March 2020
Collaborators | Mari Calderón and Steven Wyks
The user stands on a barren planet, fires burning all around, with mechanical sprinklers keeping most of the flames at bay. Behind the user towers a city in the distance, surrounded by a dome. A leader calls upon the user to use their powers to fight the fires and repair a sprinkler that has broken. Using their abilities as the designated protector, the user can fire projectiles from their hands to extinguish the fires and clear a path to the sprinkler. Reaching it, the sprinkler reactivates, and the leader congratulates them. In short, the user firefights on a different planet.
Process
Challenged with designing a meaningful everyday interaction in an alternate reality, the team started by exploring what everyday roles might look like in realities unlike our own.
Designing for a VR environment, we drew up 360-degree storyboards for several ideas before developing the planetary firefighter character.
With a narrative and interactions to work on, we began developing the experience in Unity.
Contribution
My main contributions to the project were:
- Developing narratives off of brainstormed roles
- Advising the Unity development of intuitive interactions
- Creating and implementing the endless fire propagation and firefighting system:
