Launching RealTime
It's 2005 and Unity, the game engine, has just launched. Interactive art and game design is taken to a new level but is Unity's full potential being reached?
In this project 'RealTime Events', I aim to create a dynamic environment within the Unity engine that offers the player an interactive experience. The interactive aspects of this project are generated by what's known as a 'trigger' within my environment. These triggers can be something like a touch of an object or if the player walks through a certain doorway, in turn these set off a visual or audio response within the environment.
In Real Time.
Research
3D Virtual Environments
I started my research by looking at 3D game environments. I'm interested in these games for this project especially as I want to further explore the concept of aspects of mundane life being made into a game environment. By this I'm referring to games like the Sims, Second Life or even Stardew Valley. Why when we can do everything in real life that a Sim character can do, do we choose to live out these actions online?
Looking at this idea kind of lead me down a long and winding path towards the metaverse. I had discussed the metaverse before in my Design History class, and it was of particular interest to me especially when it came to designing a space for the metaverse. Would we even have possessions in a techno interior or would all of our things like books, movies and magazines all be online? Do we still hang posters on the wall or do we have hanging 360 screens that constantly display a range of images? The possibilities are endless however minimalism seems to be the favourite style of the future.
Above are some of the game environments I looked at to draw inspiration, each image has a reference when you click on it.
So Second Life... :/
Let's address the elephant in the room.
There have been more than a few scandals in these games since created in the early 2000's.
Crime, cybersex, underground clubs, the list goes on.
I find it fascinating that, what is inherently a complex chat room paired with a character's virtual reality, has somehow morphed into a real life second reality for people. A second reality where you can spend real money, create real connections and buy items/property in real life.
The Metaverse
The metaverse is a huge topic to cover, in short it's like an alternate online universe where users can live out a whole new reality. The metaverse concept is actually explored in a whole host of games plots, even games directed purely at children. Games like Minecraft could be a good example, although its display and overall character plot isn't as as complex as say Second Life, it still explores this metaverse realm. Players can be avatars and explore digital worlds while still engaging in real world activities but yet the outcomes remain purely online. An example could be when a player buys a new tool in Minecraft, say an pickaxe, to help themselves mine faster, that tool will never exist in real life however that player did spend real cash on that non tangible tool and they can use and store it in this digital realm.
What if everything we had was bought and stored online?
I'm reading a range of materials on the metaverse and what we as a society feel towards this new tech phenomenon. Many believe living out our full lives online is extremely dangerous and some even take it as far as saying we should revert back to how we functioned as a primitive society. John Zerzan wrote a piece 'WHY PRIMITIVISM' in it explaining why anti technology could be our only escape from the metaverse but I, in this project want to instead use the metaverse idea on a lighter note and have a more humoured approach to this alternate reality space.
Sketchbook
The Sims?
Over the past two years I've spent a ridiculous amount of time in my own environment. My room.
In this project I want to utilise this, I know my room like the back of my hand and what better environment to create online than the one i'm most comfortable in in real life.
By looking at and playing games like the Sims, I've started to think about what my environment could look like. I like the idea of being able to see into the room at its barest structure. On the left are some sketches of a platform structure that I thought could be a good base structure for the bedroom. I played about with camera viewports on Unity and some kind of fisheye lens or high angle I think would be the most suitable along with a POV view when you are moving about as the character.
If you take Sims as the example, when playing you can see into a Sim characters house. The roof isn't attached and it kind of resembles architecture designs when visualising rooms. This is the kind of thing i'm looking to create here, with some form of base structure maybe made from a cube or a plane with 2 or 3 walls to enclose it in.
So what actually is this new metaverse? Mark Zuckerberg seems to be trying hard to push his concept of the metaverse in his recent re brand to META.
Well the metaverse doesn't physically exist, it's more of a digital realm. There is an ideology surrounding the metaverse and big tech production around what society should look like and how it should function with these leading tech advancements. By describing or envisioning the metaverse you are in a way just describing the future of technology.
Companies like 'Meta' call the metaverse "the next evolution of social connection", but is it as amazing as the big tech giants want us to believe or is it actually pushing people into further isolation and away from human connection?
