Research
Vaporwave aesthetic – Originally a musical aesthetic, originating with the album of the same name by Japanese artist Macintosh Plus. Vaporwave also encompasses numerous digital art projects that mimic old technologies and styles. This can include pixelated images, vintage fonts, and other elements that create a nostalgic atmosphere.
The visuals are characterized by unnatural lighting, bright neon colors, and recurring elements of retro-futurism, where modern culture blends with a sense of the fantastical. This project’s core element was established back in GDD.
Superliminal is a spatial puzzle game where the player must navigate a specific location and navigate their way to the exit using the game’s unique mechanics.
The plot revolves around a psychotherapy session at a clinic using the latest Somnasculpt technology. The patient is put to sleep and undergoes various manipulations during sleep, creating different situations that lead them to rethink their lives. The game is well-described as a narrative tied to dreams (which is also important for this project), but it also offers many unusual experiments with perspective and scale.
The visuals of something familiar within unusual circumstances were something I tried to draw from this game in creating our visuals. It also initially provided significant inspiration for the mechanics, but all concepts remained on paper due to limited time and technical knowledge.
Fragments of Euclid is another game that also explores the concept of space. It’s not a mathematically precise depiction of the concept of non-Euclidean geometry, but rather an artistic interpretation and reference to the famous works of Maurits Cornelis Escher. While working on the game, studying her inspired me to create a shader for it.
References
The game’s main theme was swimming pools. In addition to the references provided by the author of the original GDD, I created a collection to explore possible visual options that simulate the liminality of space through abandonment and emptiness.
This park inspired the level’s core structure—the main room. The unusual roof with its oppressive effect complements the concept of a liminal space, which ties in well with the dream narrative, and the unusual shape of the room provides a nice highlight for the level.
The Basilica Cistern in Turkey inspired the second room on this project. The columns submerged in water, beautiful lighting, and the concept itself create a contrast with the aesthetics of the pools and complement them beautifully.
This board is a collection of all the materials that were planned to be implemented in the game.
Modeling
The scene’s main element is the unusual shape of the walls and roof of the building the player occupies. The idea for this space stemmed from the references above and was carried through all design iterations, changing only slightly. Attached below are the thoughts on the visuals and the software work on the assets.
asset set up for later exporting to UE5
Information on all software used in the game’s creation:
- Unreal Engine 5 (free) – the main engine used for development
- Blender (free) – the main modeling software
- Rizom UV (student license) – UV unwrap software
- Substance Designer (student license) – procedural texturing software
Shader work
overall look
The entire shader is presented as a final post-process material that can be selectively applied to specific objects. The first block (image above) is a mixture of a paper-simulating filter (noise node), a tone shader separating shadows and highlights, and attributes controlling shader strength.
The next shader block is responsible for normal and polygon outlines. The Stencil add-on was used to account for situations where lines might overlap, as well as flexible parameters for editing outline strength and intensity.
The very last block “assembles” everything together and subtracts the sky height from the overall result to prevent shader overlap with the skybox. Attributes were also added so that the post-processing process only applies to specific models, rather than the entire scene, to optimize shader performance.
Final post process instance, fully adjustable, including colours of outline, shadow and light.
Final visual
Git Hub repository with the project to acess: https://github.com/wangyuheng320-cpu/Daydram-final
Educational materials that were mainly used during production:
Almost all assets were created by hand, except for the model of one prop, which was purchased for free on Sketchfab.
This page was written by Kamilla .