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Group Meetings


We found out we could customise the meeting background (Spot Joud and I)


Links to project documents:


The dynamic of our group for this project was simple since we'd worked together with the same roles before, everyone was familiar with their responsibilities and able to work on their part both independently and together. This was essential since Joud had to work and communicate remotely for the majority of this year due to her Olympic ski training.



Google and Zoom have an hour time limit on how long meetings can be for free so we had to start new ones every so often.



Before making our task list, we used Miro at Tadej's suggestion. This gave us a space to make a mind map of all the things that would make up our game and what steps those would branch out into. From there, we were able to organise them into a to-do list, setting deadlines, priority levels, and progress status on Monday.com. Unfortunately, our Monday.com free trial ended so Joud had to move our task list to Notion which had a similar layout.





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The House & Hayn



Since Joud got Character Creator 4, I've been helping her create each version of the character. Although the UI is so much easier and more detailed than Meta Human, we've struggled through several iterations before achieving even this level of resemblance to me.



By the way, I cut my hair for this. I decided I could cut my own fringe to match the hairstyle we were working with for the character. Let it be known that I am this dedicated.



Long story short, by the time the private view came around, everyone recognised that the character was meant to resemble me (my matching outfit may have helped).



House Model vs House Photos



I found that I was struggling to recall the layout of my childhood home enough to relay it to Joud for 3D modelling so I asked my family for help. My mom managed to find a link to the listing from when we originally sold it in 2012. Using these photos and my memory, I drew a floor plan for Joud to use alongside the reference photos when building the house in 3D. The only issue is that I hadn't drawn it to scale so the proportions of the model were a little off. However, this had little effect on Joud's ability to make it resemble the original house.


The front foyer and staircase

The living room

The kitchen

The great room


Rylie's room

Liam's room

Milton's room

Parent's room/master bedroom

My family's messages after showing them the game:


My dad told me to send it into our extended family group chat so that my grandfather with dementia could see the walkthrough of our old house. This got me considering the potential for 3D modelling and virtual spaces to recover or preserve lost memories and places.


Playtesters

We had significantly more people play test the game before completion than we had in the past and this was definitely necessary for patching issues that would have noticeably impacted the effectiveness of the game. The total number of game testers was 9.



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this is what adulting sounds like

Now that we had the levels nearly done, we were able to send a playthrough video of The House and The City to my brother, Liam so that he could use it as reference to create the soundtrack. He sent us these videos of his progress where he had the videos playing in his DAW to work with as he composed.



For the jewellery box music, Liam downloaded an actual music box plugin that would sound more authentic than ones we've used in the past. He then used it to play 'can you promise i'll never end' - the final song off our EP, filling in the spaces (which he argues is the best song on it). We discussed the possibility of having the jewellery box music completely take over the level's background music or having it add on to play at the same time. However, we figured this would cause the sound to be too crowded as you collected more keys and subsequently, more tracks. Therefore, we decided it would be best to have it set as a proximity sound attached to the music box, that you would hear when you enter the room and fade as you leave it but continuously play so it would still be there if you reentered.



He also sent us this video where you can hear an overarching background track. According to him, "This is what adulting sounds like" - a spacey, synth track using the chords from our song, 'are you sure you're awake,' the 4th song on the EP (and my personal favourite).


In terms of making the soundtrack out of arrangements of songs from the EP the title references, 'are you sure you're awake' and 'can you promise i'll never end' were written in the same key as they were designed to be played in succession. They are also the most representative of the album's themes and the feelings we had felt at the time we wrote and produced it. For example, the album's title comes from the lyric in are you sure you're awake: "don't fill in the spaces that lie in between, when there's still times when you forget to breathe." The other tracks are also a lot more upbeat in comparison, which doesn't as much fit the melancholic nostalgic atmosphere the game has. For these reasons, I think these two tracks would be the easiest to adapt for the game.


VOICEOVER

The final levels were built around my voiceover with the stars level especially designed based on what I was saying. I had to rerecord a part of the longer monologue in the stars level where the audio peaked ("I'd have ALL the insight in the world") which proved difficult since I recorded it in the forum rooms and needed to replicate the environment so it would blend seamlessly with the rest. Fortunately, security were kind enough to unlock one of the rooms for me to use from 8:45pm - 9pm after I spent an hour failing to get audio recorded in Pod 1 to match.



ALL VOICEOVER FILES


Meadow

1
2
3
4
5

Stars


6
7
8


TRAILER DRAFT 1

  • limited gameplay clips

  • 'adulting' soundtrack makes atmosphere ominous



TRAILER DRAFT 2

  • added sfx to create a more nostalgic atmosphere upon Roy's suggestion



TRAILER DRAFT 3

  • new music Liam produced specifically for the trailer

  • extended with new gameplay clips




Wednesday 8th May
10pm - 3am BST



Turns out Liam was easily able to produce the entirety of the soundtrack in a few hours once he finally had a free moment to sit down and focus on it. This meant that we no longer needed to compromise on which songs from the Filling in the Spaces EP would be adapted for the video game soundtrack as Liam was able to replicate all of them. His DAW crashed from the intensity of the project but nevertheless we had a completed soundtrack ready to be added to finalise the game. He also produced the sound effects for the character switch in both the House and the City (and the Meadow even though there was no switching in it but just in case), as well as the safe opening, guitar notes, and family tree puzzle completion.


We gave him a 40 minute timer to finish. He did it in 30.



Liam syncing credit song to the stars level:



By the time I left the library, birds were chirping. By the time I woke up, it was 8:45am and Stanley was still in the EMS working with absolutely no sleep but the project was done.



Summative Breakdown of the OST

TITLE SCREEN/TRAIN - a mashup of the melody from sleepless mornings and jack hughman

title


HOUSE - same as before but enhanced since

house_premium


CITY TEEN - a shoegaze rendition of track w

city_teen

CITY ADULT - a stripped down, piano rendition of track w

city_adult


MEADOW - a rhythmic loopable track inspired by the Nintendo Wii channel music + bird/meadow sounds


meadow shortened


STARS - are you sure you're awake with vocals from you and i've become well accidentally off our 'songs that sound the same' album


CREDITS - a "movie ending" version of the bridge of are you sure you're awake + Liam's vocals for harmony and a new guitar solo


credits_perfect_sync




Here is the final playthrough video of the entire game featuring all sound and game mechanics:



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