This is a course project for Building Virtual World (BVW).
This is a game for the storytelling round in BVW. In this round, the students were asked to develop a game that tells a story in three to four minutes.
The most challenging part of this round, in my point of view, was defining the scope of the project. To be more specific, it was deciding the story to be told. I had some experience in writing fictions, but it was still difficult for me to tell a complete and engaging story within four minutes. The lines should be concise yet informative enough for the guest to understand the plot; the graphics should be delicate and believable enough for the guest to immerse himself/herself in the story; what’s more, all the work had to be done within two weeks.
My team spent three days on storyboard and scripting before we started programming and modeling, and we kept polishing the story during the rest of the time. We trimmed the lines and the plot, keeping only the most powerful and emotional part of the story. Our story was expected to be arousing the empathy of the majority of the guest, thus we selected the topic of paternal love and VR platform. In the story, the protagonist was a senior high school soccer player who overcame the negative psychological influence of failing to goal a penalty kick with his father’s help. We explored the application of montage in VR to tell the story in the past when his father encouraged him to keep practicing after the protagonist failed in the penalty kick.
The process of exploring the usage of visual effects, lightings as well as cinematic skills in the scene was the most interesting part for me in this round. We gained lots of knowledge from a previous ETC project named Cutting Edge, in which the team members were trying to apply classical cinematic skills in VR.
