Game Log 2 - Play

We did not use all the methods for the play phase as we felt that our game idea was already concrete enough. Both the "Game Collage"  and the "Future Culture Worlds" methods are largely integrated into the presentation for the Expert Council, which we show below and which visualise our vision for the game.  

6-8-5 Game Sketching

During the sketching process we thought out different ideas for interaction. 

Some of the ideas that we ended up not continuing with included 

• Using pinch-gesture with the right hand to paint (because we wanted to use a Quest-linked pen instead)
• Negating the effect of bad influences by walking around and thereby placing a real wall between you and the bad influences to occlude them (we decided against it to reduce game complexity)
• Applying an item to a bad influence to deal with them (decided against because the user would have to learn what the specific interaction with each bad influence would be)
• Using controllers to put down objects and paint

We ended up going forward with the following interactions:

• Using the right hand with a Quest-linked pencil to paint
• Using the left hand to put down objects with a pinching gesture, with which bad influences could be covered up
• Having the paint on the brush be limited, forcing the player to refill it by dipping it in a fixed bucket of paint in a certain geographic area.

Convergence on our Game Idea

Using the Game Sketching results, we realized that only one of our three main game ideas from Game Log 1 could be naturally integrated with AR Interactions. For this reason, we have chosen to focus on the game Brush Hour:

The main inspiration for the idea were the paintings of the so-called "Golden Era" - an era where art was not about realism but rather to create a pleasant image. In order to create this illusion of a perfect worlds, those paintings often left out uncomfortable details and distorted reality considerably.

Now, what if this distorted image was based on the actual, current reality? 

This question is fundamental for our game Brush Hour. The premise: You are a painter employed by the king to create an idealized painting in the likes of the "Golden Era". However you will use reality to create it. You will start out in full passthrough, meaning that you will see your surroundings as they are - no digital elements, no modifications. In order to fulfil the task you were given, you have to use your paint brush. With this brush you can paint reality, turning the areas you have painted over into an idealized and stylized of reality. As you continue on painting your surroundings, you will slowly but surely turn your reality into this of a painting. The king will surely be satisfied with your work.

There is however a problem: Building an illusion of a perfect world is easy, but to maintain it is hard. This is where negative influences appear - things that the king would like you to omit such as crying children, poverty or the opposition. Those portions of reality will invade your work of art, destroying the illusion in their vicinity, so you have to get rid of them. You can do so in two ways: Either you paint over them with your brush - but keep in mind that paint is a scarce and valuable resource - or you could use other objects to occlude them - after all, out of sight, out of mind. As your illusion prevails, more and more bad influences will appear and eventually overwhelm you. At this point your painting will fall apart, the king will fire you and you will have lost as the player.

You will notice that the king has employed another painter and given them the same task. Since now however you are a jobless artist, you are also considered a bad influence in the king's eyes. The last thing you might see is that now you will be painted over - erased from reality - just as the things you have erased before. 

Presentation for the Expert Council

As our presentation focuses on visualising the game concept, we have turned it into a short animation for the game log.  It goes through the steps explained in the convergence of our game idea. 

Feedback from Expert Council

The feedback we got from the expert council was largely positive. We were told our game idea was solid and had some similarities to one made by a member of the expert council. 

We were advised to ensure the game feels good, as that is a large part of the experience. This means we need to spend time on setting the mood and how it changes during gameplay. We plan on doing this by altering the colour vibrancy and overall brightness depending on how many bad influences are currently present. Additionally, the sound should reflect the state of the game. Here we thought about using classical music as that showcases both the romantic area, but also because it is one of the few types of music available without license. 

The aspect that the expert council was most critical over was our use of tangible cultural heritage. We feel it would be wrong to include pieces of art just for the sake of doing so. We think that our concept incorporates the paintings sufficiently considering that the passthrough will be stylized with the style from the paintings. To further point out this connection to the artworks, we went through the exhibition again, taking close-up pictures of the paintings to have exact templates for the style of shader we want to create. The ultimate but maybe unreachable goal would be to create multiple different shaders and allow the user to experience different painting styles and perhaps even switch between them in the same painting. Depending on the time it takes to implement, we will keep this as an outlook and focus on getting just one shader to work for now.