{"60928":{"#nid":"60928","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Georgia Tech Gaming Students Design Nightmares","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ENightmares have inspired everything from paintings to novels, and now a group of Georgia Tech students has turned to nightmares for inspiration for a new video game they\u0027ve created called, what else, Nightmares.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Flash-based game was created as part of the Game Design as Cultural Practice class, taught by Celia Pearce, assistant professor in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and director of the Experimental Game Lab. The design team is made up of undergraduate students Andrea Benavides, Harrison Leach and Nic Vasconcellos, with the initial concept being the brain-child of Vasconcellos.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe game is basically a kid running through his nightmares, fighting off things as he\u2019s trying to wake up,\u201d said Vasconcellos.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EA platformer that features a protagonist trying to escape from his dream world, the game begins with the character visible only by a small circle of light that envelopes him. As time passes or the character hits a nightmare creature, such as an evil dust bunny or a shadow blob, the window of visibility shrinks, making it more difficult to navigate the board. The only way to increase visibility is to capture small points of light, known as lumens, which are sprinkled throughout the world.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe wanted to create something that illustrates an actual aspect of dreaming, which is becoming more aware in your dream, so we decided to represent the concept of lucid dreaming. We tried to build our mechanic based off that idea,\u201d said Leach. \u201cThe constant shrinking of the player\u2019s vision in the game world represents how a person slips from lucidity in a real dream. The circle that determines the player\u2019s level of vision gets smaller over time as he fails to collect lumens. As lumens are collected, the circle grows in size, which metaphorically represents an increase in lucidity.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u201cThe biggest challenge of the game is the visibility. You\u2019re surrounded by darkness and you don\u2019t really know what\u2019s coming up on either side. It\u2019s okay if you\u2019re doing well, but if you\u2019ve been hurt a couple of times, it gets pretty freaky,\u201d added Vasconcellos.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EA fascinating feature of Nightmares is the mood created by the music and sound effects accompanying the game. Carter and Leach recorded the music that shapes the player\u2019s experience in a studio on campus. \u201cWe wanted to texture the game world with sounds of a dreamy timbre,\u201d comments Leach. \u201cIn addition, we tried to integrate the sound effects in a way that seems emergently musical.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnother interesting aspect of the game is that at the early stages, the board actually tells you how to play by giving you diagrams, drawn on the background, of the key strokes needed to accomplish new tasks.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022I gave them a number of constraints in the class\u2014no killing, no medieval fantasy, alien invasion, and no post-apocalyptic scenarios,\u201d explained Pearce.\u0026nbsp; \u201cI also instruct them to create games that someone other than just themselves would like. We spend a great deal of time in class talking about how \u2018fun\u2019 is different for different people. This is a pretty simple construct, but it\u0027s an eye-opener for a lot of the students. The result is that they come up with some really creative and innovative projects in the class.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe group recently submitted Nightmares to the International Festival of Independent Games, IndieCade (\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.indiecade.com\/\u0022\u003Ehttp:\/\/www.indiecade.com\/\u003C\/a\u003E).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBenavides and Vasconcellos went to Scotland this summer to participate in Dare to Be Digital, the United Kingdom\u2019s premier video game design competition held at the University of Abertay.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAll five students are seniors in Tech\u2019s computational media program, a joint undergraduate degree between the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and the College of Computing.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech students has turned to nightmares for inspiration for a new video game they\u0027ve created called, what else, Nightmares.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Georgia Tech students has turned to nightmares for inspiration for a new video game they\u0027ve created called, what else, Nightmares."}],"uid":"27310","created_gmt":"2010-09-13 09:46:34","changed_gmt":"2022-05-26 17:09:36","author":"David Terraso","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2010-09-13T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2010-09-13T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"60929":{"id":"60929","type":"image","title":"Nightmares","body":null,"created":"1449176296","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:58:16","changed":"1475894531","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:42:11","alt":"Nightmares","file":{"fid":"191238","name":"Nightmares6.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/Nightmares6_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/Nightmares6_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":67829,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/Nightmares6_0.jpg?itok=cHoC1NqI"}}},"media_ids":["60929"],"groups":[{"id":"1220","name":"Digital Lounge"}],"categories":[{"id":"143","name":"Digital Media and Entertainment"}],"keywords":[{"id":"2214","name":"Celia"},{"id":"9866","name":"flash"},{"id":"198","name":"game"},{"id":"10627","name":"nightmares"},{"id":"1538","name":"pearce"},{"id":"3217","name":"video game"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations - Laura Diamond\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["david.terraso@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}