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The Social Butterfly Experiment

The Social Butterfly Experiment is an immersive experience that leverages the motion capture capabilities of the Lab for Immersive Media (LIM) at UT Austin.​ This is the first student (Spring 2024) project in the LIM. 

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Details:

  • My role: Gameplay Designer

  • Team size: 9

    • Gameplay Designer​

    • Gameplay Programmer

    • 2D/UI Artist

    • 3D Artist

    • Animator/Lighting Artist

    • Tech Artist

    • Sound Designer

    • Narrative Director

    • Producer

  • Dev time: 2 months

  • Contribution: 

    • System/Content/Level Design​

    • Game Design

    • Gameplay Programming

    • Documentation

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The project won the Immersive Media Award at the AET 2024 Showcase.

Made with: 

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Premise

Players are assigned as interns at the Lab for Investigating Monarchs. As an intern under Professor M, the players are tasked with guiding monarch butterflies from Michigan, all the way to Mexico within a simulation using motion capture controls. Interns must guide the butterflies to milkweed while assisting them in avoiding cars and the looming winter.

In Action

Game Design 

Responsibilities

  • documented game design in GDD for the team to reference throughout development

  • designed and iterated on level design, game mechanics, and in-game feedback to players based on scope, creative direction, site-specificity, and playtesting

  • white boxed levels, communicated dimensions to the Creative Team and assisted with asset implementation

  • worked with Lead Programmer to determine feasibility, implement gameplay mechanics, and finetune gameplay in Unity/C#

  • Analyzed player feedback and re-designed level layouts and gameplay elements according to said feedback

Pre-Production

  • ​Spent first few weeks ideating on game mechanics 

  • Reported ideations to producer and narrative director to ensure narrative alignment

  • Logged core loop, basic gameplay, player controls, mechanics, game progression, etc. into the Game Design Document

  • Figure out how players' physical movements would translate to in-game movement

  • Regularly updated GDD during production

  • Ideated and brainstormed user flow and art styles as a team on Figjam

  • Regularly updated throughout production

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Link

Level Design

  • Goal fo the game's level design: capture the experience of butterflies migrating from the north to the south.​​

  • Level design is a slice of the most common butterfly travel route: Michigan to Mexico.

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Of course, as a UT student, I had to include Texas and the UT Tower in the level design.

  • Main mechanics: guiding the butterflies to milkweed and keeping them from being hit by cars.​

  • The placement of milkweed and roads was key in the level design​

    • Milkweed (butterfly's main food source) gives butterflies a speed boost​

    • Roads contain cars that kill butterflies

    • Encounter design: slowly introduce players to more and more cars and obstacles

  • Some buildings (colored boxes) were purposely placed to force players onto the dangerous roads (Texas/Oklahoma and Mexico)

  • Created a scroll system that moved the map downwards

  • Butterflies that fall behind will get caught in the winter storm (check 'In Action' video)

  • The speed would be regularly adjusted to ensure balance for players' ability to run around the LIM

Game Mechanics Testing/Implementation

I worked closely with the lead programmer on planning how game mechanics would be implemented. These game mechanics were ones ideated by myself and written in the GDD.

Butterfly Trailing

  • ​Worked with the gameplay programmer to implement the butterfly trailing system​

  • Butterflies trail players based on the players' previous vector position. Why?

    • Ensures a "lag" between butterflies and players​

    • Captures the floaty and calm nature of butterfly movement

  • Butterflies move to nearest player's location

    • Ensures collaboration between players​

  • If players stop moving, the butterflies stop trailing​​

  • Butterflies slow down if not led to milkweed

  • Added animated arrows to indicate where players should go to start the game

Motion Capture Headset

  • Players control butterflies by moving around the room while wearing the motion capture headsets

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  • All design choices were made with headsets in consideration

    • Require constant movement without tiring the players​

    • Understand the restrictions of the motion capture labs space

Cars

  • Main system-driven mechanic​

  • I used a spline system that the cars would trail throughout the game​

  • Whenever butterflies touch the cars' hitboxes, they die​

  • Players encounter more cars as they reach closer to the end

  • I wanted to make sure that the players felt that they were being thrown into the chaos of butterfly migration

Milkweed

  • Main source of food for butterflies​

  • Milkweed mechanic controls the games core loop: guide butterflies to milkweed

  • Milkweeds have triggers that boost butterfly speed

  • If butterflies are not brought to milkweed, they will slow down

    • Winter storm is constantly chasing players​

  • Milkweed was strategically placed to guide players through the map

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Pollution

  • Pollution clouds slow down butterflies

  • Clouds contain triggers that interact with butterflies​

  • Placement encourages players to stay closer to milkweed.

Winter Storm

  • Butterflies migrate to avoid the cold winters in the north

  • Butterflies that lose too much speed can't keep up with the screen scroll; a kill trigger is positioned at the bottom of the screen

  • If slow butterflies don't get killed by cars, they will get caught by the storm

Juice

Creating and implementing feedback VFX/SFX to clarify or indicate an interaction

Milkweed Particles
Death Particle

  • Playtester feedback: "I couldn't tell when the butterflies died"​

  • To clarify their deaths, I created a "death poof" particle that would play on their death.​

  • I created the particle system and sprites (Photoshop) and implemented them into the butterfly script

  • Particle system is instantiated at the butterfly's death position

  • One of the biggest points of feedback from playtesting: "I can't tell when I got the milkweed

  • Worked with the 3D artist to create particle effects​

  • Implemented a scripted event that plays the particle effect as well as SFX when butterflies enter the milkweed trigger

Asset Implementation

I replaced the whiteboxes with in-house and outsourced assets. This includes models, textures, and animations.

I worked with the tech artist to replace all white boxes with game-ready assets.

 

  • I replaced placeholder assets with game-ready butterfly assets.

  • Implemented flapping animations and worked with the lead programmer to set an animation offset to make sure their movements felt more natural.

 

Full Documentation

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