Final Project: Design Your Own Interactive Audiovisual Software Tool

Train Ride Home

Demo


Train Ride Home is an audiovisual storytelling software conveying the malleability and whimsicality of memory, imagination, and nostalgia. It offers a glimpse into the lives of the familiar strangers we might find ourselves sharing the same train car with. Each person has their own worries and musings that don't seem to really go anywhere. In short, it's a story about the random, small things in life.

Production Build: MacOS

Instructions: To see the story of each character play out, click on the character you want to interact with. Click-through dialogue is activated by the spacebar. The first character has an interactive poem where you can click on the glowing words to activate/deactivate sounds and lower the playback rate. Click the exit sign to leave the train and end the story.

Download Unity Assets Here

Download Build Here




Milestone 2: Minimal Essential System

I've finished implementing the core mechanics of my second character (with the moving objects that are instantiated along with the dialogue, and their corresponding sounds). I also redid my first character, since I decided to keep everything in the setting of the train rather than moving around with different backgrounds/scenes. The character interactions are definitely not polished, though, and I'm hoping to add more of the objects that the astronaut mentions as part of everyday life to create a swirling storm of mundane "hassles" that eventually ends in an explosion/blackhole once the playback rate is above 2.0.

Milestone 1: Core Mechanics

I've finished setting up the initial train scene, and the core mechanics for the poetry filling + audio interaction! The goal is to create this with every character on the train with a different poem. Some of them might ask the player to rate how the poem makes them feel rather than have them fill out the blanks. Others will have minigames in addition to a poem highlighting each character's story. I've also started on the astronaut character's backstory, but didn't include that in the video since it goes over time, and the audio interaction is not fully set up yet.

Milestone 0: Project Proposal

Here are my favorite ideas generated during my brainstorm! I think my favorite is the third idea, because I feel like it has the most potential to carry a meaningful narrative. I'm also really interested in how I can use the characters in the game to reflect on the class, and tell a story of the journey of these ten weeks. For example, the minigames can include parts of the 256a course, like concepts from Artful Design's principles or design etudes, and past assigments like sequencing/generating music. I'm not sure if it's a bit too ambitious, though, but I am very excited about it, so hopefully three weeks will be enough time.