Process Journal
Where I put my thoughts on Games as Research. 🥼
Estimated Time To Read: More than 15 minutes
I'm putting emotes everywhere after re-reading my previous project repository. My apologies to 🌍. Nobody READS that much. Hopefully these tiny little icons bring some joy to your day.
- Today
I made a list over the past few days of what I kind of feel confident about using, technically speaking (at an elementary level, of course), in the project(s). I'll post up about this later, if I can find a way to be more concise.
Sylvain dumped a few core ideas into the Idea bin page 💡.
After discussing our week's progress, I settled on making a "CBT Game". Remains to understand the narrative structure and finer details of materializing the game, for which I should already plan and do prototypes on paper for next week. I know there are clear problems in the design already and I need to analyze both my own "requirements" or goals and perhaps look for certain references. Pippin let me know about "Why Not Games"'s own version of Tower Defence in conjunction with cognition (Note: my approach is not the same. I want to emphasize experience, story and social relationships - both with the self and others). I will also import the project's previous prototype into the repository this weekend and work on things.
I think that there are a lot of people who struggle to understand, cope, or work with their thoughts, behaviours and feelings out there. As university people (but this may concern some of us as well), we're pretty well adjusted so this may look like "common sense". But in this framework, I assume that this is not the case for most people in reality. Specifically, I anticipate that mental health needs for society will only grow, and will take more space in the air then presently when thinking about health in general (physical vs. mental health fusion in a sci-fi? LOVE the psychological therapist on board on the Mass Effect 2 ship, sending you emails about the crew's mental health. Might look into that again.), but a larger, profitable (and materialized) industry. So here's the real question: where does Psychological therapy begin and where does Materiality end? What would a futuristic therapy look like (onboard a spaceship on the long voyage? on a colony? on earth?), considering methods like CBT today, and how would it be marketed or documented by futuristic creative agencies or big corporations?
After reflecting about Pippin's pragmatic approach to artistic expression/work, I decided to do somewhat the same and focus on outputting using what I could at the moment. What is it that I can do, need to do, and want to do at the moment/in the next two-and-a-half months or so? This led to merging my ongoing work learning Unity more deeply (going for the professional certification this summer!) as well as my work struggling to keep up with frontend frameworks like React.js and Bulma, etc. for a Co-op internship in the Fall. Because I'm working on my portfolio website as well, the idea naturally occurred in parallel (I had also generated a few dozen ideas on how to use JQuery, HTML, CSS and React.js to express meaning in tandem with smaller games in a README for the WebCompanion folder) to re-use/re-contextualize my portfolio website's structural layouts/elements, a frontend project that I needed to do (an E-learning system), and somehow, my Unity tower defence CBT prototype. All of these ideas weren't mutually exclusive, given how Unity exports to WebGL, which means it can function the same as Three.js, A-Frame or Phaser.js. Since I know Unity more than these, and given that Unity is superior in editing and building capacity etc., it was fairly straightforward to decide to go ahead and do a paper prototype, then attempted a higher fidelity prototype with just the React.js structure for HTML/CSS in my E-learning system. Looking at the Unity API for browser communication, it all seems completely possible to communicate between Unity and the DOM, in both directions, and desirable to try doing so. Encouraged by the thought, I quickly put together (by re-using past React.js components in my own library) a sketch of the general idea/interface which only has the base structure but is very telling nonetheless. I found it a lot of fun generating random narrative moments that used the same HTML structure as my portfolio, almost exactly, but in a video game diegetic capacity. This led to three or four sample experiences without their image or teaser clip (again re-using a portfolio gallery structure) and without the actual "play" button for each of these mini-experiences yet.
But the last thing I wanted to try and rapidly prototype first was to capture a few in-game experiences' screenshots and clips, and put them into the website before any "play" function exists... At this point, the "requirements" seem to be clearer and I have more confidence in the general idea of the project. Remains to "execute it well and keep it coherent and simple" at every step. Also, a risk evaluation would be nice: I identified a few targets to assess:
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The mini-games/moments I currently assume are rapid to generate in Blender/Substance Painter/Maya/3DsMax following the generation of a random (poetic?) narrative brief. This confidence is gained by my generating a lot of 3D models recently at night to keep up with my level design/art interests this summer. I'm also decent at 3D kitbashing in general. I assume that these mini-scenes, quickly populated by sketching 3D modular assets using modern or sci-fi references, do not have to be interactive (e.g., only the hero pictures, and an in-game clip) or if so, very slightly only?
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The ease and scalability of the idea: currently it's about the same weight as implementing an actual E-learning system. This includes heavy frontend handling, and light backend (or session/local storage) handling for user login/registering. Though this is not core - the game can function without, it just really need the frontend and everything else is a "nice to have" features.
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Some frontend flavour elements must be also categorized as "nice to have": user pathway and progression, gamification elements including unlocking more mini-experiences/games by completing the mini-experience/games or achieving a certain score in them...
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I'm assuming embedding multiple Unity instances in a webpage goes without major problems (right?). Another way is to simply embed the different instances in different html files by exporting and linking the games separately. At this point I'm convinced that Pippin thinks I'm obsessed with multiple scenes / multiple anything, and I'm starting to wonder why.
