Technologies: Pre-Simulator Experience

• Platform: Windows

• Development Period: October — December 2022

• My Roles: Narrative Designer, Systems Designer, UI Designer

Art:
Isabella King

Programming:
Michael Bowen, Dillon Drummond

Documentation

As the sole designer on the team, I was responsible for relevant design documentation such as the Game Design Document and Visual Design Document (above), each of which underwent substantial revisions as development went on. Google Docs was the primary platform for documentation since due to its shareability and versatility, but the VDD warranted the use of Adobe Illustrator, for the purpose of creating something eye-catching and intuitive. The team and I also conducted substantial brainstorming and other planning on whiteboards (below), which we then photographed for future reference.

Leadership

The pre-sim team was too small to warrant the distribution of  formal lead roles, but as the only designer it was important to champion my areas of expertise and work closely with my teammates of other disciplines. During team interactions with the clients, I was responsible for making presentations in Google Slides, and delivering them verbally during our arranged meetings.

Narrative Design

At no point was I under the impression that this prototype would prominently involve a story, but as a narrative designer I wanted to take advantage of my expertise in that area to whatever extent bolstered the project. In particular, I held that adding some form of narrative could help the experience be more memorable. For the final version of the prototype, I wrote out a Tutorial Script that maps to the sequence of events the player experiences. In addition to supplementing each step with more information on how ALIA takes flight, it would have also provided an element of casual entertainment and comfort. While this element was ultimately not included in the prototype as it stands, future creation and implementation would be eased if the project ever moves forward.

Research

Near the start of the development process, the rest of team and I were given some general direction for where to take our prototyping, but left us with a wide berth to research potential approaches to the project, including the major pillars of gameplay and details we believed would help augment the prototype's prospective role as a teaching tool about ALIA. In a Research Document, I explored a variety of possibilities for what we could create on both a specific and broad scale; discrete mechanics and criteria that would conduce the best experience, as well as larger game concepts with a variety of listed pros and cons.

Systems Design

This prototype was conceived of as being experienced by a wide variety of people; essentially any guest of BETA Technologies. As such, it quickly became apparent the accessibility was a vital pillar of the gameplay. As such, I gravitated toward very simple control schemes, and avoided explicitly 3D spaces like one would find in a simulator like X-Plane. What we needed was a tight experience that showed how ALIA does what it does as an innovative VTOL aircraft. What we settled on was a top-down environment, where the player has a measure of freedom to move around, but is still kept in place by a gentle "soft" invisible wall that gradually halts the player's movement as they move beyond the edges of the play space and gently pushes them back towards its center. Even more importantly, the top view provides players with an excellent view of ALIA's propellers, which are foundational to the VTOL flight we were tasked with featuring.

UI Design

While UI demands fluctuated considerably in nature as development saw the rise and fall of several wildly different prototype concepts, some of my UI work can be seen in the final product. First is the concept of the checklist element that helps the player navigate the tutorial, as well as the ALIA tutorial pictograms I made in Adobe Illustrator (below), which help the player visualize the meaning of the actions they are being told to perform by the tutorial checklist. To fit properly inside the checklist, I had to ensure that all of the pictograms fit inside the same approximate dimensions as each other.