Camposition
A relaxing game for practicing and learning about photo composition
The Project
Camposition is a game prototype built in Unity that allows players to explore a stylized camp ground and take pictures using photo compositions. This was a two week prototype that I worked on during my first semester at UCF’s Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA) alongside Dillon Lynch (Project Management), Yami Trujillo (3D Artist), Emmanuel Otero (Tech Artist), and Arthur Karapateas (Programmer). I was a technical designer on the project and we released it to itch.io in October 2020.
Conception
For this project we were challenged to make a prototype for a game that was either educational or had another goal beyond simply being fun. During our discussions our group decided to focus on photo compositions. Wanting to leverage the power of active participation inherent to gaming, I pushed to teach the player from the approach of learning by doing. It simply made sense to allow the player to practice and experiment to learn how photo compositions work. To encourage learning we want the environment to not only allow different compositions but to be calm and pleasing. This would create a sense of comfort and safety that would put players in the best headspace to experiment and not give up when they fail.
Player Character
My first focus for the project was our player character. While Arthur worked on the algorithm to validate a composition, I implemented the controls that would allow the player to move around the environment, line up a shot, and take a picture. This included being able to tilt the camera to be able to line up shots at an angle. This also allowed us to add an extra challenge, and a bit of realism, from making it so that when the player takes out the camera it gets set to a random tilt that they have to correct. While implementing these controls I also balanced them to be on the slower side, both to make it easier on the player to make small adjustments and to fit with the calm tone. When it came time to put my code, with Arthur’s validation algorithm, the two of us worked together to resolve bugs. Together we were able to finish our work efficiently allowing us ample time to integrate with the UI that Emmanuel created and expand from one photo composition layout to two.
Audio
After resolving our primary controls I was able to spend time working on the game’s audio. Again we wanted our environment to feel comforting, and a space that was silent tends to be more eerie than one with ambience and background noise. Talking with Dillon and Yami I figured out the different sounds we wanted to create to accompany the scenes that existed within our level. From there I found audio clips on freesound.org which I then edited to bring the sounds into the same space and better fit the situation. In particular was an old radio that I added effects to give it some crackle that would show the radios age and poor connection out in the wild. After creating the sound effects I implemented them using 3D audio sources to not overwhelm the player with different noises and make the environment feel more immersive. This part of the project pushed me to work with a diverse set of sounds that I hadn’t before.
Want to Play
