Refection 

I feel I have learned a lot from this project. From testing to reading about the masters themselves studies on these topics. In Future projects on my MA I'm wanting to focus on my creative process itself and how to make my projects flow better. By creating more design work to keep the projects grounded and by improving on time management. Now that I have experienced the projects I feel I know were I can improve them

Lighting Project

The Lighting Set Of Corridors

Following on from the set of mood corridors I decided to test the effects of lighting on the effect of the transition. 

The First Corridor 

For the first corridor I used a red spot light on a random door to the side. Testing if the player would investigate this door instead of the one at the end of the corridor.

Second Corridor

For this corridor I set up a light at the end to signify danger at the end of the transition. Testing weather the player will gauge a sense of overall creepiness for the corridor yet safety within it. Compared to a scene of 'whats coming next?'. Keeping the transitions areas cool down period intact, while still building the suspense. Such as a med kit before a boss fight being indicative. 

End of the corridor light up with red lighting. By Yasmine Brough

End of the corridor light up with red lighting. By Yasmine Brough

The Carousel horses  Looked a lot more effective then I originally anticipated they would. 

End of the corridor light up with red lighting. By Yasmine Brough

The Third Corridor

The third corridor is lit while and bright. With a lighting transition that takes place when the player gets half way through the corridor. This triggers all the lights in the scene to go an intense bright red. This is to make the player feel a scene of danger in an area there would normally associate with feeling safe until leaving. Testing disruption of the 'cool-down' period. 

  

White lit scene. Before red light transition. By Yasmine Brough

Red Lighting Transition. By Yasmine Brough

Blood on Gurney. By Yasmine Brough

The lighting change also made a lot of the details on the textures stand out well, creating a new intenser atmosphere.

Red Lighting Transition. By Yasmine Brough

Test Results 

Summary: (as going to be adding a link to questionnaire site for furthering the testing) 

A lot of what I was testing was picked up by the play tester. 

Mood Corridors Final

Mood Corridors Final

The final corridors for the mood project. I'm hoping that the results from these corridors can help with were to forward my overall projects goals to. 

Green Corridor By Yasmine Brough

Blue Corridor By Yasmine Brough

Red Corridor By Yasmine Brough 

The Mood Corridors

The Mood Set of Corridors

For this set of corridors I wanted to test the overall effects of colors and shapes on the player, and if this can gauge a strong impression of the transitions. 

Colour Theory Wheel. Image found on Reddit

I wanted each corridor to represent a already distinguished theme, such as green for nature. The corridors will be identical same as the first set and will have a familiar shape to present that. Such as green, nature, represented through the color and a basic tree shape. to compare how this shape feels in different mood provoking corridors.   

The Corridors Overview Screenshots

The green corridor. Earth represented through trees. By Yasmine Brough

The Blue Corridor. Water represented through well. By Yasmine Brough

Red Corridor. Fire, Represented through a fireplace. By Yasmine Brough

I decided to make these corridors out of UE4's basics shapes. This was to help with the time issues. After making this set I decided to go more simplistic as I felt that despite these designs being simplistic they were a bit messy and the shapes I was trying to make were overall a bit distracting. So I wanted to create a subtler way of achieving this, as not to detract the player to much during the tests as that was a problem within the first set of corridors. 

The results are in

Test Results

The play test group was small, due to the time restraints. I was only able to get one of my friends to play-test it. The person did not know of the projects or had seen them prior during the construction process. Due to the test size being so small, I have decided not to focus on the consensus opinion but more to focus in more detail the things that this person pick up on for the moment. I indent to improve the sample size later on and will continue to test this along other projects. 

Test questions and answers 

1) How did the corridors make you feel?  'quite anxious'

2) Did you feel differently in the second run of the corridor? 'Suspicious, items moving, appearing'

3) Did you notice any differences between the different runs of the corridors? 'Yes'

4) Which objects stood out to you, if any? 'grammar phone, horse'

5) Can you describe why they stood out? 'appeared, disappeared'

6) Any additional comments? 'atmospheric'


From the brief testing that we did. I felt the honestly the moving props probably caused more distractions then i intended. Especially considering that the corridors were identical in every other retrospect. This just meant that the moving props seemed to distract the player, as she noticed that and focused mainly on it, compared to the actually props themselves. However she did notice solely as the stand out models, the two that I had indented. including the subtler gramophone. Although I cant be sure weather she still would have picked up on this if it had not moved location. As she didn't seem to think much of it during the first run through.

The results from this project were handy while also being problematic. It has given me enough information for now and will be doing several more test through of this set of corridors to get the best results from it.

