XIAO LI
PORTFOLIO
個人作品集
BVW PROJECTS | 構建虛擬世界项目
Building Virtual Worlds (BVW), founded by Dr. Randy Pausch, is a practice orientated class of Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University. BVW class is consisted of 5 or 6 rounds of building games, each takes one or two weeks, generally finished by a team of random selected four people with different roles (Programmer, 2D artist, 3D Modeler, Sound designer).
BVW stresses on fast learning, fast prototyping and efficient team working and collaboration with unfamiliar people.
ROUND I
The Guardian
Game: The Guardian | 2 Weeks | Jan.25 2013 - Feb.6 2013
Platform: Microsoft XBOX Kinect
Role: Programmer
We made The Guardian a horizontal 3D game. The art style , black and white, gothic like and similar to nightmare, was decided immediately when we came up with this idea.
We decided not to let the player control the character, as typical AVG does, but to control the environment instead.
The player, as the guardian angle in the game, must figure out how to help the baby get through obstacles with his power.
Constellation: A Journey To Hidden Treasure
ROUND II
Game: Constellation: A Journey To Hidden Treasure | 2 Weeks | Feb.8 2013 - Feb.20 2013
Platform: Eye-Gaze
Role: Programmer
Round 2 is a naive guest round. We need to use instructions as few as possible and try to apply game elements to guide players following the story line.
We used Eye-Gaze platform, a device that tracks the pupils of human eyes and locate the sight on computer screen, as interactive media.
Everybody was joyful with my map discovering idea but each of us has a different concept on how to implement. The first version of our game adopted the fog of war which could be dispersed by the player with eye-gazing. Later, we reached a consensus of using ink, which makes the map more magical, and more naive player friendly.
Conceptual Designs and Design Concepts
For the first version of our game, we used a relative complicated map with fog of war on it. We later realized it could be quite misleading to a naive player and the interest curve was hard to control.
In final version we used a relative simple parchment map, in which the ink appears immediately where player looks. Therefore we provided a more positive and direct feedback.
Orbital
ROUND III.α
in Round 3, we used Jam-O-Drum, a multi-player platform with 4 stations and 1 projector linked to computer. 4 players could play simultaneous on a table with spinning the wheel and slamming the drum.
Orbital's concept comes from air hockey and we decided to make it more science-fictional: players act as aliens, protect their blackholes from collapsing for absorbing too much mass.
We implemented gravity field to introduce uncertainty to the game. Also, when player slams the drum to shoot a shockwave, its effect would gradually decrease by distance. Players thus have a more subtle control. Faculty evaluated the game as "Straddled the delicate balance between random and predictable" and "Perhaps best use of drum part of JOD I’ve ever seen".
We tried to import more planets, but we found one ball mechanism makes players more interactive with each other instead of just trying to take care of their own trouble.
ROUND IV
Soteria
Round 4 was Story Round, we were asked to apply storytelling methods into the game.
We built a game in which player acted a cloud, moved from the sea to the land. The cloud found the land was barren, and therefore rain to make the land a beautiful place. At the end, she sacrificed herself in remote dessert to save the people suffered from draught.
I acted the cloud in the final show. Psychological activities were acted or spoke out. However in the portfolio there is only game play demo.
ROUND V
Deep Duel
Round 5, the final round, the BVW festival round. We had one week to pitch two polished ideas and jury would pick one from them which we must follow. The final world must be able to be played by guests invited to BVW festival. We must decorate one room for our world to make it a theme park.
Our world's inspiration came from film: The Hunt for Red October. We made a 3v3 LAN game, that has two clients and one server, enabled two teams of three players using submarines to fight against each other. For each team, there would be a helms man, an engineer that control submarine's speed, depth and torpedo and a sonar officer that report enemy's position to his/her teammates. The game is about collaboration in fast-built teams. Somewhat like BVW.
In the BVW festival, we had a lot of "naive players", aged from 10 to 60 to play our game. They showed their passions to the game and the environment. We tried to make the room a deep water circumstance, with all kinds of DMX controlled lights and multiple stereos to enrich the experience.