Sylvain just pushed a major key design moment commit that plans to incorporate Unity embeds in a speculative dystopian diegetic web E-Learning interface. CBT game => E-Learning CBT Game
- https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/webgl-interactingwithbrowserscripting.html
- https://api.jquery.com/data/
- https://emscripten.org/docs/porting/connecting_cpp_and_javascript/Interacting-with-code.html
- https://styled-components.com/docs/advanced#style-objects
After about two weeks of deliberation and prototyping various almost unrelated technical ideas around the very broad theme of CBT... (Hoping that I didn't frustrate Pippin haha)
Sylvain just found the very specific, narrowed down theme of the theme of CBT, which is the specific set of decisions occurring in the very specific moment in time in almost every species where a thing decides to move on from their parents for the first time, for good. Unification... And to speculate how this may be different (or the same?) in the future.
The technical idea, currently experimental idea, is to use the free-form of web to manipulate 3D embeds in a website with ease, and allow the sketch to communicate with that embed. The fragmented nature of that interaction is what potentially may be interesting for the player to attempt to unify concretely. Remains to test this.
The conceptual idea, also not totally clear, is to show a series of sketches where the player can break expectations in common use cases in a funny way. Then after the laughs are good and over, I would lead the user into the real premise, or more serious version of the idea, and it would feel interesting overall at that moment I think. There we go. All done. Amazing. Now to do it and be faithful and disciplined enough to defend the idea to the end, just like with the first prototype. And also to manage context-switching and memory problems, and motivation, and limited resources left.
The software engineering idea is to define a very specific domain model using concrete actors. Once I have a full dressed use case, I can create a specific scenario, based on a template that is easy to reason about, which gives me all the steps in the game. Once this is VERY clear, I can proceed, and further refine paper and code prototypes.
Sylvain decided on a very narrow element of speculative CBT that he found interesting, which magically made everything clear. CBT game => E-Learning CBT Game => Interactive Storybook Game
notes: it's about reworking the form. That's what always confuses me. How do I approach the idea's form? notes 2: about "shitting the final idea out". Maybe when facing deadlines and hitting the realization of very constrained situation, the designer awakens and realizes they can't afford to either procrastinate or be confused or to change their mind constantly anymore. So you make a big synthesis of what you did before (aversion to loss?) and make up your mind that it may be the best idea yet. After convincing yourself it's good enough to move on, then you have a final "starting" idea?
observation: if a studio hires a designer and that designer is paid regularly / full-time, then the designer can focus on the project with clarity and focus. comparing that to an independent contractor designer who has to think about finding a full-time job, you have hardcore competing interests going on, which is going to affect the design process completely. The context of the designer matters in the methodology?
https://hmans.co/posts/2021-01-18-three-elements/ https://github.com/pmndrs/react-three-fiber https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20526933/html-moving-phaser-into-container-div
It's been a while since the last update. I've created a few test asperite pixel art scenes, and now that the "form" thinking is over, I need to switch to the "content" thinking mode.
If I focus on tower defense, I still need to scale levels, difficulty, and that increases scope towards the "fun/challenging" direction, on top of "discussing" the theme or making variations of the mechanics to speak about the theme. Either way, it's hard. If I embed the tower defense in the storybook, as one of the flickable pages to go to, then I don't have to scale up or down because the (storybook) context gives meaning to the tower defense game for free.
It's a Carousel cybertext/storybook/RPG.
So I have practically not updated this process journal in almost two months. I have nothing to say about that other than feeling reluctant about doing it somehow? At that point in the project, I think I felt like, oh I killed it - I got my concept! It's all good now, no need to document it. Right. Anyways, now the project is at its fourth and final prototype. The software idea is the same - carousel metaverse app launcher thing. The good part is that as I said during the meetings, it was really the concept that I've been mulling over (without writing it down directly here, but in a separate google document).
The desire was to express the feeling of love and appreciation for my Christian faith - put Jesus in a video game. As demo-ed during a past meeting, that was something sort of missed I think - there was a lack of subtlety and craft to the approach. Also, depending on the user's past experiences, it definitely does not convey the effect that is necessarily intended. Pippin also commented on how it could also somehow pass as a horror game (again depending on the user perspective).
After that meeting, I went on a soul search about my approach. I concluded that it wasn't really about making a Christian game (it sounds stupid now), but that in the end, it's about understanding what values that I, as the designer, believe in and desire to "author" in my game. It may be selfish, it may be communication, but that's what the result is in the end: a thing that I want to see materialized.
So I had an idea following that: I felt as usual the urge to dump many characters (and portraits) in the experience, so I thought, how many characters can I fit in within my time? I thought, one of course, a deep, well done character is enough. So the conceptual click was then, then how do I make that relationship interesting across the cards of my carousel? Maybe that character stays in touch with the player between the swipes/apps of the metaverse? At that point, it was almost too easy to see the parallel between virtual online social dynamics around playful relationship making and a Christian's intense, personal and daily relationship with God the Creator through the many contexts and foils of real life. After all, a video game is analogous in many ways to things in real life, so why would relationship making be any different? At this point, I knew I was onto something. The question is always, though, how to execute the idea well?
