Unity Project-- Hope(less)
Project split
This project is a group project created by Shaun Zhou and Me. In this project, we had splited this project into two parts. Shaun finds all the necessary models and materials. He also did the layout and object arrangements. I worked on the design of interactivities and storyline. I also worked on the simple UI design.
Storyline and Choices
All games are about decision making. Player should make their choices which determine their own endings. In this project there are three endings.
Background Story
This is a story for future. Because of the air pollution and overusing of Freon. The hole in the auto sphere became larger and larger. In 2354, the autosphere finally couldn't function well, it couldn't lock the water on the earth anymore. Water escaped to the universe, and we have to face the huge challenge of lack of water resources. People also have to suffer the extreme weather, and dust strom. The soil is also too dry to grow, so people have to grow food indoor.
Background Story
However, God didn't close all the door for his creatures, people found a special lake which could generate a special bubble after each dust storm. The bubble will rise in the sky and form a speical land in the sky. Each bubble is isolated, but it has a small land for creature inside the bubble for enough food.
Designed Choices
So player have to make moral choices in this simple storyline. First, be in the community. Community is the main form of the society now, and people have to work for the community to gain sufficient food.
[Extra] If you are a woman, you couldn't leave the community, because the population is really declining every year, the only fate for woman is to be a mother for her whole life. (This design didn't include in the final version)
Designed Choices
The other two choices are to explore the larger world individually and to go in the bubble. After being in the bubble, player could make decisions to living and dying in the bubble, or before dying destroy the bubble. If the bubble is destoryed, the good moist soil will drop on the ground for other people to grow food.
Design Intentions
The main intention of this work is discussing there's no perfect choice. Everyone is making decisions for everything, but there's no perfect one. If you choose to work for the community, you have to suffer the high dense of workload, and work for them until the death. If you choose to live in the bubble, you have to find it first, and then suffer the isolation and loneliness. If you choose to destory the bubble for other people, you will die. All options cost something.
Click to the Game page .
Scene Control in Unity
In this project, there are four scenes in total. The first scene is purely UI and background story panel. This scene was seperated because of the splited project and working process. While I was working on this UI design, my group mate could arrange the model in Wasteland. In this UI design, all of the text was controled by event trigger. It enbaled next text object and then output an empty text. If you click to next sentance, the text will become story content from the empty text.
Beginning Animation
The beginning video is rendered from raw image, and because of the order of display. In the list of objects, the button listed items are usually layering over top items. The raw image has a rendered texture which is the video of the beginning. After rendered, the video will play, and I set a timer to count down for this video. After playing 6 second, this raw image object will disappear and the text will appear to tell the story.
Building a world
The layout of all the object is not enough for telling a story. Posters, magic bubbles, desert, and all other details telling more about this world. Here selected several design made by me. The dust particles also give the in-game view a feeling of dust strom. The abondoned landmarks showed that this is a wasteland.
Options and endings
In this game, there are three endings. However, you have more than three selections, some of the option is important, some of them doesn't matter. This is a month-long project, so the UI is not perfect. However, the content is good enough to provide player insights. The endings of this game has different ending animations. It makes people think about their selections. Is your hope the real hope? Is your personal hopeless a real hopeless? No choice is perfect, but all choices have some good part, and also some bad part.