PORTFOLIO HIGHLIGHT
PORTFOLIO HIGHLIGHT
March 2020 - June 2020
Playable City Brunswick
“Playable City Brunswick is a prototype for a pervasive gameplay experience with location-based Augmented Reality game situated in the Brunswick City. As the social relationships are shifting from the physical world to the virtual world, one of our aims is to bring people back to the physical world with the use of AR technology and physical play within pervasive gaming to facilitate social interaction between players and their connection to the Brunswick Design District. Another aim of this project was to develop and design playful activities that layer both the historical significance of place and the current context of the physical site.”
Genre: Pervasive Game
Engine: Unity
Platform: Mobile
Project length: One semester, 12 weeks
Team size: 12
Roles and Responsibilities
General Game Design
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Designed the whole experience of the walking trail together with other team members as a group
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Designed the gameplay experience of the Brunswick Buddies together with Cindy
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Designed the hidden missions for the Brunswick Buddies
Animator
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Animated the motions of the AI character in the time machine app
Programmer
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Programmed the Brunswick Time Machine app with C#
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Utilise Vuforia in the app for AR tracker detection
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Bug-fixing to prevent people from gaining energy by scanning the same tracker repeatedly
UI and Graphic Design
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Designed the UI of the app
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Designed the AI character in the time
Project Structure
The Playable City Brunswick is a walking trail experience with five sub-projects: The Heartree, The Brunswick Ball, The Brunswick Buddies, The Future Brunswick and The Brunswick Time Machine.
THE HEARTREE
Designer: Helen Kwok
Time Period: Before 1839
Heartree is an experience where players interact with a tree ti reconnect to the natural and indigenous of Brunswick through touch.
THE BRUNSWICK BUDDIES
Designer: Cindy Wang & Margaret Wong (myself)
Time Period 1900 - 1950
Heartree is an experience where players interact with a tree ti reconnect to the natural and indigenous of Brunswick through touch.
THE BRUNSWICK BALL
Designer: Carlo Tolentino & Sahaj Garg
Time Period: 1950 -2020
The Brunswick Ball is a 1950's - present themed outdoor interactive=projection prototype, focused on movement and music-making through environmental interactions and motion capture.
THE FUTURE BRUNSWICK
Designer: Phoebe Ho
Time Period: Future
The Future Brunswick is the final stop of the walking trail which aims at providing a space for people to party and express their wishes for the future Brunswick.
THE BRUNSWICK TIME MACHINE
Designer: Cindy Wang & Margaret Wong (myself)
Time Period: All
The Brunswick Time Machine is an overarching project which is an app that makes use of the location-based AR technology to connect all the other four projects together with a narrative.
The Prototype
**This prototype was created under lockdown when we had no access to the apparatus at school and the venue for playtests. Sorry for the low quality of mock up and busy background at home.**
Research & Development
Site Visit
Interviews of Brunswick Residents
The City was not under lockdown yet in the first few weeks of the semester and we conducted site visits, research at the library and interviews during that time for ideation of the project in the beginning stage. As we interviewed the Brunswick Residents, we found that three common words they used to describe Brunswick were ‘diverse’, ‘creative’ and ‘multicultural’. The following mind map showed some of my initial ideas for the project.
Initial Mind Map
Ideation
Working as a whole group, we considered different inputs and took the suggestions from the lecturers to come up with the final idea consisting of the five sub-projects. The background story was illustrated in ‘the prototype’ video that the players were from the future but trapped in the past because of the lack of energy for the time machine to function properly. They have to collect one energy pack from each time period to get full energy and go back to the future.
Image from the pitching presentation by Helen Kwok
The Brunswick Buddies
Image from the pitching presentation by Helen Kwok
This is a project to be situated at the Siteworks, a cultural space in Brunswick City. Regarding the significance of Siteworks and the theme of ‘building’ at there to Brunswick, we decided to go with the idea of ‘reversed Jenga’ where players need to build a Jenga tower together instead of pulling out the Jenga bricks one by one. Besides the significance of the Siteworks, we’ve also considered the importance of ‘interactions’ in games. Thus, we added some hidden missions to encourage interactions between different players which introduces the lived experiences about the brick and pottery industry in Brunswick to the players.
The Brunswick Time Machine
This is an overarching project that links all the projects together with a narrative. The participants will be told to download the app before they start the whole experience. The initial idea of badge collection was adopted in a mode of collecting the battery packs. After the players have finished the tasks at different locations, they could scan the AR tracker to collect the battery pack. When they have collected all the three battery packs, the players would be directed to 260 Sydney Road to have a party time in the Future Brunswick. This app would also be used in the Brunswick Buddies for scanning the AR trackers on the Jenga bricks to reveal the content of the hidden missions.
UI Design
