môo-sîn-á

魔神仔

A VR horror game featured Taiwan’s ancient ghosts

Medium : Unity3D, Visual Studio, Maya, Blender, SteamVR, Audacity

môo-sîn-á 魔神仔

“môo-sîn-á”, which means “ghost” in Taiwanese language, is a VR horror game created for my final project of Digital Content. In this game, we aim to remind people of Taiwan’s ancient ghosts and traditional custom, which were almost unknown to most people nowadays.

Collaborate with

Project Manager│陳囿伊

2D Artist│洪詩惟

3D Artist│徐子涵、梁芸瑄、陳明頤

Development│李東炳、顏欣媛、張志綺

My Role

Flowchart design

Development

Sound editing

Overview

After we decided our topic, our project manager would come up with a brief flowchart and then discussed with the rest of us about it to finalize the details.

The game is mainly divided into 3 parts. In the first part, the player needs to gain some clues by worshipping the village god to unlock the next part.

Second, the player will be indicated to explore in a haunted house, trying to find the offerings that the village god requires.

After the player brings the offerings to the village god, the third part will be unlocked and will take the player to their “home”, another haunted house. In the “home”, the player needs to practice exorcism while at the same time avoiding the ghost attack. Only the exorcism be completed will the player complete the game.

UI Design

Character : A 2D image will be first created as a prototype. Second, the 3D artists will build the 3D models based on the prototype, using Maya, Zbrush and Marvelous Designer.

* the 2D image of the village god, created by 洪詩惟

* the 3D model of the village god, created by 徐子涵

Scenes : Most of the architectures and scenes refer to Taiwan’s traditional rural area, created by Maya, Substance Painter and some free materials found in Unity Assets Store.

1/4

Technique

The development team will throw the 3D models into Unity and make them functionable by Visual Studio.

To make the game available in VR system, we imported SteamVR into our Unity project and connected with Vive Cosmos.

* HTC Vive Cosmos

My part

Bamboo slip interaction

I helped to animate and control the bamboo slip, the inventory system in our game. The bamboo slip movement is controlled by the player’s camera, so that the slip can be seen by the player all-around and move with the player.

Pouring effect

To cast out the ghost in this game, the player needs to practice exorcism, pouring mixed salt and rice into three different bowls hidden in the “home” of the third part. Here are my steps :

Using particle system to simulate the mixed salt and rice.
Making the particles collisionable by detecting the tilting angle of the container.
Animating the surface of the mixed salt and rice in the bowl when the particles collide with it

Firecracker attack

Another way to cast out the ghost is to attack it by firecrackers, a traditional Chinese exorcism. I used particle system to create the spark and the smoke effect. Second, I commended the firecracker to be determined as an attack when it collides with the ghost, or being closed enough to the ghost when it explodes.

Candles

The number of the candles represents how many health points the player has. Each player will be given 3 health points, and will lose 1 point when being attacked by the ghost. I created the candle light first by illustrating the 2D sprite on Photoshop, and then imported the sprite into particle system to simulate the burning effect.

Sound effect

Most of the sound effect materials were found in <freesound>, and later edited by Audacity.