Project Overview
This is Team 28's Round 2 project of the Building Virtual Worlds class at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center! It is a room scale AR experience using Quest 2 passthrough technologies designed for a single guest. In the story, the guest takes the role of the cleaner of our building who discovers that it is being haunted by the ghosts of abandoned game ideas! The guest has to use their vacuum to suck up all of the ghosts, save the ETC, and restore all of the good game ideas!
This world was built from scratch in only two weeks by me and four other teammates. The goal of this project was to create a sense of freedom for a guest and to guide a naive user through your experience with no explicit instruction.
Gameplay Overview
Introduction of guest role and story
First wave of ghosts - normal ghosts
Second wave of ghosts - faster ghosts
Final boss - spawns many ghosts
My Roles
Concept Designer
This concept was born out of my idea. I helped work on narrative and story development.
Producer
I was the producer on this project, growing my skills in task management and deadlines using Google Sheets, organization, and teamwork! I provided anonymous feedback forms to my team to allow them opportunities to share anything they might not be comfortable saying in person. I also worked hard to give encouragement and show appreciation to my team, gifting ghost-themed cookies and stickers at major milestones. As producer, I organized for 14 playtesters to test and give feedback for our game over the course of our development.
Artist
I was an artist on the project, sourcing reference images for the art style of the ghosts and vacuum, doing a little 3D modeling with Maya for the virtual vacuum, and creating the physical vacuum prop which held the Quest controller.
Scriptwriter
I wrote the scripts and dialogues for the introduction, win and lose endings, and ghost speeches, including the boss ghost.
Voice Actor
I did some voice acting as the voice of the boss ghost!
Concept Designer
A main goal of this project was to create an experience for a naive user where the user would know what to do with no explicit instruction. For this reason, I wanted to strategically appeal to film and pop culture tropes that they might be familiar with to bring in their prior knowledge
I chose to appeal to the trope of ghost hunting as seen in Casper and Ghostbusters
This project focused on using Augmented Reality (AR) technologies with Quest 2 Passthrough
I wanted to do a theme that would fit the physical space appropriately. This project would be played inside of the Randy Pausch Interdisciplinary Studio (RPIS) at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, so I wanted to use this as the setting of the game.
I also wanted to do a theme that would fit the AR technology appropriately. Ghosts can appear anywhere in a room, appear in front of or behind objects, and intersect with any objects or people in a room just as might happen when seeing objects in AR, so the ghost theme also fit with the abilities and limitations of the technology well.
I wanted to appeal to the audience and their background and interests. Our audience was mostly students and staff of Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, so I wanted to include familiar elements like the setting being our program building and the ghosts being the ghosts of abandoned game ideas.
Artist - Physical Vacuum
This physical vacuum prop helped with guiding a naive guest by limiting what actions guests could do. When holding the physical vacuum, they cannot access the Quest controller and so won't be confused by trying to press buttons or move joysticks
This physical prop fit well with the AR technology theme by blending a physical prop with a virtual world
The physical vacuum was a unique and interesting feature of our project which ended up being one of the audience's and player's favorite parts of the experience, consistently getting comments of excitement
Creation and prototyping
The physical vacuum was created entirely with free, accessible materials from home and from the ETC including air conditioner tubing, a large prop graduated cylinder (for structure), cardboard, and aluminum foil tape.
The vacuum required multiple iterations
The Quest controller mounted inside of the physical vacuum needed to be consistently visible by the headset but sometimes guests would hold the vacuum at extreme angles. To address this, I moved the controller further out of the top and side of the vacuum so that the controller was more visible and wouldn't lose tracking during the game
The controller also needed to be securely attached. Sometimes guests would get so excited that they would swing the vacuum aggressively and the Quest controller would fall out of the physical vacuum. To address this, I created a stronger cardboard base for the controller to sit in and I also further secured the controller with aluminum foil tape.
Contact
508-404-3168 | leplatt@andrew.cmu.edu | Pittsburgh, PA | https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenelizabethplatt/