

Outlast - Mount Massive

Mount massive is an asylum where people that are dangerous to society have escaped and all the personnel has been killed by them and so with no one coming inside there, there happened to be one person which was the main character and as he comes in he has been seeing a lot ofstrange stuff until he has met the escapees and they have tried to kill him multiple times throughout the game.

BioShock Infinite - Comstock House

Comstock house is a place in the game bioshock infinite where a girl called emily is being tourtured and tested on and as a main character of the game trying to save her you need to go through the comstock house which may look like a mental asylum due to the characters put in it that are controlled by the mains and when they see you they will get the puppets/mentally ill to get to you and kill you plus they are harder to kill than other enemies within the game.

Arkham Asylum

arkham asylum is a  prison for the mentally ill mostly criminals that may have different abilities but in this one you have to chase down joker and there is a lot of enemies that (may or may not be mentally ill ) that are trying to stop/kill you throughout the game.

QUOTE FROM -  Abel Bascunana Pons 

Amazing GFX and animations not only thanks to the Unreal Engine 3, but to the extreme care to detail of Rocksteady’s Artists. The dark atmosphere is homogenous throughout the game. It’s important to notice that the game character starts in lighted rooms and goes darker as the game progresses.

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AbelBascunanaPons/20100305/86821/Game_Design_Review_Batman_Arkham_Asylum.php

This is interesting to me and something that I feel could help in my game to show the player getting more and more disturbed. This could also be a change from colour to black and white.

CONCEPT ART

Carlos DAnda

By looking at his work i have realised that he is more focused  on the emotions and face expressions in his art to show that anger and insanity by just showing a stance or how the character uses face expressions in different situations just like in the image below.

https://www.deviantart.com/chuckdee

chuck dee: His artwork can be quite disturbing but there is a lot going on in his artwork which is a good thing because every time you look at it there may be something you missed looking at it the first time. 

Game sourced from this video.

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Firewatch - Art

Firewatch is a mystery set in the Wyoming wilderness, where your only emotional lifeline is the person on the other end of a handheld radio. 

https://www.firewatchgame.com/

JANE NG

Jane Ng is a Chinese-American 3D environment artist, best known for her work on Firewatch, The Cave, and Brütal Legend. She currently works at Campo Santo, a game studio that is part of Valve, as a Senior Environment Artist

Interesting Breakdown of the ART from the presentation at GDC.

OLLY MOSS

Olly Moss helped create the concept artwork and visual style for Firewatch.

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Drawing description

All of my drawings may not look like they are about insanity and depression but i looked at some rooms in asylums, usually abandoned ones, they have written things on walls to express their thoughts and their feelings which ive shown in my first drawing 

The other ones were usually about murder which i have also shown and as i researched insanity could be a state of mind not exactly the illness itself, you could consider a murderer an insane person but it could be just a rush of the moment and he/ she could have been in that state of mind at the moment which i have shown in my second artwork.

My third artwork was not looking like it has nything to do with insanity or depression and just writing murder on it doesnt put it into any of these themes, but researching the themes i have realised that sometimes depression or insanity is not visible so i tried to put it in that but i wrote “Murder”  to give a clue of what that character is thinking.

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Insanity research

Insanity can be manifest as violations of societal norms, including a person or persons becoming a danger to themselves or to other people. Conceptually, mental insanity also is associated with the biological phenomenon of contagion (that mental illness is infectious) as in the case of copycat suicides. In contemporary usage, the term insanity is an informal, un-scientific term denoting "mental instability"

source:wikipedia

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Depression research

Most people go through periods of feeling down, but when you're depressed you feel persistently sad for weeks or months, rather than just a few days.

Some people think depression is trivial and not a genuine health condition. They're wrong – it is a real illness with real symptoms. Depression is not a sign of weakness or something you can "snap out of" by "pulling yourself together".

The good news is that with the right treatment and support, most people with depression can make a full recovery.

Source: NHS

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/clinical-depression/

Psychological symptoms

The psychological symptoms of depression include:

continuous low mood or sadness

feeling hopeless and helpless

having low self-esteem

feeling tearful

feeling guilt-ridden

feeling irritable and intolerant of others

having no motivation or interest in things

finding it difficult to make decisions

not getting any enjoyment out of life

feeling anxious or worried

having suicidal thoughts or thoughts of harming yourself

MIND

https://www.mind.org.uk/

Mind is an institution that helps people with different types of mental illnesses and is trying to make people understand them and what people with those illnesses go through and by that they try to make people more understanding for people that suffer from those. you can donate to that foundation for them to spread the word with much ease and for them to know that more people care about others

Mental Health Foundation

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/

This foundation is trying to make the awarness of mental illnesses more public, from workplaces to homes to children and famillies so that everyone is aware and that these people may feel comfortable with others 

CALM

https://www.thecalmzone.net/

Calm is trying to bring down the suicide rates in the uk their statistics show that 75% of the suicides are males  and that every week 125 uk citizens take their own life and so they try to show support to those people and educate others on how to tell if someone is going through depression or just teach them how to speak to people that go through such things.

