http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~shl620/videoproject/
Description:
April, Vivian and I made a choose your own adventure game. The premise is you receive a call from April, who has just woken up inside a random room and is being chased by a monster. Your decisions can get her out, steer her the wrong way, or can even uncover new secrets. You are tasked with helping April out by texting her directions/instructions. While your decisions might not seem so impactful at first, they can make a difference in whether April survives the night. There are 3 different endings, with around 4 different choices to make throughout the game (for the longest playthrough. The shortest one is around 2-3 choices). Our game was loosely inspired by Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch as well as horror movies such as The Blair Witch Project.
Visuals/Style:
Our visual design is based on someone’s laptop. The user is calling their lost friend while sending them instructions via text message. I took a picture of the web version of WeChat as originally I was going to Inspect Element, manually change the text and then screenshot it. Luckily, I decided on focusing on whether I could just make a similar WeChat interface with colored boxes and I think I got a decent approximation. Especially looking at how many different paths we have now and how one line could result in new functions being made I am very glad I decided to try to find a more efficient way. The camera quality is decent, not so bad that you can’t see, but not crystal clear so that it’s believable that it’s a video call. April also shakes the camera a bit to give that frantic/scared vibe which I think is helpful for our story. The ending message is pretty plain in terms of design. So is the caller ID. I mainly focused on getting the WeChat interface to be as realistic as possible. The background gives some information/clues as to who you really are which I think is a nice touch if you’re attentive.
Code:
Coding was quite a doozy. While I don’t think that it was very difficult in terms of complexity, there were just so many paths and choices that it was very easy to get overwhelmed. Especially since I was unable to link another script. I tried to make one so that the main script wouldn’t be too cluttered, but whenever I put stuff on the other script it wouldn’t work. I’m not too sure as to why and I didn’t really have a bunch of time so I decided to just do everything on one page. Even though there were many different paths, they were quite similar in terms of coding. I would create texts and make their opacity = 1 based on the timing of the video and what you chose. I think I was most proud of streamlining the process of shifting the messages up when the chat window got full. After I realized I could just have the lines turn into the ones after it, it was much easier. I would only need to type in one line instead of 7. I am quite pleased with the effect as I think it looks like an actual messaging platform.
I also utilized a handy piece of code which changed the onclick function of buttons. Had it not been for that I would have had to make many different button IDs and after looking at the functions I’ve had to make I am glad that I was able to make buttons a bit more efficient.
The overlay hover function was a nice addition as well as relevant to the medium we were trying to emulate. Unfortunately, I was unable to find out how to make the hangup button disappear slowly as it might in other computer video calling software. Originally, we were planning on adding more functions, like muting and switching between voice and video, but there wasn’t enough time to justify rather irrelevant things.
Teamwork:
I think it might have been a mistake allocating work as we did. While I do regret it, it was I who suggested we split up the work into Web Design, Video Editing, and Coding. While I didn’t have much to do the first week other than practice, once everything was finished there was much to implement. Vivian and April definitely did 99% of the video, whether it was editing or acting. I mostly did the coding and some of the Web Design (like the WeChat interface). While I do enjoy coding more than trying to act or design stuff, I think it might be wiser next time to split the work based on when we need to do it. Yes, I could have practiced some of the coding while they were working on the video, but it was quite difficult without the videos (and a bit difficult even with the videos).
Reflections:
I feel like I have truly been growing in terms of my abilities as well as how much effort I put into my project. While perhaps not the most technologically impressive, this project has definitely been the one I have worked the hardest on. While it can be a bit tiring, I am excited to tackle the Internet Art project with my own ideas so that I can really implement my vision and design a project that I can have fun with while working on it.
This image is low quality from what I can see on my computer screen so hopefully you’ll judge it based on our presentation rather than the blog post.
