VM 470
December 4th Build
Proposal
For my VM470 project I would like to create a virtual reality experience based around the idea of surveillance. In today’s technological age, we are consistently surveilled albeit over the internet, through sound recording devices like Alexa or good old fashion video surveillance. My goal is to show how difficult it is to attain true privacy. In my project players will go through three simple daily routines: making breakfast, going to work, and shopping. In each scenario, there will be different devices that will act like surveillance cameras, the player will have to avoid the line of sight of these devices through whatever means necessary (mostly ducking or dodging). If a player is spotted it will add to a tally that will be shown to them at the end of the experience. The goal of this project is to show people how often they are being recorded and the ridiculous lengths they may have to go through to achieve privacy.
For the design of this project I am planning on using low poly angular assets with simple design similar to VR games like Job Simulator and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, but with more solid color textures. There are two reasons for this, the first being that I will be creating a lot of assets and I will need to be able to make them quickly and efficiently. The second is that I want an art style that feels simple and silly so that the user does not feel that they are being beaten over the head with a message, but rather come to their own conclusion from the experience. For the controls, I am planning on keeping it simple with the trigger buttons on the Vive controllers being used to grip objects in the world and the touch pad being used to teleport.
My schedule for this project is as follows. I plan on spending till the end of the first week of October creating simple rough assets to be used for the level design. Starting with the beginning of the second week of October and going until November 12 I plan on building the mechanics of the game. From then until the project is due I plan on creating more detailed assets as well as polishing up glitches and working out small kinks. I don’t foresee any part of the project being something unachievable. I think that the most difficult part will be creating the code that the security devices will work on.
If I get ahead of schedule I would like to include a few additional features that may require more time and research in order to implement correctly. The first feature would be to include a timer so that at the end of the experience not only are you told how many times you were spotted but also how long you were surveilled for. Another feature that I think could be an interesting addition would be to have sound recording devices as well that would be triggered if you make too much noise. A final addition that I think would be neat would be if before the experience you could input your Facebook profile and during the gameplay your own photos will appear in picture frames throughout the house.
Since this project has a timeframe of only a few months I will need to make sure that I don’t try to overshoot what is achievable. This is why I have included several possibilities for features that can be included once the initial project has a stable build. The assets for the project will be created in Maya 2018 and assembled in Unity with C sharp. To make it into a VR experience I will use a combination of VRTK and Steam VR.
