Student Area

I decreased the intensity of the directional and ambient light as much as possible, and instead chose to use different colored spotlights to light the scene. I changed the skybox to a dark color to make it seem like the room extends beyond the frame.

I wanted to create a scene in which things weren’t colored/textured in accordance to the way they are in the real world. By tinting everything red and white (and not necessarily objects that are supposed to be one color as that color), I wanted to create something that looks visually appealing but with a sense of surrealism and strangeness.

For this piece, I decided to try a hybrid of static and falling objects. During my first try on Monday, I tossed around the idea of actually putting colliders on everything and letting them fall as they may, so I figured this would be a good compromise. The coins, bowl, apples and table are from the tutorial assets, while I got the record player, picture frame, and clock from the Unity asset store. The background, I decided to texture an elongated cube as a sort of wallpaper.

The arrangement is similar to vanitas, but instead of including a skull, I went with a skull-like figure in the portrait. To relate to the passage of time, I decided to include a clock and record player, as well as the objects falling and coming to rest on the table; all indicative of how time passes.

I decided to play around with lighting within a confined space (although not perfectly confined) because I wanted to explore aesthetics of assets under small sources of light in “rooms.”

I kept the number of objects simple because I really enjoyed the complexity of the composition around the hand and the flower with the candle.

Wanted to capture the moment when things fall.

Here’s a zoomed in version!

This composition was mainly inspired from random things I saw as I was browsing the Unity asset store. Every asset here was downloaded, and I basically just mashed them all together. Modified skybox to be dimmer so that the bridge lights can shine brighter.

(More pictures from different angles)

Ahh! Food!!!

(close up)

For my still life piece, I decided to use colors that seem playful and happy. However, some of the objects indicate a more negative kind of message, such as greed and death. The arrangement is like a traditional still life piece, but the flat materials made it look very game-like, which I thought was appealing. I decreased the intensity of the ambient light so that the spotlight on the skull would have more of a glow effect.

I liked the stool and coins from the provided folder of objects so I included them. The rest of the objects were found online (with materials altered), with the exception of the necklace and mushrooms, which I modeled.

I decided to go overboard and try to create a fight scene in Unity communicated only through reflections.

The model you see is the free asset Unity-Chan: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/18705

Relax to the soothing sound of rocket engines

serene-spaceships-720 from Ben Scott on Vimeo.

I like the idea of games with big expansive worlds, like GTA, but not enough to invest in the necessary equipment to play them myself. Youtube gameplay was not cutting it anymore, and I wanted to find a way to play my own version of GTA, but one where the objective is to steal pieces of GTA V rather than cars. My other motivation was the prompt to misplay a game, and I would argue that only ever watching other people play a game and then thinking you understand it is truly misplaying a game at a fundamental level. I turned to the wealth of video walk-throughs shot inside of GTA on youtube. I downloaded some of these videos, broke the scenes into frames, and ran those frames through a photogrammetry application, essentially Xeroxing the environment. This allowed me to extrude 3D models derived from the gameplay footage. The result were very fragmented and messy 3D models, and I used them to begin populating the environment of my new game: Shitty GTA.

The object of shitty GTA is to move from point A to point B without falling through the shitty terrain.

https://giphy.com/gifs/qWzpF4umQsRNK/fullscreen

http://giphy.com/gifs/dv6kzc4MKVeE0/fullscreen

stay tuned for the release of shitty GTA: the bootleg video game.

Forza Motorsport 6

Forza Motorsports is a realistic race game that can simulate the effects of damage on the driving characteristics of a car.  I enabled the hardest difficulty (ABS off, TS off, STC off) and turned on realistic simulated damage with the goal of reaching 100% damage and achieving a DNF.  I selected my Ferrari 330 P4.  The 330 P4 is a priceless automobile and some would consider these actions sacrilegious.

After failing to disable my car, I then played with the rewind to see how big of a wreck I could cause.

I then attempted to see how many vehicles I could disable or cause to pit before the end of the race.   I selected a heavy armored vehicle and began to race.

I attempted to test the patience of my virtual customers in the popular game “Diner Dash” by taking my sweet time getting their orders, serving their food, and seating customers. My goal was to have every customer in the restaurant angry with my service, however, the task ended up being a challenging one, testing my ability to correctly time my seating of each customer and begin their tortuous wait for my service at the right moment. Customers only remain angry for a certain period of time in the game before vanishing, and I ended up unable to complete the task of pissing EVERYONE in the vicinity off.

While Overwatch is all about attacking the other team and defending the own team, I changed the purpose of the game. I used the character called Mercy who is a healer in the game and shoot continuously to the same team member to create a jumprope. While shooting, the healing yellow line becomes a jumprope. If Mercy turns the healing gun continuously, it creates a jumprope that makes other players to jump. While the other players went out to play and kill other team members, six out of three players played jumprope. In overwatch, team cooperation is the key element to defeat the other team. However, the three players stayed at the base to play jumprope rather than going out to kill other team members. This made the other three players frustrated and the other team was thankful to win since three players did not do anything in the game.

Kerbal Space Ocean Program

Kerbal Space Program is a game that is based entirely on its physics engine. Presented with a scale model of a Sun-like star system, the player must design and fly rockets to explore the various celestial bodies in your nearby vicinity.

The culture of the game is to see how messed up a rocket you can build and still fly it. With an incredibly satisfying explosion mechanic, most unusual crafts have already been flow. In a game about exploring nearby moons, satellites, and planets, there’s not a lot of unexplored territory out there in space.

That being said, there is one place that often goes unexplored. Much like our Earth, much more is known about the bodies of the solar system than is known about the oceans on Kerbin (the Earth analog). In the ever-hungry quest for science, I designed and piloted a submersible craft to explore the big blue.

For this project I downloaded an iPhone version of the game Battleship and decided to play it counterintuitively in a few different ways. Before each game, I gave myself a rule to stick to when choosing my target points.

Rule: Only shoot in an X-formation. I just wanted to see if there was an optimal way to hit as many ships as possible, and the X actually landed on several points, probably at least 3 different ships.

Rule: Try to avoid hitting any ships. Stop once you do. Basically you can play minesweeper with battleship???

Rule: Shoot at the same points on the enemy map where you put your own fleet. The other person did not catch on.

Rule: Copy the enemy’s moves. Complications arose when the enemy finally made a hit and got to go multiple times in a row (I did not think this through), but I stuck to it as best as I could by only placing my next hits only where the enemy has already struck. In the beginning I actually matched a lot of the hits.