This week, we discussed the ideas we have brainstormed with the staff, and settled on one idea: a VR Game called "Who's the Murderer".
Brainstorming Process
Sky Walk/Sky Tour
Inspiration: World Wide Telescope
Description: Users get to explore the universe via the project. Potential Interaction includes the camera will display parameters according to user’s camera, or/and the user can drive a spaceship to move faster The pros are it is for educational purpose and the existing database that can help us the set up the sky. However, there is not a lot of user interactions besides walking around. And it might be hard to transfer the data from web to VR
Synthetic Big Watermelon
Inspiration: An Existing Game
Description: going from a small grape, users will try to combine identical items to get the big watermelon. The pros are it’s fun and popular, but it might be relatively easy to implement
Driving Test Simulation
Description: a driving test simulation. This woudl be a useful tool to learn about driving, but it is hard to simulate the brakes and scenes as moving.
Campus Tour
We crossed this one out because it is hard to find pictures with large enough resolution. Also, the intention for this project is to give new Huskies a chance to explore the campus before we can get back to in-person schooling. With the vaccines out, there is a good chance that the campus will reopen this fall, making the work unnecessary.
RPG game: Who’s the murderer
Description: 6 players will be assigned different roles, five suspects and one detective. Someone has died, and there is only one murderer. Each character has their own storyline, and their rooms will have clues about their stories. At the end of two rounds of scene explorations, the 6 players will vote and figure out who is the murderer. This is a popular game that encourage social interactions, but it ight be hard to implement to build scenes and add interactions, plus networking needed.
Decision
After careful considerations and discussions about the conversations we had with TAs and the instructors, we picked the last one as our project. Great appreciation for all the staff that has helped out for our brainstorming process!Introduction to: Who’s the Murderer
Basics, Process, and Settings
Story Settings
There is an island on this planet, called the Middle of Nowhere. It is a quiet place with only two inns on it: Happy Inn, and Wendy’s Inn.
Recently, Happy Inn has become more a more popular because of four suicide cases. Starting on April 30, there is one person committed to suicide each month on the 30th. After investigations, the police believe that these are all indeed suicidal cases. But the dead body of Jane, the owner of Happy Inn, was found today, August 30th.
When people on the island try to call the police, they find that there is no way to communicate with the outside world. No phone, no internet, no ships, everyone is trapped on the island. There is no way to escape unless they can solve the puzzles, gather the hints, and identify the killer.
So, who is the murderer? Who killed Jane?
Next Steps
- Build the initial networking part of the project. The goal is to have players connect and go to a plane successfully.
- Continue refine the storylines for each players.
- Design the rooms of each player with more details. Visualize all the furnitures and tools that need to present in each room to hide clues.
- Start building the initial scenes, which is the meeting room.
- Continue researching and learning A-frame, WebXR, and Croquet.