LOST IN SPACE Team Soup-a-Stars
Callum Batty, Mary Hanson, Lewis Timm, Alec Morris, Jonathan Wright
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION The Lore In a far off galaxy a space pirate, destitute from gambling, makes a frantic bid to steal the treasure of an ancient and trap ridden tomb. He struggles to make his way through deadly defense mechanisms and guards until he reaches the glittering gulled tomb of a long forgotten space king The Product This is a first person VR adventure experience. The player takes on the role of a broke space pirate looting an ancient tomb while avoiding the myriad defense mechanisms. The VR experience will include aspects of ancient Egyptian culture incorporated into a Sci-Fi theme that will appeal to fans of the Star Gate and Indiana Jones franchises.
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TARGET AUDIENCE The target audience for this VR adventure is aimed at an age range of around 20 years old. The type of person, who would like this experience, would be a person who is into sci-fi and adventure. People who are familiar with products such as the Indiana Jones films will probably like this VR experience as it derives many elements from “Indiana Jones” type films. Although there is a heavy adventure theme, people who are familiar with sci-fi products such as the “Stargate” franchise will like this VR experience as it provides a sci-fi and Egyptian combination which is incorporated into different stages of the demo. The type of person, who will get the most enjoyment out of this VR Experience, is a person who is very curious and adventurous. A curious person will get a great amount from exploring an uncharted pyramid full all sorts of wonders. An adventurous person will also a get a good amount of satisfaction from the experience due to its surprising nature, they will come across perilous traps and dangers that are waiting for them within the pyramid. The platform preference of the target audience will be PC, this usually the platform of choice for people who are into VR experiences.
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DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS We had a variety of design specifications that we implemented such as colour scheme, asset style and atmospheric styles so that we could all produce work with the same intentions. This colour scheme was created through looking into Heads up displays and other sci fi relates objects and atmospheres. The appropriate colour palette that was chosen, helped when we started creating assets for the world by making them all look like they are part of the same environment.
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Mary one of the concept artists on the project created this storyboard which formed the whole project from this point. The storyboard gave a clear example of what we wanted to do throughout the VR experience, having stages made it easier for us focus on the timings of the VR as we needed to know when events would occur within the demo and when the viewer would have something new to see.
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CONCEPT ARTWORK and ASSET CREATION After choosing the topic and theme we quickly began producing concept art for initial ideas and possible stages of the VR demo. We had the idea of pyramids that have been preserved in space upon these islands of rock, similar to meteorites. These quick concept pieces gave us a good starting point in unreal as we could begin blocking out at a very early stage. The concept artists created lots of detailed architectural concepts as this gave the
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Unreal specialist a good understanding of scale and how objects are positioned within the world. We wanted the concept art to keep to the colour scheme that we decided so that we could then created the assets straight from the concept using the same colours, this saved us time when moving on towards the asset creation stage.
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ASSET CREATION
Our asset team created a variety of game objects that would fit the theme and intention of our VR experience. Using the same color scheme the 3D specialists could texture the assets efficiently to the design specifications that we set. We then imported these objects into Unreal and used them in various levels. The objects that were created were ones that can be duplicated and used to fill rooms to make it easier when wanting to make stages of the game interesting.
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SOUND DESIGN
Because sound is a key feature in VR experiences we found a free download to game audio sounds from a company called sonniss who specialize in game audio. This package was very limited but after emailing the company they were happy to send the package directly to me. This provided us with some high quality sounds that we could implement into our demo.
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PROTOTYPE We wanted to make a very strong focal point for the opening scene when you are first shown the pyramid. Having strong light on the metallic face of the pyramid makes the viewer instantly notice it, which draws the focus into the entrance to the next stage. The viewer flies onto the long landing pad where the bright lights and burning vases create an importance feeling, we did this because this is a key point of the VR demo. We used Unreal 4 rocks for the base of the pyramid, also we used a standard metal texture for the actualy pyramid to reflect the light, as well as a stone texture for the landing pad.
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We focused alot on open rooms and how we can create an atmosphere for each room by changing the length and width depending on the mood we wanted to the viewer to feel. For the opening airlock stage (bottom left) we made it very enclosed so that the viewer should feel confined, the red light and sound effects makes this scene tension focused. For the corridor scene (botton right) we made it very long to show importance as well as overhanging pillars and ornaments enchancing the importance.
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