Eggs and Obsticles

Unfortunately we were unable to put these into the game but these are the eggs and what the log obstacles would look like

In Situ

So in the end our game would be situated in an airport terminal - here is a little drawing to illustrate our idea further

Poster to advertise Game

Rationale

When considering a concept for our game, we decided first on a context and a brand – airport terminals and Air New Zealand. When we think of an airport terminal, it conjures up quite a different picture from the Air New Zealand brand image. Sleepy travellers and grumpy businessmen are in stark contrast to the friendly hospitable feel of the “Kiwiana”-based Air New Zealand brand. To bring travellers at airports together and relieve their boredom, we decided to create an interactive game, using Kinect. This would get waiting travellers off their seats and doing some physical activity, as well as encourage some friendly competition.

The game itself is an infinite runner game, similar to the popular smartphone game Temple Run. We decided that in order to properly parallel Air New Zealand’s visual language and promotional imagery, the game would be set in native New Zealand bush. Aesthetically, this is continued throughout the game, with a landscape visible from every screen. In the game, the player is represented by a Kiwi, with the objective being to collect the Kiwi’s eggs.

For the hand-in, we decided that keyboard controls would be more realistic than setting it up with a Kinect sensor. However if the game was to be placed in context, this is the track it would be taken down. Multiple players would have the ability to participate using multiple Kinect sensors, but they would be playing the same game, competing against each other.

Building the game

In order to produce the game we used the opsive infinite runner starter pack. This layed a framework and gave some startup modules, models and levels to base your game upon. This is a screenshot of what the game looked like before we started to modify it.

http://www.opsive.com/assets/InfiniteRunnerStarterPack/

Here you can see the custom kiwi character that we tried to import into the game. This actually worked but there was an error that we ran out of time to fix, where the character seemed to fall through the platform that the runner goes down in the game. We also built animations of the character jumping, dying along with small idle animations for when the character was still and of course a run cycle.

Here you can see the kiwi spawned in the game, and the issue of it spawing above the platform then falling into it.

We also custom edited the existing GUI replacing the fonts, and trying to create a layout that suited our brief. Although we had a whole custom UI designed, we ran out of time to actually implement this into the game.

 Here you can see one of the issues we had with spawning objects, the game itself ran on probabilities, and through a glitch that happened (still not sure what happened) these were spawning far too regularly. We had initially wanted to place tree stumps and braches which we modeled, but this bug along with the coin bug meant that in the final I just left out this asset in order to present a less annoying scenario. For some reason the character would not die on impact of objects which was another bug we were yet to iron out.

Here you can see the coin glitch, the coins that we were to replace with eggs for the kiwi to pickup.

What was successful in the same was the level design, we managed to get the straight mapping in as you can see above and the game is actually generating this as you move through. We had planned to use corners, but what happened was we had the platforms generating so you could have turns, but when the level tried to spawn on it (the corner models that is) it would just either crash the game, or spawn way too many copies of the corner around the platform.

Development

Game Play

As our game is created on Unity - with the coding behind it means that it not really possible to draw out the game plan as each block is randomly generated.

Development within Unity

I have begun designing the individual squares that will make up the game - creating each square differently to cater for the different angles of the road - corners, T intersections, straights etc

Beginning stages of Design

I have been working on the initial design elements - the rest of the game will be designed in Unity - which will be done at the same time as actually creating and coding the game.

These are just the start point - they may change and become more sophisticated

Game Topic

We have chosen to make our game an interactive endless runner with the theme of New Zealand - this game will be a kiwi running in a New Zealand forest collecting rugby balls. Even though this is cliche we feel that it fits in perfectly with the branding and ideas behind Air New Zealand.

We are going to use Unity to create this environment as it seen the most practical to create a 3D endless runner game. There are simple ways to create effective terrains such as trees and mountains.
Also there are a few tutorials to help us create this 3rd person endless runner game.

 

Existing Motion Capture Games

https://www.behance.net/gallery/3958777/You-are-Swan

This is a particularly interesting example in terms of the context of our project. This was an installation at the Lane way festival in Perth and functions in a similar way to how we would like our program to work.

What is particularly relevant is how the character in the game is controlled, and how the game function in relation to this. The character just moves forward at a constant speed and the duck is controlled by moving left to right to move around obstacles in their path. This could be an interesting solution to how we can make our game.


https://www.behance.net/gallery/9224555/iShares-Kinect-Game

This is an interesting concept in terms of relating a game to the brand. This is a game promoting a stock app, where you have to keep the ball in the middle of the path using motion control.

This shows a more abstract way of approaching our brand than perhaps going for a literal idea, and more of a metaphor for travel or something, like the balancing the ball on the line is like balancing shares.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/9289889/Living-Cell-Interactive-installation

Another sick interactive instalation on the floor of cells. Tis mean.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/12493269/Digital-action-painting

http://vimeo.com/75503831

Using motion capture to paint

https://www.behance.net/gallery/13918149/Kinect-Beach-Soccer-Experience

Football Kinekt game

https://www.behance.net/gallery/17406383/Brilique-Interactive-Game-

We could make this


https://www.behance.net/gallery/17357151/AstraZeneca-pulse-game

https://www.behance.net/gallery/18097957/Interactive-Quiz

https://www.behance.net/gallery/18006323/Coca-Cola-K2-Videowall

Rad interactive wall for coke

https://www.behance.net/gallery/5887825/Interactive-game-for-Festo

https://www.behance.net/gallery/7211133/BRICK-Kinect-Wall-Game

Pong on the entire side of a building mixed with daft punk that uses motion control and sound. Reall really really awesome. a simple game yet a really engaing and creative experience. Perhaps we need to consider not so much how dynamic the game itself is as apposed to how dynamic the whole experience is.

Air New Zealand Branding

The colour schemes used mainly by Air NZ are black, white and the purple colour that is also seen on the uniform - while designing the game we will keep this in mind

Handy blog

http://blog.soulwire.co.uk/category/code/actionscript-3/page/3

Ways to create Motion Tracking

There are multiple ways and tools that we can use to create this motion tracking effect.

One way is to use motion-control technology such as the Razer Hydra or the Kinect for Windows.

Another way could be to use technology which is called Extreme Motion. This new uprising technology uses an ordinary 2D computer camera and converts the images into a 3D model - this allows the user to directly interact with the game environment.

Another way this motion tracking idea can be attained is through using action script

Brainstorm

Sam and I did a brainstorm of ideas for our game - we have finalised it to an installation piece for the Air New Zealand brand

Water Installation

It would be cool if our game was slightly different to everyone else - the point of difference could be the medium that it performed in - i.e. an installation

This is a really cool installation involving light:

http://vimeo.com/47095462