Please refer to the handbook for further detail of our project, you can find the pdf link at the end of this page.

You can find pdf version of the handbook here:

Echoes of Memory Handbook

There can be two forms of scene design and sound design, real &surreal. For the real one, we can add some natural objects or decorations in the room, such as a clock, fireplace, etc. Eg. to make the emotion of leisure and happiness. We can add sounds and music, including clock ticking, fire crackling, and a piece of jazz music to build a warm environment.

Moreover, for sadness emotion, we may set up the scene as a rainy night with some sounds of the raindrop, footsteps, crying and so on. 

And the sounds and scenes can both become abstract for the surreal expression. There can be some strings, shapes, etc., with low-frequency and electronic sounds to also express sadness. And for anger emotion, we can use high-frequency electronic sounds, screaming explosions, glass shattering and so on to render the feelings.

In addition, there are also other tactics and operations we can use to create immersion for players. First, we will use different footsteps for different environments (wooden floor, high-heel shoes, tile, etc.). Second, add different sounds for closing or opening the doors. For example, the sound of closing the door can be creaky and reverberate in a horrible environment.

Next, we will adjust the volume of each sound by considering the distance between the player and the object (spatial sounds). Finally, we are seeking more information and guidance about connecting Muti-channel sounds, such as 5.1 surround, in order to provide an immersive playing environment. 

Ruxin and I have been discussing the possible story and narrative concept for our game. The game takes place in a non euclidean space that is designed as a maze where players must use sound to find their way through and collect clues. Each room the player enters represents some kind of memory or emotion of the playable character.

The story could go that the character in the game has fallen asleep, and as the character we enter the dreams and explore the character’s mind in this altered, dream-like kind of reality that’s in the form of this non euclidean Rubik’s cube maze. In the maze, players discover the character’s memories, and emotions that are represented in a surreal way in each room the player enters. By exploring each space, the players learn about the character’s experiences, growth, and feelings at various stages of life. During gameplay, the player uncovers more pieces of the maze, and more details about the character they are playing, with each room providing various context clues about the maze and character they’re playing.

We are inspired by the game Monument Valley, a surreal puzzle adventure game where the player guides the character through a series of optical illusions and mazes. This game has a dream-like surreal fantasy atmosphere and design with small narrative that appears once you successfully complete each level where the players get to know more about the character Ida at each stage.

Moncage is another game that we have been inspired by, especially since this is a puzzle game that takes place inside of a cube with each side of the cube showing a different scene and it’s own unique world. In this game players are also put into this world where they have to solve puzzles that are full of illusions and clues. This game also has a dream like quality to it, and a small narrative that helps keep the player interested and engaged.

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Based on the ideas we discussed as a group, I created a test scenario in unity to consider the possibilities of implementation. This is a one-way transmission mechanism with only two rooms, an initial implementation

2.9 Further iterations of the project idea today

-Three rooms and two portals have been added

-The room shown in the portal is different from the actual portal destination

– The rooms are divided into blue, yellow and, at the very beginning, grey, with two portals in each room. Each portal renders an interior scene of the other two rooms depending on the player’s location. However, when the player passes through the portal, the location of the teleportation is not the room as the player sees it, which needs to be used in conjunction with the sounds that follow

Current issues:
1. As seen in the video, when the player approaches a portal in one room, the camera also renders a view of the portal in another room, which can cause confusion for the player.

2. The display screen of the camera’s render plane crosses to the outside of the room at certain locations, as the position of the camera in the room needs to be adjusted to correspond to the player’s position, so the position of the room setup becomes quite important, especially if there are 27 rooms to be set up afterwards.

3. When the teleportation occurs, there is a frame where the whole screen is flashing grey before the teleportation occurs, I tried to place the player in that position and eventually found out that it was because the player’s camera had passed through the wall of the original room a second before the collision occurred

2.13 Portal 3 Room Demo For Sub1

I made some changes to the scene to fix the previous problem.
1. I set up a collision detection mechanism to determine if the player is in the current room. When the player is in the current room, the portal in the room will only show the image rendered by the camera, and when the player leaves, the image rendering of the portal will stop, so that when the player sees another room from one room, it will not show the rendered image of both planes.
2. I adjusted the position of some cameras and collision planes, which reduces some problems during the portal through the model, but there are still some planes that have this problem during the portal.

Code explanation of function implementation: 

Camera Follow

This part of the code is to make the camera set in another room follow the player’s position, and the portal is the base point to get the player’s offset value so that the camera moves to the corresponding position.

Some of the commented code in this section is intended to investigate the rotation of the camera following the player’s view, where quaternions are used to obtain the corresponding rotation angle, but it did not show good results in tests, so it was not applied at this stage, but as a direction for future research.

Camera Render

Shown here is how to use code to manage the image rendering material for multiple cameras. As the current camera tracking script does not implement rotation with the view, it is necessary to set up multiple cameras with different angles. Image rendering showing the plane of another room is achieved in this way.

Player Detect

This is a simple script to determine if the player is in the room and when the player leaves, the portal will stop rendering the image.

Teleport

This is a teleportation script that determines whether the player has crossed a plane by calculating the distance between the player and the door when the player collides with a collision body set up by the portal, and teleports to another place when the player crosses the plane, where the offset value of the rotation angle is also calculated by quaternions so that the player does not turn in another direction after teleportation.

The next plan:
I am going to optimize the camera’s player following logic, currently the camera can only follow the player’s movement, after that the idea is to be able to follow the rotation of the player’s head, but I have encountered a lot of problems when dealing with this part, as shown in the comments of the code, I have done some research on this part, but it is not working well at the moment.

Reference:

Mini First Person Controller

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/input-management/mini-first-person-controller-174710

Portal Tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuQao3hEKfs&t=1282s

Idea of a puzzle solving game inspired by Non-Euclidean Space and Sounds

Check the outline of the ideas:

The Rubik’s Cube of Memories