APD Week 11 - Stillness

Theme:

In his 2017 GDC talk, Brian Upton very elegantly discusses, maps and gives examples for what he calls “Non-Interactive Play”, as an essential component of all games. In referring to the Rainbow Six games, he notes that “The most interesting levels were the ones in which nothing happens for the first half of the level” as players spent time assessing the situation and planning it out in their minds.

I am interested in playing with stillness as a rewarding element of gameplay. Initially I considered the kinds of games which incorporate stillness by punishing interaction or activity, such as Don’t Shoot the Puppy but I don’t personally find that kind of gameplay satisfying or interesting so I decided to try something which rewarded stillness.

Key Questions:

• How can I explore what stillness brings to a playful interactive work?
• What kind of gameplay mechanism can reward and promote stillness as opposed to simply punishing activity?
• How can I play with my own understanding of what stillness means to me?

Context:

My strongest personal association with the concept of stillness is in meditation and my fondness for Buddhist philosophy. I wanted to incorporate some element of meditation into this work but I very quickly got overwhelmed by the possibilities. After meditating on this, I remembered a common part of my meditation experience involves a transcendental space which I decided I would try to recreate as an interactive work.

During particularly deep meditation, I sometimes find myself sitting on the surface of a large, still, dark lake. There are hills around the lake, something like a Norwegian fjord. As I sit, thoughts arise from out of the depths of the water and come to the surface. These thoughts have no visual representation but they are often connected to each other with a gold chain, so that when I lift one up and let it rise off into the air, the chain lifts another thought to the surface.

Method:

• The project is build in Unity 2019.3.13 and incorporates the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and Shader Graph packages.
• I used a modified version of a shader I’ve been working on for another project to create the soft undulation, depth transparency and gently shifting texture of the water surface.
• I took a collection of mountain models from the asset store and converted them for the HDRP.
• I set up the HDRP scene with a procedural sky and some post processing effects including some subtle volumetric fog to give more depth and realism to the scene.
• I considered how to represent the thought objects, as they usually have no sensory representation so I created some abstract meshes in Blender and applied a gold material to them in Unity with a subtle texture.
• I didn’t want to try to create the gold chain in Unity because I felt like it would be very time consuming and could potentially jeopardize the fidelity of the space.
• I wanted these thought objects to float to the surface where the player could lift them up briefly and then let them float off into the sky so I researched several methods of calculating buoyancy for objects and found a method by dbrizov on GitHub which I adapted for my purposes.
• I wrote a script that would apply an upwards force to the thought objects when the player looks at them, then as long as they were held out of the water for 3 seconds would trigger a stronger continuous force upwards until they self terminated at a certain height.
• I decided I wanted to represent the thoughts in a more literal way using sound clips of people who have influenced my interest in mindfulness so I wrote a series of audio triggers for the objects and downloaded audio from YouTube videos and cut some of my favourite dialogue from them. They appear in the order that these influences were chronologically most influential in my life.
  • The first clip is from an interview with Marylin Manson from the documentary Bowling for Columbine (2002). I had been a fan of his for a few years when I saw the film but this interview showed the fierce compassion I had seen in his music so well that I’ve never forgotten it.
  • The second clip is from standup comedian Bill Hicks’ 1993 show Revelations. I first heard of Hicks from the 1996 Tool album “Ænima”. Hicks had died of cancer in 1994 and the band had used a sample of one of his comedy sketches in the title track of the album and a memorandum in the album cover. Tool remain one of my favourite and most spiritually influential bands.
  • Clip three is from a teaching of the guru Raam Dass on “Dissolving the Fear, Finding Your Own Beauty” as he is one of my most prolific teachers particularly during my 20’s.
  • The final thought clip is of Alan Watts discussing the illusion of self, a somewhat more advanced concept in spiritual teachings which I’ve only been able to fully appreciate as I’ve gotten older. Regardless of how deeply I’ve comprehended his teachings, it always brings me joy to listen to him.
• Once the 4 thoughts have come and gone, the player has nothing more to do but sit in stillness. They can still look around but nothing more happens. This is a representation of the meditative state often referred to as ‘the empty cup’ where thoughts are no longer pressing their way into attention. It’s a chance for the viewer to sit and be still for as long as they like.

Reflection:

What worked well?

I’m quite happy with the general fidelity of the project. I usually work with gameplay mechanics and have only recently begun working with ‘the pretty stuff’ so I’m learning a lot about rendering pipelines and shaders and this was quite a challenge, even to just get the scene set up and lit properly. I’m really happy with the buoyancy system, the code is impressive and with a bit of work I can implement it into other projects. I also really like how the thought objects look. Finally, the audio clips are great and the other sound effects tie them together nicely. It feels really rich, despite the stillness.

What didn’t work?

I had trouble converting the mountain textures over to the HDRP so I ended up with single-colour models which are thankfully ok given the post processing and lighting effects. Performance is an issue, my new PC is at its limit recording and running the project at the same time. When I built the project there was some kind of issue with the final program so looking at the objects would bring them to the surface but not raise them out of the water so I had to record in-editor.

How would I extend this work?

Other than addressing the issues above, I would balance the audio clips a bit better and add a few more ‘thought objects’ with other clips. I would also have the next thought arrive at a semi-random interval instead of immediately after the previous one. I would include some kind of visual indicator that the player was looking at and therefore interacting with the thought object as this could be clearer. I would improve the water shader to bring it up to the same fidelity as the other elements of the scene and add some ambient elements such as particles in the air and water, dust and leaves, ripples and a gentle procedural breeze effect. Finally, I would have liked to set the scene at night with many bright stars.

References:

Brian Upton GDC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaH5XzLTix8

Marylin Manson interview in Bowling for Columbine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NOFSOeOBsk

Bill Hicks 'It's Just a Ride' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNEyLn1Zz_g

Raam Dass Dissolving the Fear, Finding Your Own Beauty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viNlErR88GE

The Dream Of Life - Alan Watts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0PYcCsL6o

Don’t Shoot The Puppy https://www.addictinggames.com/funny/dont-shoot-the-puppy