A first-person perspective platform game with a hidden narrative about a human and her synthetic lover, developed in Unreal Engine 4.
Love is on the Cloud is exhibited @NYU ITP Spring Show 2022
Download link: https://htlwwlr.itch.io/love-is-on-the-cloud
Exhibition link: https://itp.nyu.edu/shows/spring2022/
Love is on the cloud is a first-person perspective game/VR. On the cloud, you come to seek a hidden narrative about a human and her synthetic lover.
I continued to develop my reality threshold project and it becomes my final: Love is on the Cloud.
The design process of the first part is here:
Reality Threshold: Huan/Fantasy
For the development of this game, I focused on practicing my blueprint and visual skills.
During the development, I roughly listed the steps I need to do for this project, and I completed them one by one: (some of them already done for midterm)
Step1: Blockout
Map
Step2: Visuals
Glass materials Emissive materials Cloud materials Rain under the letter cloud(Niagara beam) Cloud(smoke, Niagara emitter) Draw+Decal Fog+Sky UI for letters and jump PostProcess color
Step3: Narration
Text based story
Step4: Mechanism(more about Unreal Engine blueprint scripting)
Generate cloud for each platform using spline Letter show up on the screen upon each trigger Specific narrative content show up for each letter Deconstruction of the final destination Moving platform (Sequencer + AddLocalOffset) Platforms show up after reading the letter (visibility) Easy Sekiro jump (move between 2 locations) Resurrection Point: using teleport (I designed 4 locations) Trigger background sound at the gate cloud Show end content when player finish the game
Step5: Music
wind sound(https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/376415/)
background music(https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/Emotive_Music_Film_and_Radio/Somewhat_Sad/)
footsteps(now only for jump)
Blueprint scripting is used for most of my game mechanism I mentioned above.
The narrative I wrote for this game is a sad story between a human and her synthetic lover. During the early part of this game, each letter, talking from this human or her lover’s perspective, is associated with a decal which will be shown on the gate once players read it. I drew them using Procreate.
I really wish to complete a grappling hook mechanism such as that from Sekiro so I tried a simple one using blueprint in my game.
The visual of the decals on the gate is inspired by Final Fantasy 7 remake.
Thank my instructor Jonathan for teaching this amazing class!!!