April 9 - New Directions in Virtual Space
- Black Room by Cassie McQuater
- Neighbor by Cardboard Computer
- Bellular Hexatosis by Neotenomie & Porpentine
- Uncle Sad Bedroom by Jeremy Couillard
- Rinse and Repeat by Robert Yang
- Fins of the Father by James Earl Cox III
- Running in dedicated memory - by Kim Laughton
- Descent by Peter Burr, Mark Fingerhut, and Forma
- Heaven Simulator by Beefstrong
- Mother of Invention by Nnedi Okorafor
- The Flyers of Gy by Ursula K. LeGuin, read by Levar Burton
What is immersion?
The Magic Circle - How Games Transport Us to New Worlds - Extra Credits - video
How do we make our worlds feel immersive? - video
Goodbye Uncanny Valley - video by Alan Warburton
Additional resources:
- What is immersion? - video
- Immersion in Digital Games: A Review of Gaming Experience Research
So far we've been working with a first person controller. We used this in a number of games and environments. Originally largely created for First-Person-Shooter games, they're also a centerpiece of "Walking Simulator"-type games - virtual worlds intended for exploration and narrative.
The first person controller is a great way to create an immersive-feeling environment for a first person perspective experience. But there may be times when we want to see characters moving around in the world instead. This is called the Third Person Perspective, and we can make a functional third person camera perspective setup fairly easily in Unity now that we have the relevant skills in our bag of tricks.
The third-person perspective allows the player to visibly see the body of the controlled character and is most commonly a viewpoint behind the player character.
This is a good overview of how to do a 3rd person camera in Unity. We'll make one alteration: Instead of this tutorial's ThirdPersonPlayer script we'll use the Move script that we created at the beginning of the semester, based on the Unity in Action reading we had.
Important: Make sure you change the tutorial's RigidBody settings to √ Is Kinematic and NOT √ Use Gravity.
See Moodle for our ThirdPersonCamera.cs script and KeyboardMoveCharacter.cs scripts (also includes JUMP).
How To Make a Door Open and Close in Unity
A.
Read The Psychology of Video Game Immersion and What do we mean when we call a game 'immersive'?.
Play two games for at least 30 minutes each. Immediately after playing, take down notes. Then type these up.
- How do each of the games create a sense of immersion? What are the specific elements you can identify that contribute to this feeling? Use the "Characteristics of games that facilitate immersion" as defined by Werner Wirth and described in The Psychology of video Game Immersion to analyze your games on the described points. How do each of these elements contribute to the feeling of immersion? If you feel the game breaks from immersion, describe that as well.
- Describe a time that you felt total immersion in a virtual or constructed world. This could be a game, movie, novel, or something else. Describe that feeling of immersion. What is the game, movie, novel? Now describe what elements contribute to its feeling of immersion and be specific using the features described previously.