The Gallery

Interactive Picture made in Collaboration with James Grey

Aims

The aim for this game was to create a set of interactive experiences that users could freely explore and discover something different about each interactive picture.
I also wanted to create some animations that could be used in the interactive pictures.

Coming up with the game

James and I felt it important to have at least four interactive experiences for users. I would handle the artwork side and create some animations for the interactive pictures. James was responsible for creating the gallery in a 3D environment and the code behind the project.

We discussed a few different ideas and settled on some concepts for the interactive pictures. Some of these are in the game and others have been omitted or changed over time.

The Game

The game consists of four interactive pictures. One allows the player to control a rain cloud in which when the space bar is held it rains, the rain triggers the flowers animation as the user waters the flowerbed. Another picture allows players to play as the Google Crome dinosaur and you have to jump over randomly generated cactuses in order to maintain your score. The third image when triggered randomly generates animated jellyfish that swim upwards in a calming display. And finally, the last image is a question mark that can be rotated around by the player and retains its rotation when not being interacted with.

Some of the ideas omitted from the gallery due to time constraints were an interactive solar system in which users could control the rotation speed of the planets. And a cave wall in which users could trigger cave paintings to animate onto the wall.

Play Test

Positive Summary:

Players appeared to enjoy the interactions
Players liked the amount of interactive pictures available

Issues Summary:

Some additional transitions could be added to make the experience smoother

The feedback from the play test was encouraging with play testers liking our gallery and the four individual interactive pictures. The players appeared to be enjoying the way in which James set up the interactions, and the fact that there are four intractable pictures to explore meant that there was plenty for users to do given the short development time.

Some constructive feedback was that the transition out of the interactive picture view and back to the gallery had no camera animation and could be a bit jarring for some users, it could be beneficial to smooth the transition.

Conclusion

The Galley works as an interactive picture experience, the game meets our aims in providing a set of interactive experiences as well as including some of my animations as part of the intractable pictures. This is evidenced by the positive response by players and their feedback praising the number of interactive pictures. From play testing it appears to be an experience that users enjoy and could potentially be expanded upon to include even more interactive pictures for users to engage with.

What I would improve

If I were to go forward with this game, I would focus on creating a more diverse and expanded experience for users. This would be done by creating a larger 3D gallery space and including even more intractable picture displays all with their own unique flavour and style. I think this kind of game could be particularly interesting when working with a large team of people who could all contribute to the larger experience by way of their personal interests, styles, gameplay, art etc. I feel this has the potential to create a unique experience for users.

Image Gallery

Below is a galley of images displaying James’ work flow within Unity. Further down is a display of the animations and artwork and below that are videos and images of ideas that didn’t make it into the final project.