Higher Education
Virtual Reality Dynamic Music and Weather Simulation
What would you do if you were a guardian angel?
The Game
Higher Education is a virtual reality dynamic music and weather simulation made in Unity C# for a brand-new experimental course at UC Irvine about Virtual and Augmented Reality and Theater. This was a two-quarter class in which we worked alongside Apples & Oranges Productions to create VR experiences based on some of their plays. The class was taught by my capstone professor, and while most students had to apply to get into this class, I was actually recruited by my professor for this opportunity.
There were a lot of complications that went on during this project, but overall I was proud of the final product.
First off, our team had been originally assigned to work on Kong, a broadway musical set to debut later in the year. However, due to some complications and politics with the production of the play, as the beginning of the second quarter we had to switch development. We were presented with a few different options, but we ended up choosing Higher Education, a play about guardian angels created by Tim Kashani (the founder of Apple & Oranges, and also the mentor for our projects). While the two other teams in the class had had twenty weeks of development time, we actually only had around eight.
Additionally, there were some issues with our team roster over the course of the year. Our original producer had some personal issues and was unable to take the class for the second quarter, and so one of our programmers decided to fill that role instead. We also were supposed to get another programmer to help with development during the second quarter, but after seeing the project he decided that he didn't want to take part in it.
On top of all of this, I was the only one on the team with any sort of Unity experience, and so there was a lot to do to get everyone on the same page. But despite all of this, I think we came together well as a team and were able to deliver something to be proud of.
The Team
The Lessons
This project was a good introduction to learning the basics of virtual reality development. I learned a lot about the Oculus and Oculus Touch APIs, how they work and how to access what I needed.
The main thing I created on this project were interactive systems that responded to how the scene was being conducted. The most prominent system was the dynamic music system, which played different tracks at different volumes depending where on the spectrum of harmony and chaos you were. This was definitely the most challenging system to design, going through numerous iterations before reaching its final state. It was also a different sort of experience for me, as I worked directly with the composer to develop this system. I had previously worked with artists on other projects for things like UI design, but I had never worked with a composer to design a system like this before.
Additionally, I modified some Asset Store packages to create a dynamic weather system, which would change from sunny, to cloudy, to raining, to thunderstorm based again on the spectrum of harmony and chaos. This actually turned out a lot better than expected, as it was sort of a last minute addition that added an extra level of polish to the game.
Finally, I created a dynamic particle system, attached to the hands, which gives another form of feedback of where you were on the spectrum. It mimicked the gradient bar on the screen: the farther you went into harmony, the more vibrantly green/teal the particles would become, and the farther you went into chaos, the more magenta/purple they would become.