City University of Hong Kong School of Creative Media: BScCM Department of Computer Science

BScCM Final Year Project 2019 – 2020 (Phase I) Report on Research, Analyse & Development

<< Redemption >>

Student Name/EID : KUO Samuel Chun Yin/54430251

Student Name/EID : Mui Man Ho/54434133

Student Name/EID : Ng Hin Chung/54841445

Programme Code : SM4712B

Supervisors SCM : Mr. YIM, Chun Pang CS : Dr.NGO, Chong Wah

Date : 11/10/2019

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Table of contents

Table of contents ...... 2 Introduction ...... 3 Objective ...... 4 Deliverables ...... 5 Project schedule ...... 6 Story Framework (Pending) ...... 7 Story Chapter flow (Pending) ...... 8 Background Research and Survey ...... 9 Methodology ...... 14 Player Control ...... 15 Implementation and Evaluation ...... 16 Discussion and analysis/Data collection ...... 17 Concluding remarks & Summary ...... 18 Acknowledgements ...... 19 References ...... 20 Appendices ...... 21

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Introduction

In our Final Year Project, we are going to create a game called “Redemption”. It is a single-player simulation game on the PC platform.

Redemption is interactive storytelling where is a combination of story and digital entertainment. Audience experiences a unique story based on their interactions with the story.

This is a story reflecting the problem of a misanthrope. Representations of misanthropy have frequently attributed to two motivations. First, the misanthrope will be portrayed as guided by unbending principle, their reasoned disdain deriving from a high-minded moral code. On the other hand, the misanthrope is often depicted as being ruled by passion, their intense, emotional abhorrence of humanity the result of personal affronts or misfortunes. Our project aims is to let the audience having a close observation of the mental journey of a misanthrope through the game, to understand there is a special group of people around us who lack of care.

In our project, the protagonist of the story “Peter” is a misanthrope who attributed to both of two motivations. In this game, player has to interact with different objects to prevent Peter to do something wrong such as drug/ kill people/ find out something etc. The performance of each mission will affect the story of the game such as the difficulty and the animation of the coming mission.

Our story is happening in Hong Kong so the art style will be modern Hong Kong. We think that Hong Kong is a city with full of pressure. That’s why Peter is a misanthrope.

The feature of our project is we will try to create a horror feeling for the game environment without any monster, ghost (except the player) and jump scare. For doing this we will focus on lighting, the texture of different objects and music.

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Objective

Creative/Artistic Objective:

Objective 1:

It is a single-player simulation game on the PC platform

Objective 2:

To tell a story where players can interact and making different decision to make different endings

Objective 3:

We will create animation for linking different storyline

Objective 4:

The art style will be modern Hong Kong with a horror feeling

Research Objective:

Objective 1:

To create a game for audience to have a close observation of the mental journey of a misanthrope

Objective 2:

To create a horror feeling environment without ghost, monster or jump scare

Objective 3:

To investigate the behavior and characteristic of a misanthrope. And also the causes of becoming misanthropy

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Deliverables

Research output

• Unity (.exe)

• Maya

• Character Design

• Modeling

• Animation

• Final Report

• Weekly Project Blog

• https://samuelfyp743458116.wordpress.com/blog-feed/

• https://kmplayer1st.wixsite.com/mysite

• https://mcchung819.wixsite.com/chungcmfypblog

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Project schedule

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Story Framework (Pending)

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Story Chapter flow (Pending)

Chapter 1

A misanthrope lives in a haunted house

Chapter 2

One day he wants to use drug Player need to stop him

Chapter 3

Suddenly, his girlfriend come to find him And he goes to toilet

Chapter 4

His girlfriend sending message with cheat Player have to stall the boy so he can’t find that

Chapter 5

But he still finds that So the boy outrage and want to kill the girl

Chapter 6

Player have to protect the girl so she can escape

Chapter 7

The boy traces the girl and player have to stall him

Chapter 8

Different ending depends on player’s performance

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Background Research and Survey

Research on Story

To create our story, we take some references on some popular game story in the market

• 返校 DETENTION

o A horror game, the story is happening in the Taiwan political period, mentioned about the Nirvana or reincarnation, the main character is a spectre and she will keep dying and reborn repeatedly if she cannot complete her wishes.

• 還願 DEVOTION

o A Taiwan horror game, the story is about a superstition father willing to do everything to save her daughter from serious sickness, mentioned about many of terrible religious ritual and self-damaging problems, there are an open ending in the story, every player will have their own version of explanation on the story ending. We adopted some elements in the game mentioned above to create our own story, it will be a horror game talk about a loser, anti-social young man called Peter, and the player will be a ghost that living in Peter’s home. Actually, the ghost is the dead soul of Peter, and the whole story is a flashback of Peter’s life, the player will stop Peter from doing wrong things, for the redemption, for the true dead, for the Nirvana.

Why the story is happening in Hong Kong?

As we found that Hong Kong people are always living in stressful circumstances. Pressure are mainly come from health, family, social, financial problem and working. It is easily to cause emotional problems. In Hong Kong young people are the most common group of people in those problems like the protagonist: “Peter” in our story.

