Narratives for Interaction Sharing: This War of Mine


This War of Mine is a wartime survival game that constantly reminds you the cruel and unpredictability nature of war. In the face of war, there are no regards to society statuses. Everyone are exposed and prone to any forms of mishap, sometimes even death. There are no heroes, just people doing everything they can to survive.

Throughout the game, you will be faced with various events that challenge your moral understanding and decisions. You can choose to save someone from the bandits but risk your life. On the other hand, you can choose to hide and be safe from the danger while the person suffers. There is no right or wrong, just how much you gain and learn from the experience.  

Besides making a difficult moral decision, the mental conditions of the survivors that are with the main character that the player is controlling also play a key role in deciding their fate of surviving in the war-torn condition. The player has to manage the feelings of his comrades or risk falling out among his people. I feel that this is an interesting inclusion to the game which adds a human element to it. It allows fictional characters to appear as real people with human emotions and problems. Through interacting with these characters, it allowed personal connections to be formed as the player does not view these characters as merely in game figures but as real human beings.   

The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges

For me, The Garden of Forking Path is a unique story. The front part of the story talking about Yu Tsun, a Chinese-German Spy, planning and carrying out his escape plan after his cover was blown is somewhat of an unrelated event to the entire story. Though, it served as the buffer for the main bulk of the story to unfold. It did, however, cause some confusion for me during my initial understanding of the text.

The main idea of the story explored the concept of time. It made me think about time more than just a form of measurement in mathematical context. It tried to bring across the idea of time being relative. It formed the basis of a network of possible futures made up of an infinite number of possibilities. These possibilities are all link with one and another. Every point in the context of time has the capability to be the starting point that will lead to an infinite outcome. A slight change in any part of the flow, it will result in a domino effect, affecting all the subsequence possibilities.  

This leads me to realize that our life is also affected by the possibilities happening due to the decisions we made and also the decisions we did not make. For example, today you may choose to go to the library and meet someone you that you can relate to. However, you might never meet that person if you choose not to go to the library and do something else instead. The decisions of going and not going to the library will each leads to a different network of possibilities that will branch out infinitely with the flow of time.

I feel that this is a relevant source of inspiration that we as designers can use to enhance an interactive narrative related project. The possibilities created by the availability of choices allows us to create layers within our narrative. Within each layer, there will be potential for more possibilities, creating an interesting and engaging narrative experience. With a fixed progression happening in most of the narrative, in which the flow of it is fixed and sometimes predictable, the availability of choices creates a non-linear storytelling experience in a linear context.

Narratives for Interaction: Documentation and Progress I

The project


Japanese Occucaption – The Tale of a Traitor

Area of focus:

The sook ching massacre

The team


Goh Cher See

Nicholas Makoto

Zhou Yang

The concept and objective


Japanese occupation of Singapore is a piece of history that is both familiar and alien to the younger generations. They might have come across various sources of information about the fall of Singapore to the Japanese through numerous mediums such as history textbook, television shows, and online articles. However, our team feels that the information provided by these mediums are not doing enough. They are not providing their audience with the necessary ingredients to appreciate the sacrifices the forefathers of Singapore performed during the period of hardship under the Japanese rule.  Therefore, our team decided to create a documentary-styled game. We hope through the interactive nature of the game and the narrative elements of documentary; our audiences will be able to acknowledge the collective past that we as Singaporeans have. Most importantly, we will be able to recognize those that gave up their future so we can build ours. 

Every year on 15 February, a memorial service will be held at The Civilian War Memorial to remember those that have fallen during the Japanese Occupation. 

The background story


The Sook Ching massacre was a purge conducted by the Japanese military on the Chinese community in Singapore during the Japanese Occupation. It took place from 18 February to 4 March 1942 at various places such as the Changi beach and Punggol beach. The estimated death toll resulted from the massacre was between 50,000 and 90,000. It was an inhumane mission ordered by Tomoyuki Yamashita and carried out by Masanobu Tsuji, the leader of the Kempeitai (Japanese military police). The extermination of the Chinese aimed to eliminate all potential threats against the Japanese and to force them into submission.

The sook ching massacre.

The battle for Singapore.