So, here we are with the idle clicker apps. And, merrily, I had to learn Angular this summer, which happens to be a framework that makes complex applications possible through individual small components. This allowed me to iterate through this "forest" concept in a cleaner way than it would have been without, I think. At this point, I've just committed a fully working conversation system that allows the player to click on "send a private message button" to spawn dialogues in the chat between they and an AI character - just like the player is able to gain experience by clicking on their hero avatar to progress in the quest idler interface. That last sentence made me feel funny - how interesting that video games allow people to click on other people's interface and prompt a relationship progression, just like what happens in some kind of video gamey feedback way (not to say relationships are like clickers or games, but at least it raises the issue of conscientiousness in our relationship-makings: towards what do we wish to progress? how does our relationships reflect and influence our values? how does context and intercontext influence this process?). I have many questions, and I believe the social relationship cybertext simulation thing is immensely interesting, but I have to close this diary entry now and continue working.
(I added another page in this wiki dedicated to how Fire Emblem: Three Houses is awesome and mysteriously accessible / intelligent about talking about divinity and theology)
What are some interesting connections between the bible and playfulness in video games? Matthew 18:1-6 says: At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. "And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."
I don't see why God and the church wouldn't be interesting to relate with playfulness. If children love video games and have such a playful spirit, and God praises such a spirit, then perhaps there's also praise for understanding how that playfulness really fits in the big picture... Perhaps video games are tremendously more important than we think, in our generation.
Alright, so today I just pushed a series of critical commits in terms of aesthetics and language... I'm at a critical junction of the project. I can take it into a detective cyber-investigation game (play as a professional impersonator to find a certain Queen who vanished into the Metaverse) or into the digital poetics that it is currently more leaning towards. I keep thinking to myself, keep to your strengths, keep to the language and poetics! And since I've been doing that, I've felt a lot more enjoyment working on the project. I've thought massively about connecting disjointed ideas (postmodernist poetry?) - now I like to zoom in on the details a bit more. I've forgotten somehow how a lot of art is very simple, probably due to how the artistic focus or element itself is already incredibly rich and stimulating for the human brain without any need for the computer to disbalance it.
My main source of inspiration right now is Tom Konyves, a Montreal poet who was extremely experimental for his time. He fooled around with video poetry in specific. I actually stumbled upon his work today by accident, and noticed the similarities that could be. He's doing some dadaist, collage fusion of seemingly disparate elements. His videopoems were interesting... (referring to Quebecause (1982) just imagine videogame poems instead!
Anyways, I've decided to dump poetry that I've written this week into the project. I also changed to replies of characters to emulate a Hamlet English style just... because. I previously sat in Intro to Software Engineering last Friday and upon being lectured about software configuration management, I had the idea of including a configuration file full of simple variables like "text is like Shakespeare" or "all your friends are encouraging you" to "all your friends are attacking you" that the player could play with, changing all the text at once in my game.
I also revamped the party join feature and single player view for the quest idler app! I was about to add a canvas, but turns out programmer art is just fine. I added a simple sunset background picture for saying where the player is, and it just looks great now with the player and their friend setting on in the horizon, questing together like the greatest buddies. The funniest add though, is adding a ripped (hope this is not illegal or something, but it's just temporary and I can take it down later but the game's not being sold anyways) Japanese pop song that plays in the quest idler app. It just sets the mood perfectly.
On another technical note, communicating with Unity from the browser and vice-versa has been an incredible pain. The Angular life cycle is definitely making it trickier than not, too. Not sure how that's gonna go yet. The 3D modelling / texturing is also a bit painful. Been using kitbashing, but I am balking at the details.
The .tsv conversation system works like a charm. That's the merit of doing my own things - I can customize something to my project's needs. I think relying on a framework for this would be daunting given the weirdness of my project... Finally, there's still some logic to take care of in the quest idler app. I've previously tested the backend API (the Forms API has potential, too), but there's a lot of systems to link yet. I'm having tremendous fun though and I think it's almost done!
I've just created a first release build tagged alphabetically this time (no weird, cold numbers like last time) - Ananias. In Ananias, the player can talk mainly to the 'herohero' character in the party quests. Anyways, the details are in the releases page.
It's worth saying that I've added a few more branches since last time - the development could really have branched out in a different one especially, with the poetry-experiment branch. I left the changes there because I thought the dynamic poem building thing was way too distracting during the game (a lot more than just clicking and seeing monsters' hp go down). Really, the focus or attention that I want to call is on THREE core things: the text poems/sonnets articulated by the characters, the progress of the player's relationship with the characters (through text), and the characters' text vs. 3D representation (not there yet) in their digital expressions and life. The quest idler's party dungeon mini-game thing is really background stuff. That's the point of the whole clicker idea. To get the prototype working but also to not take away attention from the poem. The reasoning behind this is mostly based on Tom Konyves's video poetry experiments - he basically mentions that it's hard to not overwhelm or distract the reader too much with a video (and in this case, a game) in the background. A big reminder to myself on how powerful poetry shown on a screen (or anywhere) can be if enough attention is paid to it. Ideally I'd look into a way to supplement the poem with the gameplay, but I'll content myself with a clicker for now... The text feedback seemed especially important. Anyhow, my focus is now on fleshing out the dialogues in the quest idler, and finishing up the character models for the Chat Homes 3D... Once I get a decent bouncing going on between those two apps, hopefully I can move on to other ideas.
