Essay for Interactive Visualization

The structure of the game for Interactive Visualization

Our course Interactive Visualization is about creating interactive visualizations for real processes. In our case this process is the creation of a chip and our part especially is the oxidation process, which is a sub-process of the chip creation. This process is going to be visualized using the Game Engine unity, the 3D modeling program Blender, the image editing program Adobe Photoshop and the Development Environment Processing. The planning of the Visualization is to create a 2D slider game in which you can move a character through a 2.5 dimensional environment. The environment is a street with some lanterns and signs, showing the directions in which you can go and what you will find there. At the start of the game the user will see an overall explanation video of the whole oxidation process. After that video you can move your character to the next video which explains specific parts in detail. To each of these detailed videos follows a moving platform which you can use to go on a higher platform. On these higher platforms you will find an applet which gives you the possibility to test your knowledge about the process step yourself. If you choose not to use the moving platform you will just go to the next explanation video. This goes on until you reach the end of the whole platform. Since the oxidation process in only one sub-process, there exist more sub-processes. Each sub process can be entered on a different planet representing the planets of the Little Prince story. Therefore reaching the end of our platform teleports you on one of those planets. By travelling through the planets you can explore all the sub-processes to get more insight in the creation of a chip. Each planet is created differently as well as each level has a different form of interactive visualization.

The progress of creating the game

For this project we started to inform ourselves about the whole process in which chips are produced. After we got the basic knowledge we arranged a meeting with Tom, the professor who overviews our project to explain to us the Oxidation sub process in detail. Then we decided to make our game as explained above. We divided the tasks so that one of my teammates would make a general introduction video to explain the process and the detailed explanation videos. The two other mates decided to make the applications in which you can test your knowledge about the process. I decided to make the compilation in unity and model the needed objects. Since we wanted to get a little more insight in how this process practically works and to get off of the theoretical knowledge only we made another appointment at which we could visit the clean rooms in the nano-lab to view the creation of chips. We took some photos and videos as material for the project and started to work. We thought it might be too less time to make all the applications within unity so all these apps are going to be in processing instead.

Our game for Have Fun And Play

Another of our courses is called ‘Have Fun And Play’ and it is about creating a game preferably using unity. We decided to build a big group to have everyone do specific tasks so we can get a more or less working game within our very short time limit. Our group had students for making a website, an introduction video, 3D models, the unity compilations, scripts, photos, concept art, the story, background pictures and sounds and so on. Our idea was to make a game which scenery represents the city of Enschede and especially its big church in a post-apocalyptic form. Therefore one group of students went out to make photos of the city so the 3D models could be made. We decided to make the game a mix out of action and adventure genre. The story group came up with an idea that fits into the concept.

The final version of this started with an average guy who wakes up near the destroyed city in the center of Enschede. He has no idea what happened to him or the city, but he finds clues around the church. This is where the game starts and the goal of the game is to find out what really happened. So searching for clues and running from things and persons that try to kill you is the main content of the game. You would eventually be called by a supercomputer from under the church which leads you to it. A big part of the game is getting there and then you would find out that the computer is actually the last and only true Google computer trying to destroy the world while you fought for it and against some of the last survivals that tried to destroy the computer. But when you find out you have been mislead there are also some other survivors the computer mislead and who don’t find out the truth so they are still fighting for it.

While the story group worked on what I just mentioned some of us already started modeling. We finished the monument in front of the church, the church itself, a post-apocalyptic and partly textured church, tables, chairs, lanterns, a post-apocalyptic lantern, a post-apocalyptic and partly textured table as well as a textured character. By the end of the last week we had put everything together in a working unity project in which you could work around with your main character. Still there were no real interactions at that time.

Another group made the website for our project. It is inspired by the Gears of war homepage http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/en/AgeGate?source=%252f and looks like this http://mlamore.leadhoster.com/cgs/ . On that website you can find news about our game, the minutes of our meetings, some concept art and when ready the final game.

Another group of students prepared an introduction video to present our concept and game. The introduction video can be found on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k8CRzK3LUM .