seniorprojectspring2018

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Week 13

With the IDM showcase coming around, Grace and I had to crunch a lot of things. The backgrounds were all resized differently and I had to implement the animations onto the characters, include Rose’s dialogue, push sound effects into the visual novel, and pray that everything works before the showcase. I was able to fix some bugs with the code and have everything run smoothly just in time the IDM showcase came along. Although our game ended up running smoothly, we didn’t have time to include Sakura’s dialogue and backgrounds. If we did, the game would have taken more time to complete, but it would have felt like you met all the characters instead of two. 

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Week 12

Having another meeting with Tega, she mentioned that we needed to get our script together. Our script was more focused on the prologue and not on the character development of the other chapters. Grace and I scrambled to have our scripts done in time to have Jim Lewis review parts of the script. He gave us some insight on how to make a more believable character, which I took that advice to heart with Rose. However, I wanted to add a more spicy element and have a mental trigger to her depression rather than an unnatural one. Adding a friend’s death, just allowed better storytelling to come out of the visual novel. After the script was handed off to Grace for grammar and punctuation, I got working on adding Grace’s script into the game. The relationship part was executed perfectly and the if, else statements were all fixed. I just need to receive the cutscenes, resized backgrounds, and pngs from Grace.   

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Week 11

This week I just focused more on finding more sound effects as Mark and other playtesters wanted more feel into the visual novel. I found a lot of sounds that are used in the script such as a busy sidewalk, women’s high heels, and crying. All the sounds I found were from freesound.org and that helped me compile this sound library in the game file. 

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Week 10

I decided to help Grace out because she was busy with other things, so I took it upon myself to help photoshop all the other backgrounds that needed to be redone. It took a while, but didn’t halter my progress on fixing the bugs and code for the game. We did agree that the watercolor effects on the background made the visual novel look better. 

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Week 9

So, I figured a constructive way to include the relationship meter without hindering the rest of the visual novels features. I used a lot of Youtube material sourcing to help figure out where I can carefully implement the code and the rest of the help was sourced from Renpy documentation website, which really helped push the choice factor in the game. Grace was still working on fixing the game characters, so I helped Grace fix the backgrounds on Adobe. She gave me the tutorial to fix it and I just applied the filters to all the images.

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Midterm Project Demo and Week 8

The prototype right now is mainly in the prologue section, which introduces all the main characters that the player interacts with. The animations of the game intro is finished and we are planning to fix the character designs and bring the game’s atmosphere to be more lively.

Some critics that reviewed some of our work are Mark and another guest. Both of them had comments about the amount of text they have to read in the game. The beginning was a bit bland and wasn’t grabbing much attention. Mark’s comments mainly focused on the aesthetics of the game. Describing us in detail that the characters are 2D and bland looking in comparison to our hyper-vibrant backgrounds. The intro video seems too long as there are scenes that can be cut off and make concise. There also needs to be an attention grabber when first playing the game: a sound alarm or things moving on the screen. The criticisms of the aesthetics seem to be pretty valid. However, we noticed some of the critics don’t really have much experience in the game and just pushed off our game as boring because they don’t have much interest in playing visual novel games. 

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Week 8

I made some basic code for the game, with the script for the prologue being included. There were no issues in understanding the code, but there were some problems getting all the script in without getting tab errors. To my surprise, Renpy does not allow the tab to be used in the code, so the only way to fix this problem was by spacing everything really far. This was not only very tedious but also hindered some time away from adding animations in the game. Also, there was not much time to get a lot of cut scenes to be added just in time for the demo day. Next week, I will figure out how to add more animations and figure out how to implement the relationship code.

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Week 7 progress

Grace had finished her character models, while I just finished understanding some Renpy concepts. This week was hectic because we had to finish redoing the proposal and figure out the concepts of our visual novel. I mentioned to Grace about the DSM 5 and she agreed that the manual is a big resource for our project. We keep bouncing ideas off each other to get an understanding of what our storyline will be. She tells me some anecdotes we can use, however, I had to keep her on track to the main focus and adding unnecessary subjects such as religion will push us off that track. Next week, I will get working on finding the music for the game.  

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Project Development Exercise and Week 6 progress

3 Question Exercise:

How will our character progress in the story?

Will there be multiple endings or just a single one?

Will we have enough time to allocate all the multiple character’s narratives in this one game?