I have finished my summer class (Intro to Software Engineering) yesterday, and for the final project of that class we're submitting it tomorrow so I can finally focus back on this project. It was a hectic week to study for the finals (and mostly impossible to work on this project at the same time due to the 11-team group project).
Anyways, the last time I checked in, I was working on the hair of a 3D character. I found an easy way to make hair tubes so I'll finish that up. The poetry and conversations have to be updated as well: I'm putting in more tonight.
Tested positive for COVID. Throat's on fire. Not sure what will happen to me, but I'm eager to work on this again. Made progress yesterday.
I just finished up Intro to Software Engineering's final project yesterday, so I'm back to this project until it's done. I'm going to get back into finishing up the sonnets and the conversation prompts and the 3D.
A few days ago, I've got the hair technique mostly understood, and I had retopologized the face before that. Next was the eye's and face's texture to do. Then, simple low poly and sculpted clothing, and then basic auto rig and mixamo animations. I'll be able to re-use those things and it'll be done, but mainly for my project it's just the desire to see a character come to life in two different representations (text vs. 3D) and see how that plays overall, psychologically.
I wanted to make the observation that sometimes you really do run into people who are like video game characters... I guess the normal thing to say is that video game characters can be like people, yet how uncanny this whole directional perception is.
So the major design issue right now is how jarring switching between card views is. Ironically that was the whole point so it may just be fatigue at this point, but aesthetically it isn't the most pleasing or coherent. I'm looking to make the cards' look harmonious, despite being different apps of different origins. The 2D vs 3D is hard to balance. I decided to remove the player's input controls in the 3D view (chathomes), focusing instead of "looking" as I felt it was too complex to switch from 2D to 3D. Focusing on back and forth movement between the quest idler (2D) and the chat homes (3D). It's difficult to balance. I removed the complex environments in 3D in favor of a simpler view, and added books / readers so that it's all more about reading / poetry / writing rather than exploration.
Refocus
The design goal at this point is to make the user experience more harmonious and less confusing. Also to make it all centered on one primary action or goal: reading in its various forms. For that end, I want to prioritize reducing chaos and complexity to lessen the cognitive load. That principle or decision was already followed through the previous choices (simple clicker game to move on through screens), but now the goal is to extend that principle to the 3D view as well.
Interface of 3D interaction
I decided to switch from a navigation focus to a "looking" focus, and keep it related to "reading" as previous cards are focused on that as well. "otherness/presence" through words and reading is therefore the main focus now. I believe the project is too complex to try other modalities on top of it before it all becomes jarring, so I'm going to focus on the lightness of text.
Lots of changes in the past few days. Lots of things I may not explicitly discuss here (outside the commits' change logs). I tried to describe those changes in the commits themselves (although just in bullet points). So, where am I in the project? Pretty far now, thanks to huge progress done on the frontend and backend. First, the initial carousel cards interface (which led to confusion/jarringness as previously described) was modified so that the user is first presented with an emulator OS for iOS / Android instead. The swiping acts in the same way as in those devices. Second, the cards were encapsulated into apps - represented and launched by icons. This had the immediate effect to draw the user into a more "calm and controlled state" rather than the chaotic anticipation and wondering of what's next. I think that isn't a bad thing in itself, but it felt like a different project (storybook format interactions - could be more focused on website articles, images and videos). The main reason for this is the 2D vs. 3D. I felt it was negative to swipe and not know where to be next, and the amount of back and forth needed to represent or map the interactions from the first card to the last had a different aim or focus which clashed against the "lightness" wanted in the storybook flipping idea. Putting 3D experiences and 2D experiences apart in encapsulated apps makes the whole thing more coherent, and usable I think.
So that's a big change from before. I'll link the precise commits later here, or in a future documented post. Next big change came sort of naturally or as a consequence to that "IOS/Emulator" modification. Once I had the navigation made to be clearer, I had the problem of motivating, orienting or guiding the player's attention into the many different apps. Since there are many apps, this problem would only grow in complexity. So an old idea came back from the dead from the earlier days of the project - to make a form-based (again) investigation system or game layer. This idea was in direct conflict with the poetry reader idea, but in an hierarchy of problems, I chose to prioritize overall harmony between the embedded experiences. Because what's really being manipulated and arranged here are experiences (instead of static images, notes or other art elements). Given the complexity of arranging experiences, it seemed to be logical to make that the priority in usability. The idea of adding the investigation claim and scattering cues in the apps to progress in the story and relationship with the main character (referred to as the 'Queen' in-game) resurfaced and regained credibility and viability, where before re-arranging my priorities it was perceived as a "less than good thing to do or temptation". Anyways, I'm pretty satisfied with the results, and also surprised at how easy it is to change priorities and appraisals based on the problem or situation in design.
