Rising Suns is a walking simulator in which you play an American journalist and photographer that witnessed the Japanese - Chinese battle in Shanghai, 1937. In this game you play through the foggy memories of the battle trying to make sense of what's going on in the battlefield. The story is told through the soundscape, voiceover narrative and through the photographs that you go taking around the conflict area.

 

This was a semester-long project developed by me (Maria Saint Martin), Bruce Lan, and Allen Yu, for the MFA in Game Design, New York University. The music was made by Nature Zhang, who is also part of the NYU family.

 

When the game is loaded PRESS "R" to start the game. Play with WASD keys and mouse.

 

Standalone build for PC. Play with mouse and keyboard.

We knew from the beginning that this game was going to take place in this specific war so for the visual development of this game we took inspiration from Japanese and Chinese traditional art, they both use ink widely throughout their paintings. We also knew that we wanted to give it a more contemporary look so we turned to comics and specifically games based on comics, specially the recent Walking Dead and The Wolf Among us, and from the videogame realm, Okami.

We started by creating mood boards of what we were aiming for.

We loved the idea of stylized characters, but in the end we wanted a more serious look, so we stayed with more realistic proportions.

These were made for the purpose of clearly differentiating both teams at first glance. They were specifically made in black and white to test the silhouette difference.

This is quick concept art for another possible type of playable character: a messenger. She would not have any weapons, nor participate in the battlefield, instead she would go around delivering packages and collecting ammo for a particular team.

This is concept art for the overall look of the environments. We decided to do a cell shaded type of look in which the ink strokes would be visible through the buildings and the rest of the props. All the environment would be black and white with red highlights and some colored props. In the end these colored elements noticeable show the player the areas he can interact with.

The development of this game was rocky to say the least. We started with the idea of creating a multiplayer, capture the flag, battle arena using the Unreal 3 engine. This arena would take place in this battle and would feature some important events from this historical battle.

 

After some work was done we changed the concept to go more in tune with our design goal, which contained an anti-war tone. Through more critical design thinking and realist time frames, we decided to get rid entirely of any bots or animated 3D characters for that matter. Being only a team of three enrolled in a full time master's degree, we had time and work constraints we had to deal with. Thanks to these constraints we were able to develop a much more interesting and original concept than our previous idea.

 

In this new game, you would be shooting a camera, not a gun. This goes more in tune with our design objectives.

Since this game is part of a dream, you are unable to see very far during the first minutes. All is foggy, nevertheless the fog starts to clear out as you start taking more pictures. This reflects that your memory gets clearer and clearer with every location you visit.

The duration of the game is divided in three day and night cycles. This particular battle lasted three days in reality, so we put a timeframe in the game of "three days" in which you had the opportunity to collect 20 different photographs. You don't have to collect all photos, in fact you don't have to collect even one for the game to end. Although, we do have different endings depending on which photographs and how many you collected.

Red color indicates interactive spots where you take pictures. By taking a picture in one of those spots you collect an actual picture of the war taken during that time. This also includes a small caption detailing the events that were going on at that time and place.

The 3D models were made in Maya and the textures were made in Mudbox with some retouches in Photoshop. We didn't use normal maps for this project and all models are very low poly.

The Unreal Engine allowed us to create great environmental mood through lighting and post-processing effects.

Different areas located throughout the map feature different animations and sound effects that also include moving props, paths closing and doorways shutting in front or behind you.

At the end you have the opportunity to review all the pictures you took in detail. The photographs you didn't find will be blurry and will have no text.

As noted before, the end story will change with the pictures you took. If you took more Chinese oriented photographs the end report will be more pro-chinese, the same can happen with Japanese photographs. We also have a more neutral report and a special one for when you don't take any pictures at all.

 

The idea behind this is that the world was seeing the war through the eyes of reporters experiencing the battle themselves. The point of view of external spectators is molded by those who are inside the battle and may be biased towards one side. But in the end, with war, everyone loses.

We created a facebook page that features some of our art and progress through the semester.