Project Image:

Logo Design: 

With some of our drawings finished by Grace, we are trying to figure out the scope of our project. The meeting held us up a bit as we had to understand that we couldn’t put everything into the game. So, we decided to just focus on depression and schizophrenia as the main factors in this visual novel. We had to redo our proposals, which halted some progression. Next week, we will be focusing on trying to make our bios for the characters.   

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Week 5 progress

Following the presentation and the critiques we have been receiving from our fellow classmates, most of them had issues with being insensitive to the topic of mental illness. We decided that we had to conduct a more thorough investigation into the topic. I made a meeting with Jim Lewis and discussed our visual novel idea. He recommended reading the DSM 5 manual as it is the main basis that psychiatrist uses to diagnose patients. I looked into the readings he recommended and used some of those diagnosed as some characteristics for our girls in the game. We are just in need of some inspiration for character development.

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Week 4 process

Because this was the week of project proposals, Grace and I had to conduct a lot more research than we initially thought and figure out an approach to presenting our ideas in an effective manner. We gathered all our resources and found some inspirations that we wanted our game to be based off from, so we picked the ones we enjoyed the most: Doki Doki Literature Club and Hellblade.  Learning our own interests, we decided to dedicate our project to mental illness because I initially wanted to make a game revolved around the issue. Grace thought it was a great idea to include and we just wanted to collaborate our ideas into this visual novel. We gathered some research on which game engine we should use. Most individuals directed our attention to Renpy and we decided to go from there. From learning the system of Renpy was easier than I initially thought, the program used a coding language I was comfortable in. So, I gave my role to Grace as being a programmer for this game. 

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Research for the annotated bibliography- Week 3

Looking for great gaming resources was harder than I thought. However, looking through existing class material, I was able to start my research progress by looking into game design and gaming culture. My ideas for my project revolves around making a game that involves mental illness. This stems from the topic of how to make a great game that involves a complicated character. Using the Game Design Workshop, I wanted to start my research off from there. The book itself gave great insight on methods an indie designer might use to make a creative and innovative game. From there, I wanted to look into the gaming culture and using the Dibner library, I was able to find similar content material that can be used in my research: Mobile app and the gaming culture around that, and cross sectionality between society and gaming culture. Although it was more of a social commentary on games, I thought it would be useful to think about when making a game for a specific niche. 

I found looking into the research projects to be easier because I was going to base my project around these specific games. Hellblade and the text adventure, Depression Quest actually inspired me to dive into my project idea. These specific games are more aimed at the person’s psyche and it was deemed really innovative for discussion about mental health. 

[seniorprojectspring2018]

Disco Beast: Jonathan Monaghan Exhibit

In this specific exhibit, it was mainly focused on the 3D models of Jonathan Monaghan. He specifically made a video “Disco Beast”, revolving around the life and death of a unicorn in a dystopian urban environment. This exhibit mainly presented the unicorn from the video as the main focal point, but the theme still surrounded the idea of a dystopian environment. There were models of elaborate white rooms, however, space itself is barren and desolate. This was probably to show the increasing amount of advertised space in New York City, but not enough buyers due to the high prices.

[seniorprojectspring2018]

research related content

In “ The danger of a single story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”, the speaker focused on the stigma of telling a story in a linear way. Interestingly enough, there is a similarity that everyone has with a singular story. With my project idea, there is a focus on telling a story from a perspective of a character. However, this Ted talk introduced a new mindset to bring in another perspective to change the outlook of a story. This idea seems tempting to work with and can bring an interesting twist to the visual novel project. Linear story-telling can bring the reader into the personal world of my character, but switching up the narrative can bring a shock factor that might be needed in a boring single narrative. However, I question that thought of Is telling a single narrative necessary for a good story?

In another Tedtalk, “ Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story”, there is a simple ingredient for great storytelling: making the reader care. There needs to be some empathy and human-like features of a character to make them relatable. All good stories have flawed human beings that the reader can understand and connect with. Taking the idea of a relatable character, I want to incorporate that thought into my visual novel, a story that has a hero’s journey. I need to involve a character that has a struggle/ adversity which can be relatable and ends up resolving that struggle he has. The Ted talk made me realize that good story-telling needs to stir up human empathy. 

Sources: The danger of a single story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxDwieKpawg