OneNight
The VR game follows Ezzi, a young girl with Alzheimer's who's fighting to get her memory back. We experience her mind's unraveling from her point of view making her the ultimate unreliable narrator. You will feel trapped in the room and this is brought to life through game visual tricks.
produced by: Qike Shi
Introduction：
OneNight is founded on the idea of subjectivity offering a subjective experience in place of an objective story. Ezzi will look for fragments of memory according to Ai artificial intelligence voice prompts. When the memory level is triggered, she will open a memory video. When we role Ezzi, confusions, and duplications make us feel excluded and lonely. Looking for broken memories is just Failed relationships, past traumas, and stolen youth.
One night rendered scenes and textures through Unreal Engine 4, combined with Oculus Quest2 to experience an immersive experience, and created multiple game interactions. The memory video part is through Touchdesigner and Processing particles system, in a fantastic way how life erodes, piece by piece, when Alzheimer takes over Ezzi’s life. The rain stopped, the sun rises. Anyway, tomorrow is another day. Ezzi still living in a repeated and recycled environment. Alzheimer's is a cruel and heartless disease that robs any affected patient of their memories, logic, and - ultimately - their dignity.
Concept and background research：
Have you heard Alzheimer’s？In 1906, German physician Dr. Alois Alzheimer first described "a peculiar disease" — one of profound memory loss and microscopic brain changes — a disease we now know as Alzheimer's.
My older sister is the prototype of Ezzi, an Alzheimer's patient. When I was a teenager, I thought about what she was thinking every day, sometimes very conscious, but sometimes she was confused and even incontinent. I remember she once told me, " Every whole night, I could hardly sleep," that’s when I didn't understand that. She died in the early hours of the morning last year, and at her funeral, my curiosity was stronger than sadness. What had she‘s been through the night before？
Alzheimer's disease is one form of dementia. Dementia refers to the loss of the ability of a person to think and reason due to some type of brain disease(→ V., 2021). Although, the way that Alzheimer’s disease affects the brain is drastic it is not the primary cause of death. AD causes many handicaps, like immobility and difficulty swallowing, which leads to malnutrition and pneumonia, resulting, in the patient’s death. （Mayo Clinic. 2021）
My project is to create an immersive space experience through Oculus Quest2. Virtual reality is amongst the technologies that have existed as early as the 1960s. Now，Vr Technology is widely used in the whole society, such as (1) Healthcare and Well-Being, (2) Entertainment and Gaming, (3) Tourism, (4) Retail, (5) Education and Training Programs, (6) Production-Driven Businesses and Automotive Industry, (7) VR and Architecture. Using VR technologies as a form of the OneNight presentation is the best choice. The player can immerse in a 3D virtual reality entertainment environment and interact with each other during the game.
My inspiration was the movie "The Father." Anthony Hopkins is easily the greatest actor of our times in his gut-wrenching portrayal of a man suffering from Alzheimer's. This movie helps me understand my older sister's experience and struggles so much better. I am blown away by how moving and incredible this movie was. The difference here is that the film is from the sufferer's perspective. This view brings a different perspective to my game, in which players play Alzheimer's patients and experience the madness that Alzheimer's brings to them.
Game mechanics：
【1】Level 1:
Avoid players not knowing how to control controllers after entering the game. On level1, While the voice dialogue guides Ezzi to find the right exit, it also allows Ezzi to learn how to use Controllers to move the character.
【2】Level 2:
Let players master how to pick up items through controllers. Ezzi returned to her childhood room, heard her mother yelling at her to clean up the room and 15min to turn off the pot in the kitchen. In the process, the player will easily master pickup and throw ticks.
【3】Level 3:
Ezzi (the player) came to an exhibition, Ezzi obstinately believed these are her paintings. She will explain each painting to everyone.
【4】Level 4:
The rain stopped, Ezzi found She was imprisoned on the bed. The game is over.
Technical：
【1】Streaming in levels with c++
Many people use Unreal Engine 4 blueprint to Stream level, I tried C++ to set up. Create a new C++ Class，including Actor，select Actor and click next。 The new class will now open in the Visual studio. When stream level in once the character overlaps a box component called overlap volume in our LevelStreamerActor.
【2】Niagara FX System
I made a basic rain particle in Unreal Engine 4. Setting up the Niagara particle system and get particle data (rain real material), and then in the material channel sets up Niagara.
