Game Overview 0.2 (Update)

 

Summary (Updated)

A narrative-driven single-line plot VR game, with a science fiction, near-future story background.

Themes related to dreams and artificial intelligence.

The gameplay includes CG animations and player exploration and interaction within the scenes.

The game aims to provide players with a smooth, simple, immersive and engaging gaming experience with outstanding visual and artistic effects like a movie. Game

 

Game Technology (Updated)

Game Engine: Unity 5.3 LTS

VR Operating Environment: Steam VR

Modeling Software: Blender

Material Software: Substance 3D Designer, Substance 3d Painter, Photoshop, Blender

Game CG rendering: Blender

Game CG post-production: After Effects

Sound effect production: Not yet determined

Playing area: Completely empty area of 3m x 3m or larger

Game running devices: Desktops or laptops which featuring DP 1.4 or DP 2.0 interfaces

 

style (Art style)

Near-future; Artificial intelligence; Retro-futurism; Cyberpunk; Brutalist architecture; Interior design with the style of installation art; Dream; A small amount of surrealism; A small amount of horror. 

 

Focus

Strong on scene design (to show my skills in creating environments). Includes some scene interaction and character dialogue.

Story summary (Updated)

Part1

[The game begins with Hinata attending a kendo class. After class, Hinata says goodbye to his classmates and walks down the corridor. He hears the sound of a piano playing from the classroom on his right. The music is Claude Debussy's Clair de lune (to be determined). Hinata enters the classroom and sees a girl in a school uniform playing the piano with her back facing Hinata. Hinata walks forward, and suddenly the piano melody starts to change, with electronic tones appearing, then it turns into rapid beeping, beeping, beeping sounds, getting louder and louder; at the same time, the light in the room starts to flicker (the handling technique here is based on the flickering of the lights in David Lynch's TV series Twin Peak with a horror atmosphere). The girl playing the piano turns to look at Hinata while the flickering of the light stops, Hinata sees that the girl's body has derived countless glowing wires, some connecting to the outside of the window like vines, some connecting to the piano, and some vertical and connecting to the top of the room, while the girl's face has no face or features, only a complex mechanical structure.] As the beeping sounds get louder and louder, Hinata wakes up and finds himself in a small room similar to a laboratory. There is an electronic instrument on the bedside, connected to countless cables, and he has no memory. As Hinata explores, he gradually discovers that he is in the company building named Kamigaki conglomerate (神垣コングロマリット), and through the company's paper documents, computer files and videos, he learns that the company is conducting a series of anti-human experiments. Countless experimenters are injected with drugs to keep their brains in a shallow sleep and dream, and the company's technology can read the images, senses and other data in the dreams, generate three-dimensional models and transmit them to the server for training generative artificial intelligence. (Later, I will design specific exploration, interaction content and room maps, which are one of the main contents for players to play, and there will be approximately 3-4 main rooms.)

Part2

As he continued his exploration, Hinata found a hard drive in a room resembling an archive room, which stored his past two dreams, along with the instructions manual (in this manual, it would mention the method of judging dreams using a clock, as well as the possibility of multiple layers of dreams). He hoped to retrieve his memories by re-entering his dreams. (The company's technology not only could read out dreams but also allowed people to enter previously stored dreams.) Little did he know that these two entries into his dreams made it difficult and blurry for Hinata to distinguish between reality and dreams.

[The first dream: Hinata was drawing comics in his bedroom. (Note: There was a clock in the bedroom, but there were no specific words on it, only strange symbols, and the pointer's movement was abnormal.) At this time, his father entered the room and saw this, then began to scold him, hoping that he would spend his time studying instead of constantly drawing. Then he left the room. At this moment, Hinata turned his head and saw huge dolls floating outside the window. The dolls' hands were gently shaking, and then Hinata heard a knocking sound at the door of the room. Hinata left the room and came to the corridor of the house (this corridor would be designed differently). The corridor was very long, like an unnatural stretch of a normal house corridor. At the end of the corridor, there was a doll waving at him. He walked to the end and opened the door. The door was facing a single-person mirror. From the mirror, Hinata could see his father eating in the living room. Hinata entered the living room, but found that there was no one in the room. The main door of the room was half-open, and he could see the burning flames outside.) At this moment, the beeping sound woke Hinata up again.]

[The second dream: In Hinata's bright, solitary office (there was a clock in the office, with the numbers all correct, only the minute and second hands were moving erratically), he got up to rest halfway through. He opened the office door and saw the outside was a beach and the sea (similar to the painting by Edward Hopper).

Then he returned to his workstation and continued working, only to find that the drawing board, palette, and brushes had turned into a computer, the keyboard and mouse, and on the computer was a modeling software. The surrounding scene suddenly turned into a depressing office with countless tables that seemed to have no end (the style of this office was exactly the same as that of the Kamigaki conglomerate company building).]

Then Hinata woke up again (this time there were no beeping sounds, and the scenes in the dream were similar to those in reality. Moreover, the game's previous information mentioned that there would be multiple layers of dreams, which made the player wonder whether Hinata was in reality or in a dream here.) During the exploration, they discovered the company's monitoring room.

Part3

In the monitoring room, Hinata noticed that there were no exits in the building, and no employees were in any of the rooms. It was extremely quiet, and the only sound Hinata could hear was the ticking of a huge clock on the top of the surveillance room (this clock seemed to be in good condition). Hinata kept switching the surveillance images and finally discovered that the only place where someone might be could be a large space in the very center of the building.

At the end of the game, Hinata met the boss of the Kamigaki conglomerate in the central Japanese-style garden of that large space. Surprisingly, he found that the boss of the company had already become a mechanical body, a combination of human and AI, connected to the company's servers via data cables, knowing everything about the company and controlling everything. Finally, the boss proposed a sword duel with Hinata, hoping to humiliate him in this way.

During the sword duel, Hinata quickly fell behind. At the last moment, Hinata realized that the entire Japanese-style garden was made of wood. Taking the opportunity, he used a lighter and the oil in the oil lamps to set the entire garden on fire.

The final scene of the game will show the garden in the midst of the fire. The camera gradually pulls back, revealing the panoramic view of the company building, while smoke billows from the top of the building. Two floating police vehicles fly towards the building. The game will not inform Hinata whether he is alive or not, leaving the ending somewhat open-ended.

 

Sketches of the final scene

The office of the boss of the Kamigaki conglomerate.

The vast space is surrounded by concrete walls that resemble building facades. On the walls, one can see rows of bright and dim lights flickering. Upon closer inspection, it can be noticed that each light represents a server. The floor of the space is a shallow layer of water, like a still lake. On the water surface, there are countless glowing wires, all seemingly extending from the bottommost servers and finally converging at the center of the space, forming a Japanese traditional courtyard building that is out of place with the surroundings.

 

 

 

 

Panoramic view of the buildings of the Kamigaki conglomerate. 

 

Character Introduction

The protagonist Hinata is 24 years old.

Hinata was born in Japan. In 2032, he loves painting and kendo and is full of imagination.

In high school, because he didn't like studying, he secretly drew comics and was often scolded by his father.

In college, despite the opposition of his family, he continued to study the art major.

After graduation, due to his excellent professional ability, he entered the Japanese oligarchic technology company Kamigaki conglomerate to work. 

 

Story Background

Note: The background story information will be presented to the players through various means such as paper documents, television media, computer files, and electronic promotional billboards within the game

In the year 2054, the graphics card computing power technology made a breakthrough. With the increase in computing power, the training efficiency of AI significantly improved. However, the problem that emerged was that there was a severe shortage of data on the internet, especially for creative artworks such as paintings and games, which led to the development of AI being stuck in many creative fields.

At the same time, due to the advancement of medical technology, a new technology enabled people to record their dreams using specialized equipment and generate visual information with all sensory data. However, due to the high cost and the fact that most people's dreams could only be recorded with fragmented and unconnected information, it had been used only for psychological research and as an auxiliary treatment for mental illnesses until now.

In 2055, a small Japanese AI company named Hwangxing Group (煌星グループ) collaborated with another medical company and announced that it had developed a technology that could use the recorded human brain dreams to generate three-dimensional environments and sensory experiences to train AI. Later, due to public doubts about privacy issues and media reports revealing that Huangxing Group had used drugs on the subjects to effectively record their dreams, the project was forced to shut down, and the company disappeared from public view.

However, the research did not stop there. The Japanese company Kamigaki conglomerate purchased all the research results and secretly continued the experiments. 

 

Analysis of game stories (Updated)

I will discuss the sources of some game stories, my thoughts on dreams, and the elements I incorporated from my real-life experiences into the game.

 

1.     Why do game companies train AI using the content of people's dreams?

My dreams have more imagination and creativity in aspects such as painting and scene design than in reality. I began formal painting studies at the age of 10 (copying impressionist oil paintings and drawing still life sketches), and have been studying art ever since. I participated in the art exams in junior high school and high school, and was admitted to TAFA. I have always loved excellent artistic works, but when creating my own works, I always feel that my imagination and creativity are insufficient. The scenes in my dreams are often beautiful, interesting, and sometimes can even provide inspiration for my real-life creations.

 

Creativity is something that current generative AI does not have. Therefore, when creating this science fiction-themed work, I began to think whether it might be possible in the future to use human dreams, this content with extremely creative imagination, to train generative AI. At the same time, this also gave rise to my thoughts and imagination about the possible moral issues that might arise from using human dreams for commercial purposes.

 

2. Hinata's method for determining if he is in a dream

When I was in junior high school, due to frequently having lucid dreams, I tried to explore some methods for determining if I was in a dream. The main two methods were clocks and words. Because imagining clocks and words is much more complex and logically structured than imagining other things, I often couldn't see the normal time and words displayed in my dreams. The object of the clock also symbolizes the passage of time. The time in the dream is completely different from that in reality, without a clear sequence or a definite speed of passage. I once recalled many experiences from my dreams from many years ago while dreaming, but after waking up, I was certain that these contents were not what I had dreamed of before, but new ones in this dream. In another dream, I spent the entire afternoon, but in reality, I only slept for 15 minutes. This shows that the time flow in dreams can have characteristics of being illogical and having an uncertain speed. The movie Inception also has such a setting. The time flow in dreams is much slower than in reality, and many surrealistic paintings also love to use flowing clocks or clocks as imagery in dreams.

 

Therefore, in the game, I use the clock as an object to serve as a method for determining if the game character Hinata is in a dream. And during the game process, when the player starts the dream for the first time, I will make the player notice that the clock always has distorted numbers and the direction of the pointer is incorrect.

 

At the same time, I will mention in the game's documentation that using specific objects to determine the method of dreaming won't always be effective. Every time the player notices an error in the clock in a lucid dream, the subconscious of the next dream will correct a part of it. Eventually, people will completely be unable to determine if they are in a dream using the clock.

 

3. Methods to Escape from Dreams

I have had many lucid dreams before. In these dreams, I realized that I was in a dream and gradually became anxious and scared because I couldn't escape from the dream. I wanted to find a way to return to reality. For me, a method that often worked was jumping off a building in the dream. After each time I jumped off a building in the dream, I would wake up or enter another dream. (Later, I saw someone say that the reason why jumping off a building in the dream can lead to waking up is that the brain cannot simulate the feeling of weightlessness.) However, I'm not sure if this method is universally applicable. Also, simulating a jumping-off-building experience in VR games is too realistic and can easily cause players to feel scared, uncomfortable, and motion sickness. Therefore, in the game, I designed it so that the protagonist Hinata would wake up from the dream through external sound stimulation from the machine. (After Hinata wakes up, he may still be in one of the multiple layers of dreams. I will discuss this in more detail later. Also, the game will inform the players of this setting.)

 

 

4. The stimulation of dreams

The stimulation of dreams mainly falls into four categories: external sensory stimulation (such as the sound of the alarm clock turning into the sound of a clock in the dream), internal subjective sensory stimulation (such as the formation of images in the retina creating images in the dream), internal physiological stimulation (such as diseases, digestion, sexual impulses influencing the content of the dream), and pure psychological stimulation. In the game, the company uses the first three types of stimulation to influence the content of the dreamers' dreams, and at the same time, through internal physiological stimulation - injecting drugs to make certain areas of the experimental subjects' brains extremely active, so that they remain in high-quality dreams all the time.

 

5. Hallucinatory Dreams

I noticed that before I entered a real dream, I would always hear the sounds within the dream first, especially when I took a nap after being physically tired. Perhaps the sounds of the dream often appeared earlier than the images? Therefore, during the process of players entering the dream in the game, they would first hear the sounds of the dream, and then gradually see the images.

 

6. Dreams can be multi-layered.

During the gameplay, the game will inform the player that there might be more than one layer of dreams, thereby making the player start to question whether they are still in a dream layer rather than truly awake in reality?

 

7.Dreams are the fulfillment of subconscious desires.

Dreams express repressed desires through disguise and symbolism. One of my most representative dreams is

Similarly, Hinata's dream is not entirely a memory of his childhood past. At the end of the story, there can be two interpretations. The audience can either believe that Hinata is still in the dream at the end, or that he has returned to reality and completed his rebellion against the company. I prefer the former interpretation because the latter is more like a fairy tale or a revenge drama. Therefore, in the following text, I will assume that Hinata is still in the dream for explanation.

 

In the story, Hinata has a sword duel with the company boss, and eventually burns down the courtyard where the boss is. The element of sword fighting comes from Hinata's past obsession with sword fighting. Hinata has always loved sword fighting and painting since childhood and has persisted in practicing. However, after high school, due to his poor academic performance, his parents blamed him for being overly obsessed with his hobby, which affected his studies. Hinata had no choice but to give up the sword fighting course, but still persisted in painting. After university, Hinata studied an art major, and sword fighting became his childhood regret. He still has a love for sword fighting but no longer has confidence in his sword fighting skills. This is also the potential reason why Hinata quickly fell behind in the confrontation with the company boss (the surface reason is that the company boss has a mechanical body). Later, Hinata burned down the courtyard where the boss was, which is a direct display of his inner resentment towards the company's actions, and is a heroic rebellion and counter-rebellion of personal heroism (or self-sacrificing heroism). At the end, the floating vehicle of the smoke police flies away like a building, metaphorically representing that Hinata still has the fantasy of having a greater other (representing the just government) who will judge the company's crimes.

 

The way the game storyline (game process) progresses

1. Play video animations

2. The player explores, interacts, solves puzzles in the scene, and moves on to the next scene

3. The player has conversations with characters (there might be some selectable options, but they will not affect the overall storyline and ending. To be determined) 

 

Interaction methods

Grabbing and throwing objects, screen interaction, unlocking locks, buttons, climbing, etc.