It had only one puzzle I was really satisfied with and a lot of miscellaneous filler. The original version was a homework assignment I made in two weeks. To be honest, it still feels like an “old buggy prototype” right now. What were the significant changes from the “old buggy prototype” you made a year ago? Later, I realized that the mechanic could be done in third person, but the concept of forced perspective is still more intuitive in first person. Yup, the game started out in first person because it was that was the only way to not have any characters in the game. Was the game always made in first person? As a wise man once said, production is hard work – but it is hard work that is easy. Trying to fit puzzles, art, story, and theme together is like trying to get Congress to agree on something (ok, there’s probably a better analogy for this). We only began working a few weeks ago, but I’ve learned a lot already. This semester, I gathered a group of 4 other people (Xiao Li, Allen Tingley, Yuxi Zhang, Zhengyi Wang) to work on the game as an actual school project. How many people were on your team, and what lessons did you learn in working as a team? I don’t really have a target platform right now, but anything that Unity supports is quite convenient. For the majority of the time in the past year, I was occupied with other schoolwork. It’s been more than a year since I created the first version of the of the game, but I only spent about 6 or 7 weeks of work on it before I submitted to Sense of Wonder Night and the IGF student competition.
How long did you work on your game, and why did you choose your target platforms? The list includes Photoshop/Gimp, Maya, and Adobe Audition/Audacity.
I mainly used Unity but I also used some miscellaneous software to edit textures, models, and sounds. I ended up asked myself, “What kind of interesting first person game can I build by just moving cubes around?” And then I slept on it for a few days. I didn’t want to over scope, so I tried to think of a gameplay mechanic that didn’t require a lot of models or textures or complex systems. Continuing the Road to the IGF series, Shih discusses the evolution of his two-week programming assignment that many are dubbing ‘The next Portal.’Ībout a year ago, I was supposed to turn in a two week game programming assignment. The tech demo’s original creator from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, Albert Shih, has since created a team of five called Pillow Castle Games to expand development. Described differently, players will use the ambiguity of perspective to resize and move objects while exploring the museum, creating several impressive moments that, when watched, seem akin to optical illusions. Exploring perspective as a weapon is the central idea of IGF Student Showcase entry Museum of Simulation Technology.