【3】Pixelflow
The videos have lots of particle effects, it’s suited my topic that forgetfulness. First, divide the video screen into many blocks, and then observe each block how moves. Difference between motion-compensated prediction and current frame. This was related to speed, density, and pressure. High-pressure area squeezes mortgage area that can product acceleration. Each particle represents moving direction and speed. In a video, I divided lots of pixels. The pixels that moving fast will produce particles, then when my video has a moving object like girls and carrousel. The particle will be around them.
Self-evaluation:
My first time tried Unreal Engine4 and Oculus Quest2. The development of the Internet has given me a good learning platform that I can learn a lot of high-quality tutorials. In the process, There are a lot of unexpected situations because there is no planning for the final project. For example, because of my computer graphics card, if I turn on AMD Radeon (TM) Graphics, it will cause Oculus Quest2 to fail to connect to my computer to start the game. After many experiments, I found that revealed motherboard power flaw that comes with AMD Radeon (TM) Graphics.
The worst thing was when I found out 3 days before the Degree Show that my VR game was unpackaged. On Andy's advice, 01. Make sure all assets build correctly. 02. Have a look in the output log for error reports. 03. try removing assets from my level maps。 This process, pretty similar to commenting out parts of the code of your in a C-program of the kind of what's the problem. Fortunately, the package was successful in the end.
This situation also occurs because I was not well prepared in advance, you should find any problems early, as well as quickly learning what causes problems and how to fix this rather than anxiously looking for the cause in the final period of my project.
I also found a lot of problems during the Degree Show, OneNight is a narrative novel game, and I also set up sound guidance. But for some reason, in the course of the show, the player does not pay attention to the story content, more in the game experience. In this regard, I also need to think more about how to balance these relationships.
Future development:
Unfortunately, due to time, I cut from the original 6 scenes to 4 scenes, resulting in a lot of scenes I did not express. After that, I will refine my project and design more player interactions, such as clue UI tips, character interaction conversations, etc. At present, the controllers only have “movement” and “pick up items” two buttons control, after which I can refer to The Luigi's Mansion 3, set "suck" "pull" and so on.
References:
Assets：
[1] Unreal Engine. 2021. Alchemist's House in Environments - UE Marketplace. [online] Available at: <https://unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/alchemist-s-house> [Accessed 8 September 2021].
[2] Unreal Engine. 2021. Cartoon House in Environments - UE Marketplace. [online] Available at: <https://unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/cartoon-house> [Accessed 7 September 2021].
[3] Unreal Engine. 2021. Victorian House (Only BedRoom) in Environments - UE Marketplace. [online] Available at: <https://unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/victorian-house-only-bedroom> [Accessed 6 September 2021].
Tutorial：
[1] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndT2cXZuOuM&t=589s> [Accessed 09 September 2021].
[2] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqg3qlJdCCM&t=442s> [Accessed 09 September 2021].
[3] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_s1q2SGRK0&t=175s> [Accessed 06 September 2021].
[4] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqg3qlJdCCM&t=676s> [Accessed 07 September 2021].
Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5gA7q5GD7Q> [Accessed 05 September 2021].
[5] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndT2cXZuOuM&t=594s> [Accessed 05 September 2021].
[6] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmb2FrFunME> [Accessed 08 September 2021].
[7] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFJmiLpfpEg&t=91s> [Accessed 05 September 2021].
[8] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgwXqRuEOo0> [Accessed 05 September 2021].
[9] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58tCYEEPgLQ&t=279s> [Accessed 05 September 2021].
[10] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2QhxTRmVXc&t=1s> [Accessed 09 September 2021].
[11] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boW9BSTw6ec&t=53s> [Accessed 08 September 2021].
[12] Youtube.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY1wmjDqc9k&t=184s> [Accessed 09 September 2021].
Article:
[1] Martin, Herbert. "Alzheimer." Chest 154.2 (2018): 451. Web.
[2] American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias. (2000). Web.
[3] Bourne, Sue, and Holly Bourne Starecka. One Life : Mum and Me. Wellpark Productions / BBC, 2008. Print.
[4] Draper, Brian. Understanding Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias. 2013. Print.
[5] Brenman, Natassia F, and Richard Milne. "“Ready for What?”: Timing and Speculation in Alzheimer’s Disease Drug Development." (2021). Web.
[6] Chapman, Silvia, Leigh E Colvin, Matti Vuorre, Gianna Cocchini, Janet Metcalfe, Edward D Huey, and Stephanie Cosentino. "Cross Domain Self-[7] Monitoring in Anosognosia for Memory Loss in Alzheimer’s Disease." (2018). Web.