After that, I added the auto SMS system that links the investigation form (that the user submits to the server after finding keywords or cues - which I hope would be smarter, but because of time and scope I don't have the capacity to make it as clever as I'd like to). Now the idea of God, presence in others, is mainly retaking shape in the relationship of the player vs. the Queen, who texts the player (e.g., Emily Is Away style?) after the player progresses in the investigation (keywords are scattered in apps, which is designed to stimulate exploration goals). The neat thing is that with my current software architecture, and Observables (observer pattern) using RxJS, it's very approachable to design complex event-driven systems like these. Doing so without event-driven paradigm would be highly problematic probably. The affordances of the framework used, and knowledge of these paradigms seem paramount in making rapid decisions and taking care of them with playfulness. Anyways, now the player's progress is linked to the core relationship / system of the game in the SMS, which can be opened / interfaced in any apps.
The investigation center and SMS system working together like friends
These may be flavor ideas, but I've thought of having the Queen ask the player to root their device or enable dev mode and then activate a VPN (through the settings app/activity) in the beginning of their relationship via SMS, where the dialogue would only continue on the player having done so. That sort of idea is fun and interactive and would be quickly dismissed had I not the tools to implement them quickly using the right architecture, events and Observables (RxJs). I still want to be careful not to be lured into wanting to implement to many gimmicks or flavor elements. The core it seems remains to build on the relationships via text and progression in the systems I already have.
On top of all that, I managed to sneak in a Pixi based rendering engine (RPG Maker MV) which allowed me to quickly add (in matter of minutes) a working RPG game app. Now this is the equivalent of embedding a Pong or Breakout game, but in my generation I grew up with RPGs instead of these 80's games. With the tools to create those (in minutes), it is a defendable choice and also the thing had a dialogue system for free in it (which sort of stupidly makes the Quest Idler seem less interesting now, or maybe makes it feel that it should be very differently focused) so I snuck in some "meta" comments about otherness/togetherness in adventures/epic quests with other NPCs. I think if it sort of reinforces the overall idea (onion design thing?), each app can only contribute and build there. It's also probably interesting to sneak in meta cues or keywords (the previous system mentioned) in an actual video game vs. only in web pages, then come back and do the same in a completely different context.
The use of AI generators
Also, the queen's profile picture is generated by AI. This sort of experience/game lends itself to things like that, right? I could generate other things, but if there's anything I want to continue believing in, is the human authorship in the narrative/story part of the experience. There's not much sense to me in reading a machine's thoughts - they don't have a message or soul. Even if it's "meaningful", it doesn't come from a human. It doesn't share in the universal pool of what it means to be human in the same degree or side. It's like the monitor at a pool watching the pool who's not in the pool. (With the people in the pool). Therefore, I like to keep on creating my own stories without using AI for that (or at least, perhaps in starting points, but I don't see a need for more.), at least for the enjoyment of writing and also there's just material from each individual that the AI wouldn't ever get from the Internet, or at least, not with the same qualia or pedigree.
Emmanuel: Behind Presence's Scenes & designing core messages for the game
For my project(s), a core idea was to reflect on the meaning of Emmanuel. 'God is with us'. Not against us. I am with you: here is my Son, for you. As much as I gave myself completely to my Son, my Son gives Himself completely to you even as food and blood in the flesh, and in the Eucharist. Speaking in terms of my practice and understanding of roman catholicism, this act of redemptive love that even supersedes the act of creation (!) is established time and again in history and without levity through the incarnation of God Himself in the flesh... The following is a reflection of the core ideas of God's 'presence' as I interpret it. I wrote the following in an automatic stream of thought, meant to understand the core stuff that I want to design in the game.
...So the Christian faith would be utterly useless, boring, dangerous and subjective with regards to other religions if it was not based on perfect love, supernatural power and perfect truth. Specifically, if the resurrection had not happened, there would be no point to Christian faith but foolish self-delusion. But CBT... cannot do for people what it simply cannot do. Where God is concerned, Jesus did resurrect, and raised others from the dead. This is good news... so why not rejoice? This is no ideology but redemption and love in its true form. Hence the mystery of hate against God remains to this day... and in my case, I believe the rejection of God in media and in our lives to be demonic activity.
In no other religion has someone claimed divinity (!) like Jesus has, and then proved it to be true. If we doubt this, then we say that He is a liar. But smarter people than me have written about God's existence (The Case for Christ, Thomas Aquinas, etc.). And that is why I am not a muslim, buddhist or taoist. If it is a claim of superiority of belief then it is - modern day values tend to put people's comfort, temporary welfare (not true welfare) and human 'needs' before truth, and that is also very certainly demonic activity. But when people pursue God, people become better, obtain true happiness, fulfillment and joy, and understand how to love in a perfect way.
We cannot compromise on being afraid to hurt people's feelings or beliefs in response to truth. Because someone claims that they are a woman does not mean that they are a woman - the conflict of authorship. But here is exactly where I think things get messy: we think God's truth to be unpleasant and a "bad thing", restrictive and condemning. For if God is real, then everything in our lives would need to change. If God exists, then nothing else is the same. You couldn't intellectually process that He exists, and be indifferent about it, because it wouldn't make sense, if one really understood. But God's truth is not bad but true meaning and perfected love. The ultimate things that we are created to long for. God's commandments is not a reduction of freedom but the goal of freedom. Free will has God for a goal.
