Spider Collider

Spider Collider

Project Vortex

Project Vortex

Maybe Today

Maybe Today

The Sorrow King's Castle

The Sorrow King's Castle

Dimensional Drifter

Dimensional Drifter

Fantasy Worldbuilding

Vaeluria started as a means to output creativity: an empty canvas in which I could create anything I set my mind to. Many ideas were thrown at the wall in the early days of this project; concepts of gods, monsters, complex magic systems, characters that could one day be the protagonists of this experience, if ever made interactive. The possibilities were endless, but there was one thing I had clear in my mind: gods and divinity must be at the forefront of this world. As I have been a fan of Greek Mythology since childhood, I took a lot of inspiration from the way they portray the creation of the universe to create my own version, one in which gods are born from ideas, wishes, and necessities of other celestials. Each god created has a purpose unique to themselves, whether that be to provide light and heat to the galaxy as the sun, or to maintain a record of all knowledge in the universe, not one divine being's existance is unimportant.
‍
The lore I've written for Vaeluria is extensive, spanning several thousands of years from the creation of everything to the war that split the divine and mortal realms, and to the current conflict birthed from the death of a god. As my passion project, I have spent many hours attempting to perfect the timeline of this world, and even now I continue to do so, however I have reached a satisfactory point which allows for many possibilities. The current conflict that Vaeluria faces is that of a war between the Sun god and one of the two Moon goddesses after the other was caught in the midst of their conflict and killed. This cataclysmic event has led to divinity seeping into the mortal realm, empowering magic users who worship the Moon goddess as they wage war against the dragon-riding Sun worshippers. All other nations pick a side in the battle as the gods do the same in their own realm, splitting the pantheon in a way never to be seen before.

Fantasy Worldbuilding

When writing the history, religions, and magic systems of this world, I always kept a strong narrative focus in mind. One of my favorite hobbies is storywriting, and so when creating Vaeluria, I aimed to write stories around and in it, spanning from stories of how the world came to be and what shenanigans the gods get up to in their immortal extistances, to stories telling the lives of mortals and how they live day-to-day in a world full of wonder. As time progressed, and the world grew into its own, Vaeluria's future became broader. The world lends itself to many mediums: literature, video games, tabletop campaigns... However, in relation to my studies and personal interests, a game seems to be the likeliest path, given time and the proper resources.

An open-world RPG including classes the player can choose from, each related to the different species that populate the world. Each class would have it's own unique qualities; moon elves who are more attuned to magic, sun elves who ride dragons, fire elementals working in forges to create weaponry, or water elementals who thrive underwater. These are only a few of the options the player would be able to choose between, with the freedom to craft their own path through this world. A strong narrative would guide them through their journey as war rages through the world, granting them the choice between the two sides, the possibility to rise in the ranks and carve their way through the conflict.

Enschede Weaving Factory

For my course at university, we take part of the IMT&S module for one semester of our fourth year. This module consists of choosing among a list of projects, all commissioned to the university by a different client. For this module, I chose the Enscheden Weaving Factory; a project that had been passed down by the previous group of students that worked on it before us. The project given to my team focused on the animation of the weaving machines, with little regard to the historical accuracy of the setting. In the first stages of development, we chose to reinvent this project, creating a live scene which featured the animated machines passed down to us, with the inclusion of the realism expected by the client.

A live scene was chosen as the final deliverable, with triggerable "microstories" that would play if the user approached certain workers. These microstories would consist of 20-40 second snippets of workers' day-to-day lives, featuring the unique sign language that they invented during that time, kindly taught to us by the museum. Unfortunately, these microstories did not make it into the final product due to scope changes.

The user would wear a VR headset to begin the experience, with no controllers to go along with it. This was done to avoid the steep learning curve of VR for museum visitors who had never used the technology before. The headset provides a teleportation feature throughout the factory if the user maintains their eyes locked on the teleportation point they wish to teleport to for approximately 2-3 seconds. By exploring the factory, the user would see the workers, whose idle movements were recorded using motion capture suits, as they went about their daily tasks, overseeing 4 weaving machines each. The atmosphere of the factory, created using volumetric fog, dust particles, limited lighting, and loud ambient sounds of machinery was made to recreate the poor conditions in which workers had to work during that time.

Enschede Weaving Factory

For this project, I acted as co-team lead as well as general designer with a focus on narrative. I helmed the creation of the microstories, both on paper and with the suits. By the end, ten different microstories were written for this project, all of which feature at least 3 different sign language gestures through worker interactions. These stories ranged from a worker asking another the time to two friends telling each other stories about their weekends. We recorded four of these microstories using the Xsens Link motion capture suit, with me acting as director and managing the MVN software required for recording.

The removal of the microstories meant they were not included in the final product, however we ensured that they were AB tested and ready for the next team to pick them up in the future. The AB testing consisted of an "expressive" and "subtle" version of each microstory. The expressive versions had grander movements that were easier to read, however lacked the realistic restriction that the workers had as their boss was constantly keeping an eye on them. The workers were not allowed breaks or the freedom to chat with one another, which the subtle versions conveyed, albeit sacrificing the readability of the movements.

In the testing, the expressive versions performed better, with most testers noting that the gestures in the subtle version were hard to read and did not convey the emotions we were trying to show.

Additionally, my contributions to this project related to documentation and occasionally tweaking certain aspects of the project in Unreal. The IMT&S module requires maintaining a detailed development log, both individually and as a team. I was in charge of keeping the team devlog up to date, noting down all team members' work and contributions towards the project.