The Finish Line

The First Finished Set of Corridors



1st Corridor

Finished first set of Corridors By Yasmine Brough 

The finished Corridor, quite dark to keep the horror feel to the player. In these corridors I am testing the effect of stuff. Looking at which props stand out to the player and why.

The light at the end of the corridor flickers throughout the scene. Shown above. 

The gurney in the final. By Yasmine Brough

Chairs in the final. By Yasmine Brough

Unlit final of corridor. By Yasmine Brough

Phonograph. By Yasmine Brough

The Phonograph lies at the end of the corridor. In the most light defined area. The purpose, to see if the player notices it as a unusual prop in the first of the three corridors.  

Door transition. By Yasmine Brough

When the player reaches the end they are instructed to press E to continue on to the next corridor. The Differences between the play-through corridors is small, and I am very intrigued to see what the player will pick up on and why.

                                                                    2nd Corridor

Phonograph moved. By Yasmine Brough

The second corridor moves the phonograph (new location depicted above) to see if moving it will make the player notice it more. I was also interested to see If the player would talk more about the prop itself, or weather just on the fact that it moved in the first place, if noticed at all.

3rd Corridor

Carousel Horse. By Yasmine Brough

The last corridor removes the phonograph entirely and focuses on the more 'stand out' prop, the carousel horse.

How I feel about the finished product

Essentially I feel I lost a lot of time were I would have liked to have made the props and overall corridor have more detail to it, however had to condense the project down due to time constraints. I have learned not only to ensure that my personal life, such as work is sorted better, to not have this issue effect my work again in future projects. 

I feel like I focused to heavily on realism for a first semester project. The reason that I did realism and persisted with it throughout the project, Is because I do feel that this particular set of corridors benefited from this style. I didn't want the player to be drawn out of the horror immersion as I feel my results on the experiment would be more effective using realism then if done in a stylized manor. 

However it does make me realize the importance when it comes to picking a style for these experiments as it can effect the result and can take longer to achieve the goal. It has made me realize the importance of considering these two factors and to balance them more equally in future projects.    

Time Constraints

Condensing

During these few months of the semester I found it very difficult to balance my MA and work life. I struggled to get on to part time hours and with the complications with my uni work I feel the project suffered due to these factors.

For these reasons I decided to condense the project.

The First Set Of Corridors

For the first corridor I ended up condensing the project to were the carousel horse couldn't be textured or posed in the way that i wanted. However I don't feel this effected the experiment to much as this prop was to be the most stand out between the phonograph and the horse. So this prop standing out even more due to just a flat grey texture wasn't as problematic as it would have been for other props.
This I did make sure to consider as a factor that could possibly effect my test results though.

The Second Set Of Corridors

The second set of corridors I made sure that I would prevent the previous issues and focus completely on juts the test itself. I condensed It down to just focusing on the effects of colors on the player. This I didn't make any models for and just focused on block maps and block textures.

The Third Set Of Corridors

The third set of corridors I used the same setting as the first set of corridors to help save on some time, while also being able to compare the corridors results better and decided to test lighting.

A Hidden Problem

An Unexpected Issue

A problem that I didn't image walking in to, and definitely not so early on. I was unfortunately very out of practice with the programs that I had once become so accustom to using. A transitional complication that I didn't not foresee. Having taking two years between my BA completion and begging my MA a lot had escaped my memory of the programs. This was not so noticeable to me when I first began building the corridors props and base. 

Image of building base corridor: by Yasmine Brough rendered in Maya

Such as in the image above, everything looked to line up nicely and seemed to be well constructed. In the renders I couldn't tell this was not the case for a few of the items as shown below that I did not notice until was implemented into UE4.
                               
                                 

Image of building base corridor: by Yasmine Brough rendered in Maya 

Image of building base corridor: by Yasmine Brough rendered in Maya

The further I got into the project the more I ran into problems due to these Issues that I had not noticed. Such as models that were not scaled or lined up precisely, overall impacting my work heavily later on in the building and modeling process. Similar issues happened when it came to the texture, the out of practice me struggled to come to grips with the programs again quick enough. As I had planned my time according to grater skills and faster use of the modeling and texturing software Maya and Substance Painter. 

        Image of  base corridor: by Yasmine Brough rendered in UE4

The Textures began looking quite clumpy and didn't fit together very well. Making it come together to look quite messy, not the effect I wanted to go for. I didn't want this effect to effect what I was wanting to investigate. However I was incredibly lucky in that, before my work suffered to much from these issues, a previous MA student, Rob Throne, assisted me in fixing these issues. 

                                                               

       Image of  base corridor: by Yasmine Brough rendered in UE4

After image of going through and fixing the measurement issues and making the texture tile better. Overall improving the atmosphere and effect of the corridor. However more time was spent on fixing these issues then I planned for or would have liked to have spent on it. Showing how important and time saving preventing these issues in the first place is.

