posted my final paper for game studies online.
it goes without saying that it needs more work but i wanted to upload here because of it’s relevance towards my thesis.
and this is the thesis group i will be part of:
Katherine/Crys
Edward Button
Jorge Brake
Andres Taraciuk
Adam Quinn
Mike Allison
GJ Lee
Erin Smith
David Lobser
Wyna Liu
Anne-Marie Lavigne
ahhh… next month will be an adventure.
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soaking poplar allows for it to bend just like pine… we’re not really sure why we never tested this approach earlier. the overall look of pine is much nicer but the thing that we found about poplar is that because it’s a harder wood, it holds its shape better.
for our final, we want to iterate on our midterm and create a wearable sculpture that allows for two people instead of just one. because the max width of wood we can get it 11.25″ we had to split our design into three pieces.
… and they will fit together… puzzle-like. which means we will incorporate pocketing. exciting!
after mulling over what the pattern shapes i wanted the graphic assets to be a strange realization hit. i am abstracting a system in nature… why am i trying to portray these things to it’s literal form? so i thought about simple shapes and geometry… thought a little about works by tony smith and yayoi kusama and tried to figure out what the point of those shapes meant and their function.
so i simplified them and it’s almost embarrassing how i made this realization last week. the next task was my issue with color.
the biggest mistake was looking through color swatches… again, i needed figure out the importance of color and why i needed it. pretty obvious… and rather embarrassing to admit to this mistake.
what i needed:
– 2 colors for the player to switch
– these colors should contrast one another
– 2 colors for a background
– one of these colors should be red- direct correlation for danger
everything else outside of this was superficial… but in a way necessary to create visual atmosphere. i wanted small things to happen while the game was going on. tiny creatures appearing and moving in a playful manner. during a playtest session, norah mentioned how she wanted to interact with those creatures so i thought it was important almost everything in this environment to be responsive towards the player- even if they were subtle.
as of now… it is working but it’s not at a final place. but there are some fun things happening. hopefully… it’ll be an enjoyable experience.
[btw- this could not have been done without brian s chung.]
our first test to try out the new shape of our design.
we made sure to measure the thickness of the wood many times at various places so we don’t make the same mistake as last time.
our first run had the speed set at 35 but it was too fast, the combination of a harder material and faster bit speed made tiny chunks of wood come out. also contributing to this was that the bit went against the wood at different angles, causing various amounts of stress.
our second run had the speed set to 25. it was better but we still encountered bits of wood chipping off.
both runs are being considered as tests because our final product will be done with a softer wood- it’s unfortunate how we can’t test with that kind readily due to price. but it’s okay.