The metaverse is like an online world, humans are avatars, artists can sell digital jpeg artworks or NFT's for millions of pounds and most importantly you can be anyone and do anything. Privacy is a huge concern in the metaverse, with everyone living online is it possible for those in charge of these servers to gain access to personal information on the sly? Highly likely...
So now I kind of get what it's about, but what does it physically look like?
Everything in my metaverse is based off of screens being the main component to my living requirements. My avatar lives an online existence with online possessions, books, clothes, plants no longer are required to make my avatar happy. Material possessions are no more, welcome to digital living.
In the metaverse I want to feel like life is a past abstract thought, no windows, only artificial lighting, no plants or living things, in the future my interactions and enjoyments I feel and fear will only be accessible via giant screen or portal.
Even down to my bed in the metaverse, it is not made for comfort rather necessity.
Useful
Links
Screen Portal
What if the trigger was in itself ironic of my whole metaverse theme? A portal to the metaverse maybe. A tech trigger? Some kind of walk through experience into the metaverse?
I have a plan now to use multiple screens as my triggers. The player is in my room controlling me, clicking on things in my room to control my actions. An example being if you click the couch I could go and have a nap, or if you click a book I could go and pick it up to read. The main trigger however will be my giant computer screen. click or walk through that and it will teleport you, the player, into the 'metaverse version' of my bedroom.
Process
Unity Work
Above is a gallery of screenshots and images taken from start to finish of this project. If you click on an image I've written a description about what i'm doing in each.
Documenting my progress was really important to me since Unity isn't a programme i've ever used before. Learning from the ground up was a lot to get my head around but i'm starting to feel more confident working through the interface and editing my scene. I've previously used 3D Max so the split view port reminded me a lot of that.
I wanted to get three main elements ready for this build and I'm pretty happy given the time constraints with what i've managed to come up with. I wanted a dynamic scene modelled after my bedroom, I wanted to create a portal between my bedroom and the metaverse version of my bedroom that players could endlessly use and final I wanted to create fun audio so the experience for the user was full circle. To make the bedroom I 3D modelled objects on using dimension, blender and purchased models from asset stores online. To make the portal I used scene switch scripts and edited these on Visual Studio and to make the audio I recorded sounds and used loops then mashed these on the Logic Pro X editor.
Adding the first person camera to my practice scene so I can move about.
Turns out I actually downloaded the wrong asset pack to begin with and that's why my camera set up was not working.
I had downloaded a standard assets pack that had three different character cameras as well as eight different camera views. Turns out all I needed was the mini first person controller and all I had to do was drag it into my scene and assign a capsule collider.
This worked out any issues and it let my player interact with triggers now.
Light Switch?
I'm having a play about with scripting in my scenes now. I like the idea of being able to mess about with lighting like in this example above where I can turn my lights on and off with a key press. I also want to have a look at making this a trigger though so when a character walks through an area a light comes on and off.
This was the script for creating a trigger light. Like the first script the light is just turning on and off but instead of manually having to press a key you would only have to walk into the trigger zone now.
For my portal i'm using either a teleport script or a scene switch script. The teleport only let's me move the player within the scene though.
This was the final script I ended up attaching to the collider. I had to change this so you can use the portal both ways so instead of always being load scene 1, I had to add scene 0.
Logic Pro X
Some of the sound effects I recorded using instruments at home but the bigger background tracks for the bedrooms I used some loops for as well.
These screenshots are showing me playing about with settings like the overall volume of a track, vocal effects and EQ.
To get the sound the way I wanted I had to tinker with these settings a lot and for the Meta world I wanted it to seem very intense so I switched the tempo up as well to around 145bpm.
Bedroom 1 Track
Bedroom 2 Track
Laptop Sound Effect
Guitar Sound Effect
Final Export
Introducing
META Sims 0.1
The environment 'META SIMS' is an exploration into what life could look like in a digital realm. The name 'META SIMS' itself is a spin off on both the Metaverse, the fictional digital world described in the 1992 sci fi novel 'Snowcrash' by Neal Stephenson, and the 2000's life simulation video game 'The Sims'.
How would we be living and how would our environment look if every aspect of our lives purely existed online?
The environment allows the user to explore the METAVERSE version of my bedroom and when you enter the portal the user will be teleported back to reality, the normal version of my bedroom. Explore the environments and their differences, you can follow audio cues and interact with objects throughout the rooms...