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Opinion on 3 games (twine)

For all of the i feel like mostly the title drew my attention and it turned out that the title was as good as the game itself all of them had good stories and are quite easy to play. I found that Temple of No had the best UI of all of them as it was more entertaining than the others.  games i have played i think that the title design in general draws people in as there is a lot going on in the title for example “the temple of no” has like that cartoon paper and pencil drawn title that is created to look 3d that itself is eye-catching and just the name of this game is quite interesting as the person that sees the title and thinks what the temple of no could be. I very much like the story for that game too as it was very comedic and just nice to play because the UI was quite alright, different i guess it was still text but it was presented differently 

IMPORTANT PARTS

TITLE - draw people in

STORY - needs to be engaging

UI - has be fun to use 

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Twine game number 3

The Writer Will do something is a text based game and doesn't show any images but its quite entertaining as the text is animated and the story overall is very good because it tells a story about the people that make games and this game kind of breaks the fourth wall as it is talking about their experiences 

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2 twine games

Depression quest:

This game could be linked to what i am doing as it has the same theme of depression but the difference is that the person that made this is writing about it and i am showing it. This game is (like all text based games) using a point and click and you have to choose your answer to different situations and they determine your outcome at the end.

this game is also showing information about the character you are playing as which may differ as you go on in the game 

Temple of No:

This game looks like it is more of a comedy text based game which surprisingly has images and sounds which engages the players even more. The text differs throughout the game. It uses profanity which is also unusual and there is also a twist right at the end.

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what is it?

I have chosen to do artwork as i felt like it is a lot easier to show peoples emotions and it is easier to people that re looking at my artwork to see what it is about because for me it is far better at showing off emotions.

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What is twine

Twine is a website where you can make your own narrative based games, you can add choices to your text based game so that the player can take his own path that would lead to a different ending for most.

https://twinery.org/

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THIS IS WHAT I HAVE DONE!!!

these are all of my finished projects as i have deleted the projects that didnt look too good in my opinion. In these i basically try to show insanity,murder and depression which were the themes showed in the book that was given to me, The Madness of Cambyses.

I have used photoshop because it was the easiest to do it with and of course i had a drawing tablet

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Evaluation

I think that the artwork I created went well as I stuck to the them e of insanity and enjoyed drawing things within that theme and what could have gone better is coming up with the ideas and I think next time I will try do more research to get more inspiration and therefore create more artwork. I really enjoyed making this project and I think the artwork I made is alright. I have researched a lot about insanity and asylums and the behaviour of people that are in those facilities and i tried to put it in my work, i have also researched a lot about depression which has also been quite hard as not a lot of people talk about it or just don’t want to talk about it and all of this i tried to put in my work some of it may be subtle as you never know what is going on inside someones head which is of course not visible but i tried to put clues of what is going on in my artwork which was mostly text. I have learned a lot about these subjects and i feel like it could come in handy in my future projects.

week 1/2: I have done research about my book and the history of prince Cambyses and wrote a summary of the whole story.  I found that the main themes of the book were: insanity,depression and regret and so i started researching about these topics, mostly  about depression and insanity as regret connects with both of them in some way.

week 3/4: i have started to create my interpretation of what depression and insanity would look like and so i have created my first artwork in Photoshop and i have gone for more dark look because i though that it wasn't a very vibrant and happy subject and so the colours i chose were grey and black  as they are the most associated with sadness. also learned how to make a character in the game pick stuff up and drop it.

week 5/6: i have made 2 more art pieces that took a while to make as it is very hard to interpret depression and insanity at the same time so i tried to do as much as i can before the end of the project,

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branching narrative

branching narrative is breaking up a story into different choices which end up in different endings or they may come to the same ending depending on the developers choice

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QTE 2

This feature is not useful for me at all as i am doing concept art but for a narrative game is quite useful as it makes the game more fun and more entertaining

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QTE (Quick Time Event)

QTE is an event which you have to complete within a certain amount of time otherwise you have missed it and wont complete a certain activity.

To make a quick time event you have to make a box collision in a new blueprint and then make a widget. in the widget blueprint you have to use an event construct then delay the button showing on the screen and then hide it.

then go to first person character and i created a custom event, then create a widget in the first person blueprint and add to viewport and then it will show on the screen

in the new blueprint you have to use event actor begin overlap and cast to the first person character and connect it to set QTE.

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Code for grabbing and dropping objects

This is a code for executing all of the functions that is used to pick up items when holding left mouse button and then dropping them when it is released

This code is basically tracing where the character is looking and by having that you can look at objects and pick them up. The tracing is aliened with the camera so that you pick up the object from when you look

This code just drops the objects that are held be the character

This code allows the object to be picked up but it has to have physics and that is how the objects within the map are identified and are able to be picked up