Roman Vacation
This project was developed in DESIGN 6400 as a visual representation for the intersections between research interests. I researched and found connections between VR/AR/XR, Chronic Pain, and Ancient Rome and then developed a narrative visual novel game. The story involves a group of tourists visiting Rome and exploring three locations where they learn about the various subjects. The final product was a functional game.
Presentation recording
For this project we were tasked with finding the connections between three different topics and creating a visual design for the ‘space in-between’ those topics.
one topic should be an unfamiliar emerging technology
the 2nd topic should be a current social issue
the 3rd topic is up to you: an academic discipline, problem, technology, or personal interest
After several iterations of research into each topic section I decided to research the connections between:
VR/AR/XR
Chronic Pain
Ancient Rome
At first I thought finding connections between modern technology and ancient Rome would be extremely difficult. But the connections were surprisingly extensive, especially when I considered the word origins for our modern language and the tourist industry adopting modern technology to explore the past. Below I have the Latin word origin for reality, augmented, and virtual.
Reality comes from the late Latin word realis which means “relating to things”.
Augmented comes from augere meaning “to increase”.
Virtual comes from virtus and virtuosus meaning “possessing certain values”.
For medicine and VR there were numerous connections that I was only able to briefly explore even a sliver of the scope. Below is a rough Venn diagram that I created early in my research in Miro to visually map some of the overlapping connections between my topics.
For my actual project I decided to create a visual novel story game. There were three major steps that were necessary to complete this game.
Write a script and design characters
Create Assets
Learn visual novel software
I started early with a script. The project prototype was created in Google Slides and I finalized to make a functional game using Ren’Py, a visual novel engine. I created a flow chart in Miro in order to visual the story progression options a reader could create. Every potentially pathway has an exit and a progression to the final stage where they can review what they saw or exit the game.
Below is a collection of images from the final product.