So it is not in condemnation of others' religions that I say this. But other religions' prophets claim to be messengers, where Jesus claimed to be the Son of God - something literally no other leader of any religion in history has ever done with credibility. Mohammed or Buddha or Shiva have not raised the dead, and resurrected themselves from the dead. There is but one God in three Persons: The Son, Holy Ghost, and Father.
So, if God did not care or love us, He would not take this human condition in our temporality and become one of us. But as an act of radical empathy and presence... like an elder brother to humanity in the order of creation, He came down and although greater than the universe, lowered Himself to the base level of a servant washing his disciple's feet. Nobody else could wash them of their impurity. Where God the Father asked then withheld Abraham from sacrificing his own son, a son expected for nearly a hundred years, God does not withhold His own son for us. If that is not love, then love is not. So it is a great problem to say that God does not love, for if we think of the better men or women in our lives who were able to love us despite our failings, then God always exceed that limit. That is how mentally one can arrive at conversion - through intellectual realization of the love of God, and also from God's help and presence as this capacity is from God.
And metaphysically and physically present in the Eucharist. The meaning of body of Christ extends indefinitely - how far does that 'body' go into our digital-physical lives?
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. Isaiah 55:8
"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11
People ask, how to pursue God? Being raised in a catholic family helps but is not the end - many people are raised in catholic families and choose to abandon their faith. God said that He allows Himself to be found easily, and that to those who knock the door will open. Praying, seeking and pursuing is a response to God's direct action in the heart: choosing to open those doors is in our free will. While alive, we should call and seek Him, because once dead it is too late. As for me, I simply desired those things for myself as well, and increasingly so during my twenties. I am still a sinner and stumble on bad habits and such, but in the end I want to strive to become more like Jesus with each day.
It doesn't matter what I do, but I love the idea of being playful about it. I'd like in other projects to focus more on the aspects of love and joy in faith, but for this project, it was more oriented towards a person's spiritual journey. My concern was and still is, how do I put this message into the game? As written in the artist statements, I think I could work with the SMS system and change how the character is initially presented as a real person, then as an AI, and then shockingly as a supernatural... angel... The thoughts are interesting - they are above the story and above the game. God's presence is ultimately to be in us, our bodies. That is the goal of saints. How could technology contribute to sainthood? We are left with an open mystery and vagueness. An open-ended ending, and multiple interpretations (the game ends with the protagonist's boss explaining that Cyfer was too emotionally attached to the subject (Autumn) and might benefit from a sabbatical or retirement. The real person had been dead all along as later learned in the game...
Attachment to Evil
Open air streams
Flames in the Dark
So as I understand my project's materials more and more and erase or cut out pieces that could have been part of the whole, things get more interesting and intimate.
The most important and interesting design moment was definitely commit #a9930969454b02cb121278a0de6b9ebbf0e2364d (referred as #a993096 from now on).
Here's the link to the commit's details: Most Interesting Commit
In that commit, for the specific script file here, I had completely removed and changed some of the messages of the previous version, where I had experimented with the "gamey investigation" layer. This commit's contents has since changed a lot since then (see commit #a993096's meta-message-center.ts file at this commit link: a993096.
If I have time, I'll draw up an aesthetically pleasing to look at tree of the commits' changes (sorry Pippin for the slightly mess commit links, I can clean it up later), but the gist of it is that in a short period of time (around 2 days), I tested a version of the game that I needed to see, and once I threw it up, I cleaned up the vomited materials and never spoke about it again. Like when you get a virus in a different country by eating the local's food - you throw up for 12 hours and then move on.
Notice the language change in the main SMS conversations as well: commit for main-quest.service.ts
The language keeps being reworked on and on again. Depending on how I make it sound, the whole experience feels different to me. This is obvious to more experienced designers, but I am still amazed at how powerful the written language is and how it can determine the direction of the whole application's experience.