And so it begins

Designs and Research 

Beginning the project, I researched Victorian hospitals and came up with some designs of what props I wanted to use and for what effect. For this set of corridors I wanted the props to reflect that this is an old hospital, so included typical items such as waiting chairs tiled walls in my designs. I chose to do this so that these props could set the scene but without being to cluttered or to distracting. To fill just the right amount of atmosphere without over doing it. 

                                  

First corridor design by Yasmine Brough

A quick sketch of a basic plain layout as a starting point.

Floor tile sketch by Yasmine Brough

During This design sketch, I originally wanted a shiny wooden floor. As it was the most common Victorian styled flooring for a hospital. However I felt that although this flooring was more chronologically accurate that it inst as easy recognizable as a hospital flooring, so I decided to go for a more hard floor surface instead. 

Corridor including more hospital themed items. Gurney, wheelchair and nurse dressed doll. By Yasmine Brough

I decided after creating this design that i should pick either the wheelchair or the gurney to continue with so the player could still move well through the environment without lots of large items blocking them of. I decided that i wanted to continue with the gurney as its a very prominent hospital item and I feel would get that across the hospital well in the environment.  

Gurney Decision sketch by Yasmine Brough

Photo by Mail Online 

Ever since Seeing this photo I loved the idea of putting in an archway at the end of the hospital corridor. I think that its attracts a lot of attention the end and gives a sense of obscured vision to the whole way down the corridor. Which I believe same as in this photo can be used effectively to create more atmosphere. So I designed putting this in to my corridor. 

 Door and Archway design By Yasmine Brough

Quick Design Sketch so I knew were I wanted the indents on the door. By Yasmine Brough

Further design sketches. By Yasmine Brough

The Carousel Horse 

The prop that I have chosen to be the dramatic stand out is a carousel horse. This is a bizarre item to see in a hospital that will surely stand out while still being time appropriate. 

                                            

Image from: 1stdibs 

Image from: Selling Antiques

The Design ultimately for the carousel horse were pretty simplistic. I did play around with the idea of putting black ink on the props as an extra 'what is this?'. However I abandoned this idea as I don't think it would ultimately effect the results of what I'm wanting to look in to so would be time costly for what I believe would be for little effect.

Carousel Horse design with black ink by Yasmine Brough 

Chair Design sketch. By Yasmine Brough

Chair design sketch. Also playing around with the ink idea.

Playing around with carousel horse placement and poses. By Yasmine Brough

Further corridor designs and prop placement. By Yasmine Brough

The phonograph 

The prop that I have chosen for the subtler approach is the phonograph. Also a time appropriate item and also unfitting of a hospital. They typically wouldn't be seen here however long term patients did sometimes get entertainment, unlikely to be used or seen in a hospital but is not quite so far fetched to be there. Such as in American Horror Story: Asylum, using a record player to play the song 'Dominique'.   

                                                 

Image found: What is Phonograph

While doing research on these items, I was also thinking of  other ways these items have been used to bring attention to the scenes. Such as the the record player in Asylum, bringing a lot of attention and interest to the area via the song it plays. Having the same result of getting the audience to think more about the environment. While the audio provided, prevents the risks in this method, the prop of being missed. 

Corridor Design by Yasmine Brough

Design of corridor were the player is to interact with both items before leaving. That way the player definitely has to investigate those props.  

Designs for the props. By Yasmine Brough

Corridor Project

The Corridor Experiment

The Corridor. A simple example of an environment that is typically used as a transition area in games and a good place to begin experimenting. For this I'm going to produce multiple corridors testing a  transition technique for that area and its effect on the player. Experimenting and testing multiple methods, so that I can later apply the best methods to create a transition area that is extremely effective.

For the first set of corridors i decided to test the effect of 'stuff' on a player. Props can be an effective way of getting the player to think more about the world that they are in and increase the experience of the environment while not being to direct, as a method this is also not very time consuming for designers to add to there transition areas. A good example of this is the environments in Bioshock. There are so many props that bring the chaotic environments to life, and really make you think 'whats going on here?' Each room telling a different story.

Bioshock: The Collection Review by William Schwartz Sep 14th 2016

I wanted to test how effective props can be used to bring subtle intrigue to the environment and to get the player thinking while not forcing them to stay within the corridor. Testing and comparing weather subtler props work better then dramatic ones. To test this I am going to design some props that i want to stand out to the player. My goal, to question the test player at the end of there play-through to see if these props were the ones to stand out, which one stood out more and why.

 To begin I needed to select what setting and genre I would go for. After deliberating with my tutor I decided to go for a horror themed genre, in a Victorian hospital setting.

                                               
                                            Brainstorm of Ideas by me and my tutor