Ghoster Coaster

A Location Based Entertainment (LBE) CAVE experience through a haunted cave. You should be fine so long as you mind the red spirits.

Overview

Time Frame: 1 Week

Date: December 2021

Team Size: 10

Team Members: Caitlyn Lenhoff, Lori Kipp,

Weilin Yuan, Amber Griffith, Jingyuan Kang,
Cleo Ko, Sandra Liu, Hannah Baxter,
Maria Laura Miribelli, Eliza Ye

Links: ETC Festival Livestream (Time 2:28:00)

Role: Gameplay designer, Experience design, gameplay programmer

Platform: CAVE, Vive Controllers

Tools: Unity

Keywords: CAVE, Multiplayer, LBE

Description:

A rollercoaster-esque mine experience game where you use a flashlight to dissipate evil spirits who are trying to stop your cart from making it to the end. This experience was developed In the CAVE, a location based experience where the game is projected onto screen walls around the viewer. This CAVE also includes a moving floor platform and theatrical lighting options. I, along with nine other individuals, designed the game for CMU ETC's Building Virtual World's course, specifically for the ETC Fall Festival 2021. For the livestream, we used one guest as to not block the entire view, however, the experience can actually have two players at a time, with room for one more person to experience it at a time if they do not wish to interact with the scene and kill spirits.

Duties and Personal Contributions:

Designed and implemented the Ghosts
Designed and implemented the flashlight attacks
Designed and implemented the puppeteering system run by the host
Worked with sound design to incorporate the music and SFX.

Process

The Red Spirits

This project was designed to be a mix of two team's initial projects in order to be presented at festival. As such, we did not have time to incorporate any new and elaborate mechanics, so I designed and implemented the red spirits, based off of the use of Clementine, the friendly spirit orb, that was used in one of the base projects.

We first had ominous red orbs floating around that would be dispersed with the wave of a flashlight, but they were not noticeable enough, so the orbs were changed into actual specters.

I also added a vfx particle effect when they blew up to make it look more like the light made them disperse, rather than they just disappeared.

The Giant Spirit

One thing that the team agreed on was that we wanted a moment at the end that had a higher amount of intensity than just hitting a bunch of tiny spirits that are floating in the way.

Thus, I designed the giant ghost. Both guests have to continuously slash it with light in order to kill it in a large cacophony of death.

Several changes were made at date after our trailer was produced that allowed guests to see that they were doing damage and the giant spirit would slowly encroach upon the guest the longer they took to defeat it.

The Original

The Original Project

The project before mixing the 'Ghost mine' theme for both team's projects, our project was supposed to be more of a passive viewing experience similar to a virtual version of a ride at Disney, like the Haunted Mansion Ride or It's a Small World ride. The aim was to tell a story of a miner's daughter who tragically died in the mines. The story was inspired by the song "Oh My Darling, Clementine" by Percy Montross (1884).

I was the experience designer and programmer for the original project. I was in charge of most of the behind-the-scenes mechanics.

The project, particularly the cart movement, was still in need of modification before it would be presentable as a finalized product, which is why we as a team had decided not to send it to the showcase at the end of the semester. When our ghost mine ride was accidentally submitted instead of the other team's project, the Clementine Ride was merged with theirs to make more of a haunted ghost-ride experience that would be faster-paced and shorter ride-time so that more people could experience it during the festival timeslot that we were given to showcase it.

Clementine Ride Demo

Behind-The-Scenes Mechanics Demo