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Research on Artistic

We planned the art and aesthetic of the game will keep a realistic and modern style, However, to create a horror feeling, we will also focus on lighting. We take some reference from few games.

• 還願 DEVOTION [1]

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• 香港秘密警察 SLEEPING DOG [2]

Since our story mainly happen in a Hong Kong apartment in slum, we are thinking of applying some art elements in DEVOTION like dim light, messy house, small and tight environment, combine with the old Hong Kong style of SLEEPING DOG, to create a Hong Kong haunted house.

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Research on Gameplay

We design our game will be a first-person horror/ adventure game, the player controls a spectre hovering around the house, try any method to stop the main character to do any bad things suck like take drugs, murdering. Our gameplay style took some reference from some first-person game in the market.

• 超能殺機：兩個靈魂 BEYOND TWO SOUL [3]

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• 絕命精神病院 OUTLAST [4]

Player act as spectre, so the NPC cannot see you, but you still able to control somethings in the real world will spiritual power, we hope to add more gameplay style and feature, puzzle, quick time events, chasing, shooting, escaping are planned to be include in the game.

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Methodology

In this project, we used MAYA as our main 3D Modeling software. We use MAYA to make our main scene, e.g. the house, chair, table, sofa, etc. All the things that will appear in a normal house. We will choose to use MAYA as our main 3D Modeling software because we all have some experiences in MAYA. It is easier and more efficient for us to finish our project. Also, MAYA provided a good environment for making good models with a user-friendly design, it also helps us to make some realistic animation through MAYA.

We use Unity as our gaming engine. Unity is very effective in rendering 3D images, which is the main part of our game. Also, we can simply import the MAYA scene into Unity to make the animation part of our game. Which it is very convenient for us to make a good quality game.

Premiere and AfterEffect will be our main video editing software. We are quite familiar with these two software. Although MAYA can produce the animation directly, we can optimize our video through these two software to make a better animation.

We will allow the player using both keyboard or console controller to play the game, depending on the user preference.

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Player Control

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Implementation and Evaluation

In this moment, we have made are very brief demonstration concept game for our game, it is just a very simple game concept, player will act as a spectre (in the picture below, the player can move around, but cannot show in the picture) , hovering around a house, much more details will be added into the game, such as character, texture, NPC.

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Discussion and analysis/Data collection

Limitation

There are several limitations in our game. This app is a single player game, which this may not fulfill some user who prefer multiplayer game instead of single player game. Also, players cannot explore the world freely, they must follow the basic storyline to play the game. Not all the props in the game can be used, only some of the important props can be used. The quality of our game may also limited by our techniques. But we will try our best to make the best quality. It might not be perfect but will be acceptable, we will still have room for improvement.

Interesting findings

We give up to use jump scare for scaring players, we try to build up the horror atmosphere to make player feel uncomfortable and scary. Also, using Hong Kong as our main background willing to make the player take empathy into the game character.

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Concluding remarks & Summary

In this material wealth era, people always pay for entertainment. Technology develop rapidly. We believe that to develop in the field of game will have a good return. Thus we decide to create a game for our final year project.

Redemption is an interactive storytelling game. It combines story and digital entertainment. Audience will experience a unique story based on their interactions with the main story.

We hope players have some reflection after playing our game and also can be scared by our game which we will not use the traditional scaring method, such as Jump Scare but the horror atmosphere. All of us are the new of unity, we think this project is a huge challenge for us, take a big risk, think about making a game that we have no any experience on it. Therefore, we may need much more time for studying the production of a game. Bless we can complete this challenge and gain the new knowledge, experience, ability of self-study and courage.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the advisor of our advisor (Prof NGO, Chong Wah, Prof YIM, Chun Pang) for technical support and propose useful suggestions about the project idea. We also thank our Acting BScCM Programme Leader, Mr. LEUNG, Hiu Ming Eddie and our FYP Course Coordinator Ms. YIP, Koala Choi Fung.

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References

[1] Red Candle Games, Images URL http://redcandlegames.com/presskit/sheet.php?p=devotion#images

[2] Sage Ashford, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition Is The Same, High Quality Game As Before URL https://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/10/29/sleeping-dogs-definitive-edition-is-the-same- high-quality-game-as-before/

[3] PewDiePie, Beyond: Two Souls - Gameplay, Walkthrough - Part 1 - OUR NEW STORY BEGINS! URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhMptotuYeM

[4] deluxe345, Outlast Gameplay (PC HD) URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeoLiQiun74

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Appendices

還願 DEVOTION https://redcandlegames.com/index.php

返校 DETENTION https://redcandlegames.com/detention/

香港秘密警察 SLEEPING DOGS https://square-enix-games.com/en_US/news/sleeping-dogs

超能殺機：兩個靈魂 BEYOND TWO SOUL https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B6%85%E8%83%BD%E6%AE%BA%E6%A9%9F%EF%BC%9A% E5%85%A9%E5%80%8B%E9%9D%88%E9%AD%82 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaF5nAINXX0

絕命精神病院 OUTLAST https://redbarrelsgames.com/games/outlast/

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