Round 2:
Operation Minefield
(Magic Leap)
Role:
Sound Designer, Producer
Total Dev Time:
2 Weeks
Operation Minefield is a augmented reality top-down Magic Leap game. The player takes the role as a pilot as they guide robots that crash landed in the desert to the nearest extraction point. The player uses their Magic Leap remote as a pointer to guide the robots in the sand.
OVERVIEW
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Top-down Navigation
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Made with Unity
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1 - 2 minute AR experience
MY CONTRIBUTION
Design
Ideation | Feedback & Iteration | Level Design | Naive Playtesting
Every BVW project comes with a forced constraint.
For this project we had the constraint of designing a game where a naive guest can pick it up without direct instruction of how the game works.
During the early stages of the project, we had to figure out the general layout of where mines were placed. I did the level designs on paper. We later found, due to time constraints, that it would be simpler to just randomize the minefield. The design for the general layout of the game was used however.
For this project specifically, we had to test our project with naive playtesters, who were not familiar with the platform, to make sure we were designing something self-explanatory. This meant we had a wide variety of playtesters from various backgrounds play the game. Examples include friends that were not in the grad program, family, and faculty that were not apart of this class.
Production
Agile | Task Delegation | Stand-Up Meetings
The way I ran production was similar to an Agile work flow. For task organization, I used a Trello board with deadlines in accordance to project deadlines. I also implemented daily stand up meetings to keep status with my teammates.
Here is an example of meeting notes that later turned into tasks on the Trello board.
Art
Vector Artwork | Video Editing | Spritework | Illustration
Vector Artwork:
The title logo itself was made using Inkscape.
Video Editing:
I not only made the sfx, voice acting, and art assets for the start video, but I also edited them all in Adobe Premiere.
Spritework/Illustration:
All the assets made for the video were made in Paint.net.
Sound Design
Sound Design | Music Composition | Vocal Recording & Treatment
Music Composition:
For this project I was given the challenge by my instructor to combine my love for 8-bit music with my composition skill in FL Studio. The result is a somber, but sad slog through a desert.
Sound Design:
In this class we are given a sound library for use of our base sounds. For this project, I went for layering a multitude of library sounds to help fill that hard sci-fi world we were going for.
The biggest challenge on this project was making sound effects for the ship taking off at the end. This was due to the fact that the sound needed to be tightly timed to the visuals. I ended up using Adobe Premiere, synths, and a lot of audio layering to achieve the idea of frantic ship taking off. This is the video I was given to match the audio to and my resultant audio is on the video.
Vocal Recording and Treatment:
For this project, I had to do the voice work myself. All the voice-over was clipped, balanced, edited, and filtered in Audacity. I also added filters to make it sound more like a radio.