The plot


Role of the player:

The player will be playing the role of a traitor (汉奸) of the Chinese community. His job is to identify the rebels among his people and report it to the Japanese.  By doing so, he will be able to survive the purge and get valuable resources to keep his family alive from his work for the Japanese. 

Act 1: The beginning of the end.

The player was going through his daily routine of identify the rebels for the Japanese. His earning was determined by his quota of identifying the Chinese rebels. He had to ignore his sense of guilt as he was committing acts that were harming his people. He felt bad about it but he had no other choices. Adapt or die. 

Act 2: The struggle.

Conflict:

Some of the people that he had identified were people that he knew. However, he had to continue to do his job as it was the only way to provide for his family and to keep them safe. The pressure from the Japanese and the mental trauma from sending his people to their grave was slowly eating him away. 

Climax:

The Japanese took away his family as they believed he was helping the Chinese rebels behind their back.

Act 3: The aftermath.

The Japanese surrendered and he survived the war. However, It was at the expenses of many innocent lives and wrecked families. His suffering was just beginning. 

The narrative of the game will vary depending on the choices the player made during the game itself. 

The inspirations


The technology


Our team had decided to use the GameMaker: Studio as the main platform to develop our documentary-styled game project. 

Narratives for Interaction Sharing: Dungeons and Dragons

 


Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) developed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson that paved the way for modern day RPG games. The game is played with each player controlling a single fictional character. The abilities and background story of the character will be based on the imagination of the player. The game will also have a Dungeon Master who will take up the responsibility of running the game and providing the players an overall pleasant gaming experience. 

Each player will are supposed to guide their in-game characters through series of adventures and make decisions that will affect the outcome of the game. At the same time, they also have the chance to interact with different characters throughout the game. The exploration and interaction of the characters in the game are based purely on verbal communication among the players and the Dungeon Master. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Max Assignment 2: Tracker

The project


This max assignment aims to allow us to experience the technical steps involves in creating an eye tracking set up. A video is needed to be pre-recorded and imported onto Max. Using the functions of Max, a patch will be created to match the value of the face received through the webcam with the frames of the video. Through matching the values and the frames, the motion of the face will trigger the part of the video that corresponds to it. 

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The challenges and problems


It took me a while to understand the logic behind the idea of matching values of the face with the frames of the videos. However, the patch that I created is still technically lacking in many aspects. It is still affected by many conditions that my patch did not take into account. Very often, the motions of the face did not correspond to the ones in the video. The video also continued to loop when there was no face in front of the screen. The presence of multiple faces in front of the screen also affected the accuracy of the tracking. 

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The reflection


Through building up my patch for this assignment, I learned much more valuable technical knowledge. It was interesting in trying to figure out the values and its connections with the frames of the videos. The whole process of trying to get the set up to work was intriguing and satisfying. I start to slowly see the connection between the different commands and functions though there are still much more to learn. These assignments served as great exposures for me to understand and appreciate the capabilities of Max.


The documentation video for this assignment will be up soon. I am currently having some issues with premier pro. Such is life. 

Max Assignment 1: Magic Mirror

The project


This first max assignment aims to equip us with the relevant technical skills to create a mirror that dims itself when a person gets close to it. Through the process, it intends to expose us to the different aspects of Max and its applicable functions for future possibilities. 

The sensing of the face was done with the webcam. Through the values collected, we can calculate the size of the face. Hence, the distance between the webcam and the face can be determined as the nearer the face is to the webcam the larger the face will be.  

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The challenges and problems


To obtain the collect range of values for the face proved to be a challenge for me. This is crucial as they determine the brightness of the screen the user is interacting with. Through numerous experimentation, I realized the quality of the webcam is also important for this assignment. At times, my face cannot be detected and thus affects the transition of the brightness of the screen. The brightness transition of the screen was also affected when there are multiple faces appearing in front of the screen.

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The reflection


This is my first time experimenting with Max. It was very challenging for me as I was very confused with the different functions and how to join them together to perform various tasks. The responses provided by the console was of little help to me as my technical knowledge of Max is still limited. At times, I was aware of what are the steps that were needed to be performed to carry our certain task. But I was unable to execute it as I was not sure of the necessary commands. However, I feel that this is just a learning process I have to go through. I believe Max will create many possibilities for my potential future projects. 


The documentation video for this assignment will be up soon. I am currently having some issues with premier pro. Such is life.