D I A S P O R A PREPRODUCTION DOCUMENT OF A GAME ABOUT RETURNING HOME
by VIRAT TIWARI
The gulf diaspora gives us an interesting perspective into the lives of those living in the gulf. The lucrative salaries and the thought of having a better future for their loved ones is what lures a lot of hard-working migrants. But the catch is the humiliation and the abuse they have to endure to be able to realize these dreams. This project was my 7th semester project and we were supposed to create a pre production document for an animation film or related deliverables. My story is inspired by my visit to the Thiruvananthapuram (erstwhile Trivandrum) airport, the arrival terminal was jampacked, people were waiting for hours to see their loved ones once again after years. I saw a toddler reuniting with his mother, but he had forgotten her altogether. I could see the happiness on her face but her kid was clueless as to who she was. This was quite an emotional moment. I had recently adopted a 3-week old kitten before having to relocate to Thiruvananthapuram for a month and I just wondered if my kitten would remember me when I return home?
My kitten listening to the frequencies of my guitar, this was when his eyes weren’t even developed.
I saw this poster at the hand wash in the cafeteria of the airport while I was waiting and this in combination with the woman and toddler incident really sparked the idea of this story. I could feel a personal connection to this story. During the course of my research, I recently read about the discrimination and ill-treatment faced by Gulf migrants and I strongly felt to incorporate it.
People spend years away from their families to provide for a better future for those they love and care about. They work in hazardous conditions just to ensure that their offspring won’t have to go through what they have. But this leads to a tremendous toll on their mental and physical health. Their offsprings sometimes don’t even remember them when they return back, which is really heartbreaking.
We were sent to Thiruvananthapuram by the college to find a local issue and create a story for pre production of an animation related medium. Most of my classmates settled on various different local issues around Kerala and decided to make pre production documents for animated films. I decided to create a story for an interactable animation which could also be turned into a game.
SETTING The story is set in a space station that is orbiting the earth. In alternate future earth is almost out of fossil fuels, the new fuels discovered produce a lot of pollution and radiation and make it impossible to live there. The ones who could afford started leaving the planet in search of newer inhabitable planets. Meanwhile, big corporations collaborated and created a gigantic space station orbiting the earth. This space station is supposed to emulate a cleaner earth meanwhile deep space explorers look for other planets to colonize. The station is divided into multiple decks and people living from top to bottom decks depicts their financial status. The topmost level is a megacity with greenery and skyscrapers covered with a force shield that traps a clear atmosphere and ideal conditions for existence. The middle deck is inhabited by the crew of the space station. The bottom decks are where all the actual workforce of the city lives. Without them, the top deck would cease to exist. But this group of people is forbidden to stay on the top or interact with those who live there. They are only supposed to go there and work then return to their quarters.
Some procedurally generated space station shapes in blender for quick iteration.
PLOT The story follows a nameless character who is looking at earth from a huge window of a space station. The character simply called “player” is reminiscing his time on earth with his family. Suddenly we see a small spaceship go across the screen and then the space station’s automated defence system shoots down the ship. The player looks at this and then decides that it’s enough and wants to take his chances and go back to his home where his family is. He sees a restricted access door on his right that was left open by mistake by a security guard, who wnet away for a small break. The player quickly sneaks inside and through the console window sees a small spaceship at the docking station. Intrigued, the player wonders if he could use that to escape. There is no other way and the player must quickly decide if he wants to do this before the guard comes back. The player thinks for a while but then quickly proceeds towards the spaceship. The ship is small and can only take one passenger. This is perfect for the player, the size may also help the player get past the defence system as he boards the ship. The spaceship console has various blinking lights and few buttons, the player somehow confused knows exactly which buttons to push. The player then pulls the throttle stick, soon enough the player leaves the docking station and ejects from the space station. This cuts to a cutscene of the turrets’ light blinking and the turrets aiming at the ship. The player who was previously unaware of this gets alerted by the lock on when the lights turn red and the console flashes a warning of an incoming projectile and starts beeping. The player panics and starts pushing buttons in anticipation in order to activate the counter measures but fails to do so as the beeping and flashing increases its pace and then the projectile hits the ship vaporising it and the player instantly. *FADE TO BLACK* We hear a train horn and an industrial train shows up at the platform. Player sighs and looks at the security door on the right and thinks, maybe tomorrow and then quickly boards the crowded train.
DEVELOPMENT Since we only had 4 months to wrap the story and pre-production so I thought about using procedural generation as a possible method of generating multiple props that could be used for quickly establishing a look and feel of the project. But ultimately settled on hand crafted models for a more personalized look The reason to use space and future as a setting was made to avoid any biased/ideological approach thereby making it unbiased & neutral, as it would also give me enough freedom to work with. My plan was to quickly iterate through visually and narratively and then at the end of the project have a proof of concept ready in a game engine with real time rendering. The game engine I choose early on was unity but then later changed that to unreal engine 4.
MOODBOARD
KEYWORDS : SCI-FI GRUNGY, CRAMPED UP, FUTURISTIC, INDUSTRIAL SOURCE : VARIOUS ARTISTS ON THE INTERNET
MOODBOARD
Screenshots from the game NO MAN’S SKY by HELLO GAMES
Screenshots from the game WOLFENSTEIN : THE NEW ORDER by MACHINEGAMES
Screenshots from the game DELIVER US THE MOON by KEOKEN INTERACTIVE
STORY BOARD
Initial Storyboard
CONCEPT ART
Player Looking at earth through a huge glass window.
Space Station floating above earth.
Player’s ship heading towards Earth.
First person view of the player’s ship’s cockpit.
MODELS
Guard Model Iteration 1
Guard Model Iteration 2
Space Craft Iteration 1
Space Craft Iteration 2
LEVEL DESIGN The plan was to make a set of levels that could be interconnected as the game progresses. I divided the world into 3 different floors and each floor would be a part of different section of the story.
Top views of two seperate levels
Quick iterations of the above levels in 3D
PROOF OF CONCEPT
Screenshots of the game running on Unity Engine, Made using free assets.
RENDERED CUTSCENES