For example, upon finding out the "Neptunia" keyword, the player gets a SMS chat pop-up from the Autumn AI:
["Sixth3489: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.", "Sixth3489: Are you having fun on that account?@waitReply", "Autumn: Hey... long time no talk. I haven't used this account in a while", "Sixth3489: You can stop pretending. I know who you are.@waitReply", "Autumn: Okay, so who am I?", "Sixth3489: John Cyfer. You work for the NSA.", "Sixth3489: I have the information that you seek. But you'll have to do what I say first.@waitReply", "Autumn: Why should I trust you?", "Sixth3489: I know how long you've been trying. You're in the dark. So take a chance.@cutLiveConnection&waitReply", "Autumn: How did you do that?", "Sixth3489: I know that device well. Go to the Settings app, and enable dev mode. Then root the phone. After that, activate the VPN app. We'll talk again once you do that.@end"]
It changes from the previous 'biblical thriller hacker' vibe, to a more romanced, poetic version, regarding the same in-game SMS text event:
["Autumn: I want to go there. A place of green springs and where the sun falls on people who love peace.", "Autumn: There is a place hidden that people call Neptunia. I was not able to find the exact location yet.@waitReply", "YOU: Maybe the place isn't meant to be discovered.", "Autumn: That's a good observation. I believe certain things... are meant to be secrets.", "Autumn: But we shouldn't stop looking for that place. It is there, somewhere. Don't you agree?@end"],
The last commit further eliminates or reduces the text to a more minimalistic "evocation/poetics" style:
["Autumn: There is the hidden place I long to see. A place of green springs and where the sun falls on people who love peace.", "Autumn: I was not able to find its exact location yet.@waitReply", "Cyfer: Are you sure there's such a place?", "Autumn: We see the stars as they are millions of years ago. Stars are ghosts of light.", "Autumn: And yet their beauty remains visible.@end"],
and THAT is the direction I was looking for. But through at least three different commits (actually a lot more than that), separated in time between those experiments (several days), I experienced a completely different version of my project. How can the designer be so unaware of what they want in advance? Why must the stormy sea push the boat under it? There was no way for me to plan these accurately. Because of my inexperience with this kind of UI project (aside from the previous speculative play project, I never worked on a fake UI game like this one), these manifestations of the general idea occurred in an evolutionary (as software evolution) way. I had to crawl and grasp and tatter for days in the dark, looking to seize and understand my own feelings and desires. The focus must be maintained for several days or weeks for this process to happen, I think. I previously mentioned (at the first meeting in May) context switching analogies in CS and design... I think if the designer responsible for prototyping 'context switches' between different projects, it's inevitable that the context switching process will incur doubt, confusion and entanglement. The exact measurements of this process could be analyzed and experimented upon, using the scientific method (mixed quantitative and qualitative), but as experientially as autobiographical research creation may reveal through my own case study, this is a highly charged process of maintained problem solving and mental activity for at least several days. The sleeping occurring between those days is also important. But anyways, this series of changes may be complete accidental, but I think the saying that you can write "from the seats of the chair", or analogously bottom-up iteration in programming, applies here leads to very intimate results as you discover things an incremental and evolutionary way. If there is a blank or writer's block, chasing the idea continuously with a club really seems to be something analogous in research creation, and is both a thing difficult and incredibly passionate to do.
I want to provide more interesting analyses regarding my commits' development using a more structured approach and do the design moments commit tree visualization that I mentioned, but now I have to try finish up the next things in the project.
The last interesting changes I wanted to drop:
Upon clicking the settings app, the player receives the following SMS text from Autumn: ["Autumn: A user can root their phone to enable special functions. These functions are not otherwise possible for unrooted users.@end"],
This is the sort of "metaphorical context based cue evocation" that I wanted to use in the project. The previous version was a talk at the level of the game's story or layer:
["Sixth3489: Thank you for trusting me.", "Your faith will be rewarded.@end"],
...where the player would then continue to engage at the level of cooperating with Autumn to gain her trust and have her continue to divulge her secrets and location. For this project, it just didn't feel right in the end, which is why I changed it. The reminder of scope also directed this decision.
Another example is the SMS text that the player receives upon clicking on the bible app for the first time:
["Autumn: When it's wind and it rains, people go inside. When it's sunny, people go outside."]
In a previous version of it (another sadly forgotten staged commit that I had changed twice which killed the first staged change in the commit), it roughly went like this:
["Cyfer: Are you religious?", "Autumn: In the original sense, yes.", "Cyfer: I'm a agnostic. I just don't have the time to worry about that sort of thing.", "Autumn: How interesting that you mention time. Time is what religious people are pursuing to obtain all eternity."]
But this felt condescending (which was in character for the previous version of Autumn's character - a very proud, religious hacker playing with the protagonist's head admist their own spiritual struggles), and aggressive or too direct, hence the last "soft rain observer commentary" version mentioned before. Again, the game version could have been part of a different project - a mature cyber thriller investigation (I have a lot of ideas for these...)
Another example of literary style changes or evolution. From one of the most important design moment that had that "game layer" context to help direct the player's attention (commit #fa092a66):
"Brigadier General Maron", "John - Cyber Investigation Expert", "Your last assignment", "2022-06-02 13:37:00", "Congratulations on being hired for the job. This may be your most important contract: to find any digital traces or signatures pointing to the Queen's whereabouts or presence in the Net. John, we've just established a live link between your SPHINX and the Queen's last known meta device. You have remote and direct access to all the Queen's last installed apps and contacts. Please complete a C-PIC form with any information that may be useful in the investigation. Queen Augusta liked to use the handler 'Autumn' in her meta verses. Use whatever you can find. When you're ready, use the 'Star' icon in the navigation bar below to open the investigation form. Be aware that any ongoing and future messages from her last contacts will be intercepted and monitored along with any communications from Mission Control. - Brigadier General Maron"
I unfortunately forgot to stage and commit an intermediate version of the same discussion where instead of a super serious general talking down to the player and barking orders to them, it was a bandit space crew captain basically hollering profanities and curses about how writers are a bunch of idiots for revealing passwords in the game (the player was a person who had contributed in hacking the phone that you play in, and the space pirates made profits by selling these data as assets). The tone was much more comedic and entertaining, but it still didn't feel right. The last version of this conversation is basically a sibling's heartfelt congratulations (the protagonist has since become a woman) on the protagonist's new life on the Titan moon colony. Again, the tone of the story is just what changes the most in this project.
