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Behold, the tender fruit of violent brainstorms.<\/p>\nThis week found us continuing pre-production, working fastidiously to establish the bedrock of a communal creative vision. Naturally, this pursuit could only be realized by the lot of us barreling headlong through a meeting-gauntlet; fortunately, as a byproduct of the necessary creative crucible in which this week we simmered, we\u2019ve discovered that we collectively possess a preternaturally high threshold for meetings. And although none of us are clairvoyant in the strictest sense (at least to the knowledge of this author), it can be intuited that this collaborative tenacity will serve Prisoner\u2019s Cinema well for the duration of the semester.<\/p>\n
Our most bounteous seance this week was focused on the structure of our game, though we also substantially touched upon gameplay possibilities. We plan to architect our experience around some derivation of the circadian clock–which is Casey\u2019s personal favorite biological phrase, and which denotes a chronologic cycle of 24 hours–but our current quadry (and one which will likely remain unresolved until we\u2019re able to begin prototyping and iteration) is whether to approximate the day\u2019s hours in accelerated real time, so that players must endure each passing, glacial, fleeting moment from the subjective viewpoint of our protagonist; alternatively, we question whether the game should progress in a more authored manner, in which we as creators will select which segments of day and night the player will assume the consciousness of our protagonist, and in which the player will have to place their trust in the fact that we are allowing them to control the protagonist\u2019s most significant moments.<\/span><\/p>\n Pertaining to gameplay, at this juncture of the project, during which we have the affordance of conversing about ideals, we plan to include three \u201cmodes\u201d within our experience: exploration, conversation, and \u201cmini-experiences,\u201d a phrase that we\u2019ve coined to represent discrete and self-contained instances of varied gameplay which may only occur once during the course of our game (and, for all intents and purposes, are synonymous with mini-games, though we\u2019ve knowingly chosen to spurn the term and its wretched ludic associations (and in the process we\u2019ve perhaps sired a term more offensive still, though endearing to us, for it is uniquely ours even in its monstrousness)). We spent a great deal of time defining the features we hope will comprise each mode, and, for sake of brevity, it\u2019s fair to divulge that we hope our exploration system will be sufficiently Gone Home-y, and that our conversation system will evoke a certain The Walking Dead-ishness. To be clear, our goal is not the mimicry of these existing games and their systems, but to rather use what they do well and how they do it as a foundation for our singular creation. (And pertaining to \u201cmini-experiences,\u201d we\u2019re very early in their conceptualization, but touchstones are presently games like Heavy Rain or Shenmue, in which distinct gameplay moments arise unpredictably, and during which the player must fleetly acclimate to numerous, disparate interactive challenges.)<\/p>\n Individually, each member of the team has sought to make as much tangible headway as possible during our pre-production phase. In addition to creating suitably ponderous promotional materials for our project for formalistic ETC purposes, Casey has also begun collecting reference materials for and executing drafts of our protagonist\u2019s dwelling–the very nexus of our game.<\/p>\n Alex researched our shortlisted tech options and winnowed them into definites, and he also begun prototyping in Unity a first-person camera perspective which allows the player pivot the camera downward and view our protagonist\u2019s neck, shoulders, arms, legs, and–yes–even feet: our hypothesis is that by better simulating a true-to-life first-person viewpoint–the one with we as humans are all so inextricably familiar–a more empathetic relationship between player and player character may be forged. Alternatively, this perspective could appear horrifically unnatural, subconsciously unsettling, or unintentionally hilarious, in which case we can simply adopt the curiously conventional, metaphysical first-person viewpoint in which the player character is represented only by a crowbar, gun, or disembodied hand which repeats the same three idle animations ad infinitum throughout a 60-hour game. Arseniy, meanwhile, developed a high-level project schedule, erected a SCRUM board, and was in a continuous producer\u2019s flight ensuring that the team was well equipped and happy (including procuring a coveted CintiQ tablet for Casey\u2019s disposal). Lastly, Nathan met with Dave and later spoke with Shane, our external advisor, during a team kickoff meeting with him, about the usefulness of player story design documentation, and has been preparing to compose it.<\/span><\/p>\n Production will begin in earnest next week, and we couldn\u2019t be more enthusiastic about this transition.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week found us continuing pre-production, working fastidiously to establish the bedrock of a communal creative vision. Naturally, this pursuit could only be realized by the lot of us barreling headlong through a meeting-gauntlet; fortunately, as a byproduct of the necessary creative crucible in which this week we simmered, we\u2019ve discovered that we collectively possess […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/prisoners-cinema\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/prisoners-cinema\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/prisoners-cinema\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/prisoners-cinema\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/prisoners-cinema\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/prisoners-cinema\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/prisoners-cinema\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/prisoners-cinema\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/prisoners-cinema\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/prisoners-cinema\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/na7_LqACyVCc8TDJ2SwVgGh4HlEm6M_VodoltLbh_n0negNXbgPW9Ioa5WPirxjACv_ek44Fj2JENwMERoRXn7pMj35rbZ4Jc5qLSyrMlM9bUlbLH50KWlhTjw\")
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