alexismultiverse

It’s not week 5 anymore, however, I have been thinking a lot about sound design and dialogue.

Sound to me, is what makes something fully immersive. Driving around in games like GTA or Cyberpunk 2077 wouldn’t feel the same without the music and interviews from the radio station or the general city ambience of people talking, cars honking, engines revving, rain etc. It makes me feel like I’m actually in the world.

Music is super effective in communicating the tone of certain types of games, especially in video novels. It helps the player understand whether a scene is supposed to evoke happiness, sadness, or anticipation of something bad happening.

While I don’t think I’ll be able to compose original scores for this piece, I’m definitely thinking about what kind of music I want in the game. Maybe more chill Lofi vibes to start and as the game progresses the music gets more intense?

I was considering having voice-over dialogue in my game as it would enhance the immersion and accessibility of the gameplay. However, it might be difficult to find voice actors, It would also mean I have less flexibility with the dialogue and generally create another layer of things to think about which would make things harder for me. Although I could use AI, I’m not entirely comfortable with the ethical implications, and the voices still sound a bit robotic. Therefore, I have decided to keep things text-based for now.

I’ve begun building the foundations!!!!!

Character Creation!

I decided to use DAZ3D for character creation a lot of 3D artists I like used it and It’s branded as an easy way to create 3D characters. if I’m being honest, i’ve never used it before, but it seemed like it would be simple enough to grasp and seemed to have easy pipelines for exporting models for use in Unreal and Blender.

I would say it’s quite easy to grasp, especially once you’ve installed additional content it was kind of like a videogame costumisation screen.

Maybe it was because I had just rewatched sucker punch but when I was creating the main character I had the main keywords bopping about in my mind so hyperfeminine, robot, and cyberpunk I was also thinking about other female game characters whose designs I liked like Tifa, 2B, Bayonetta and Samus to name a few. but I was also thinking about maybe a brothel as a potential location, which was the main reason for the outfit. I wasn’t 100% sold but I decided to test out other things before reworking the character again.

I also randomly rememberes Unreal has their own character creation system called Metahumans and played around with it for a but but decided to stick with using Daz models as the Metahumans felt a little too lifelike and I still wanted a bit of a doll-like quality if that makes sense. It also just felt like I would have to do more work to customize the Metahumans.

Getting the character playable

Before I started creating characters I was also looking into gamelay mechanics mainly around creating and triggering cutscenes.

I then went on to trying to get the character playable. which was quite easy as I was able to retarget the default third person mannequinn animation onto my imported model (Thank you YouTube <3) However there were still slight issues…

There was an easy fix for this though. Always watch tutorials all the way through

From this test I learned a lot but came across issues I really wanted to fix. The main thing was the fact that due to the heels on the character her feet were deformed

The hair was also looking like playdough 🙁 although she’s bald becuase you have more control and can add hair physics if the hair is added as a seperate entity!

I went back into Daz to redo the character once again and was very pleased with the results. I really wanted her to feel sexy but I also didn’t want to sexualise her if that makes sense? I find this will most likely a personal thing for players again I feel like sucker punch has a nice balance of characters that are sexy but don’t feel sexualised even in the context of the film and I was also thinking a lot about a lot of the dancers I am around who do the most insane things in stilettos and skimpy outfits but the environment never feels sexualised even if the vibe is meant to be sexy… very nuanced conversation, I think

I then went on to import this model into Unreal

It took me an embarassingly long time to figure out why she looked so different and long story short there isn’t a way to export the modified textures into Unreal so I just had to play around with the nodes and shaders in unreal as well to get it looking close to the original.

After hours of searching I also figured out how to fix the issues with the deformed heels feet. This involved modifying the bones in the original mannequinn model to raise its heels.

The last piece of the puzzle was hairr. Thankfully someone created a Blender that let’s you convert the playdough hair into hair that looks a lot more like hair in Unreal and Blender.

This process went super smoothly! I played with the colours (still haven’t figured out how to get the ombre effect) but it was quite late and I was tired lol but overall I was happy with the results.

I’ve settled on the plot for my visual novel!!!! The synopsis currently revolves around an AI fembot who begins to murder the men she is supposed to serve.
I really want it to be like a super-insane revenge plot in a vein similar to Kill Bill. I’ve begun to fill out the project report, and I’ve been watching tutorials trying to figure out core gameplay mechanics and such.

I’ve created some mood boards I already had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted the aesthetics to look like but it helped clarify the vision even further and helped me think more about character appearance, which I hadn’t really thought about that much

There’s still so much more concept development I need to do but I think I’ll start experimenting in UE5 and Blender and gathering assets while developing the story.

Feeling a little all over the place but hopefully it will get better

This was quite a productive week!
I started working on things for time management!
I set up a Gantt chart using notion! Since Notion is a generally useful productivity tool, I thought it’d be smart to do it there, as I’d also be able to see my tasks for this project alongside my other day-to-day activities.

I have the main blocks of work I need to get done in the actual Gantt view but underneath the main goals, I also have the specific tasks I need to get done and I can mark the progress which my brain loves.

There’s also a board view, and I can move tasks over, so if I can finalise a name, for example, I will be able to move it from not started to done.

I also have more daily checklists of things I need to remember to do like blog lol or fill out the project report!

Sarah helping me set goals for each week has also been really helpful in giving me structure and ensuring I actually do things and I again can just add them to my Notion dashboard.

I’m loving this system and I think it will really help me stay engaged and accountable.

I’m currently more clear on how I want my idea to be presented than what I want it to be.
I am considering making a digital/virtual film or a more interactive video game utilizing Blender and UE5.

In terms of subject matter, I’m thinking I could maybe build upon ideas I explored for my Art and AI projects.

Themes and aesthetics I’m interested in:

• Feminism
• gender roles
• cyberpunk
• dystopia
• digital spaces
• deep fakes
• the gendered nature of AI
• the male gaze
• the idea of objectification
• trad wife romanticism
• justice and revenge
• beauty standards
• imagination
• utopia

Video embedding isn’t working but some of the work I did for reference:

AI women and the men that love them:
Video Essay

MYReality – Generate the world of your dreams:
MYReality_Ad.mp4

The Ugly Filter:

?????????