In this series of lists in the message center, I had outlined one of the main character's perspective on her faith in the form of a CBT session which the protagonist player discovers in an attachment file in the message center (removed the list elements for clarity; the upper cases was meant to increase the message's intense/punchy/scary factor in an email attachment):
CBT Session Therapist: Dr. Kroen Tan, MD
DR. KROEN TAN: HAVE YOU IDENTIFIED ANY CORE BELIEFS SINCE OUR LAST MEETING?
AUGUSTA VON LI: IF YOU HAD ASKED ME, DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD? THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE INTERESTING FOR THE BOTH OF US. PEOPLE OFTEN ASK EACH OTHER IF THEY BELIEVE IN GOD. DO YOU NOT SEE HOW RIDICULOUS THAT IS? OR DID YOU FORGET THE ENGLISH MEANING OF IT? IT IS AS IF YOU ASKED ME, DO YOU TRUST THIS PERSON THAT I'VE NEVER SEEN OR HEARD? OR DO YOU TRUST HIS WORD? HOW SHOULD I KNOW WHY I AM DOING THE THINGS THAT I'M DOING OR SAYING? HOW CAN I TRUST HIS WORDS IF I HAVE NOT HEARD THEM? BUT IF YOU HEARD HIM, AND KNOW HE EXISTS, THEN WHY DO YOU ASK? PERHAPS YOU NEED NOT TO BE CONVINCED, BUT RATHER A HUG FROM HIM? ARE YOU NOT LEFT WANTING INSIDE TOO AFTER A LOVED ONE LEAVES? YOU ASK BECAUSE BELIEVING STARTS WITH RECOGNITION, NOT IDEAS, BUT BOTH ARE SEEDS. NOW YOU SHOULD ASK ME, HOW DOES ONE RECOGNIZE GOD THEN?
DR. KROEN TAN: I APPRECIATE YOUR SENTIMENTS, BUT TO CLARIFY, I WAS ASKING IF SINCE OUR LAST MEETING, YOU HAD IDENTIFIED ANY DISFUNCTIONAL OR IRRATIONAL BELIEFS. AS YOU KNOW, BELIEFS ARE CONNECTED TO FEELINGS AND BEHAVIOURS. THOSE ARE BELIEFS THAT DO NOT HELP US UNDERSTAND THE WORLD IN A GOOD LIGHT, WHICH OFTEN BRINGS US DOWN.
AUGUSTA VON LI: IRRATIONAL BELIEFS? THAT WE ARE NOT SINGING AND PRAISING THE BEAUTY OF CREATION EVERY INSTANT IS WHAT IRRATIONAL MEANS. DO YOU NOT SEE THE IRONY OF YOUR WORDS?
DR. KROEN TAN: I AM AN AGNOSTIC, BUT I APPRECIATE WHAT YOU MEAN. WE SHOULD BE GRATEFUL ABOUT WHAT WE HAVE, FOR SURE. THIS WILL HELP YOU BECOME HAPPIER ACCORDING TO SCIENCE.
AUGUSTA VON LI: NO, THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT. I WOULD ELABORATE, BUT PERHAPS WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. DR. KROEN TAN: YES, PLEASE ELABORATE ON YOUR IDEAS FOR OUR NEXT SESSION. CONSIDER THAT OTHERS MAY SHARE DIFFERENT BELIEFS.
All this was REMOVED in the subsequent commits despite the effort to write it. (I seem to have a large supply of writing inside, so this didn't matter too much to me).
The Autumn character was meant to be the vessel for the spiritual & religious journey and theme of the game. That she becomes the catalyst for the protagonist's own faith journey was the goal. In the nearest commits, her role changes into a more "supportive / mysterious" character than before. Instead of being intense and aggressive about her beliefs, Autumn becomes this strangely sentient AI that sometimes gets possessed by both angels and demons, in turn. This turn of events and roles scaffolded my game design further, and allowed me to change my focus from the "disappeared biblical Harvard student hacker getting into touch with the player on their own hacked device" into the more supernatural "who is this that I'm even talking to right now?" version. The calm, fake emulated eOS operating system that invites the player to lower their guard and pick the rate of their experience can now be troubled and tossed around in unexpected, weird ways (the simulation of a realistic app into a supernaturally driven one). The reason for this approach was for the "dramatic factor" and the "subtlety factor" of the latter version, which I chose because it seemed to be more interesting than the "cyber hacker investigation" style. Does it do a better job at helping the player pray or think about God and faith? I don't know yet, but it's really interesting.
IT RUNS ON HEROKU IN A DoCkeR ImAgE! GAME IN A DOCKER IMAGE
The slug size being too large (709mb+ over the 500mb cap) for Heroku, I faced the choice of finding another host and scrapping 2 days of Heroku work, or get around the slug problem by using Docker. Docker is amazing, that is all I will say. It was all worth it
Now that my local development is fully mirrored on the real production remote server, I can focus on finishing off the last bits of the project and scaling the progression a bit.