A Simulation | Lacuna

WHAT IS LACUNA?

LACUNA is a simulation about schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder, which means “split mind”. It effects severely the way a person thinks, acts and their behaviour in general. There’s not a known cause and there is also not a known cure, just medication that helps people live and cope with it, for the rest of their lives.

Take into consideration this is not an accurate representation of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is different from person to person so it's hard to portray correctly as there is not only one experience. Some people may experience auditory hallucinations, others may not. Others may experience visual hallucinations but then again, it might not be common to everybody else. Everybody has their own personal experience with schizophrenia, even if they have the same symptoms.

In this simulation the player is invited to experience some of the symptoms, to raise awareness to the disorder and understand just a little bit how someone who lives with it feels. While it may feel a little bit exaggerated, understand that you are only experiencing this for a few minutes, while people who live with the disorder experience it all the time if not properly medicated.

About

ABOUT THE PROJECT

We were challenged to make a project around the binomials mind/body, body/space and inner world/outer world.

After some research to better understand them, I decided I wanted to make my project around the mind/body binomial. Descartes believed that the mind was not a physical substance and therefore was distinguished from the brain. The binomial mind/body says that mental phenomenons are not physical and that the mind and body are distinct and separate.

So I wondered what would happen if the mind and the body came into conflict. That led me to mental disorders. After some more research I decided that I wanted to represent schizophrenia, since it's a disorder that is often misunderstood and often associated to negative feelings.

The binomial also talked about how mental phenomenons weren't physical, but I wanted to try and find a way to represent them visually. I wanted to physically represent the intangible. I came to the conclusion that the best way to do that was through a simulation. Not forgetting about the mind/body conflict and the mental disorders and schizophrenia, I wanted to create an ambient to embody the mind of somebody with the disorder. I wanted to create an immersive simulation, representing some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, where the player would be able to experience what it was like living like that. But how would I go about that? How do you represent the mind of somebody? After some thinking I came up with bedrooms. Because our bedrooms are where we most feel like ourselves, our "safe space". But for somebody with a disorder like that, how safe can they really be? If you're not properly medicated, being in your bedroom alone must feel like a nightmare.

So I started to properly research schizophrenia, find more about the disorder, it's symptoms, what causes it, if there's a cure. But I was only looking at the more analytical side of things. The medical side. And while it did help me understand the disorder better, I needed to get more personal. So I started researching and collecting real testimonies of people who lived with schizophrenia. How their life was like. What they heard. What they saw. How they felt. And while I knew I wouldn't be able to properly depict it, I wanted to try and be more or less accurate, so that the player would at least get an idea of what it was like living like this.

From the medical research and personal testimonies, I came up with a plan. A corridor, with four doors. Behind each door, a room, representing a different symptom of the disorder. It would start small, just a normal peaceful room. The next one would introduce paranoia. Then the next one you would hear voices talking to you. And in the final room, you would see things. The point was to keep adding up the symptoms so that the last room would be the most overwhelming one.

And that's how Lacuna started. From that point on, it was time to start turning things real.

Screenshots

PROCESS

I first started by writing things down: my initial idea, some notes on the binomials, research done on schizophrenia, what I could do in each room, what to animate, what sounds to have, etc. I sketched out some initial concepts of the rooms, of the "monsters" and the vibe I wanted the rooms to have, deciding then what each room would represent and what it would entail.

After that I started modelling some basic assets on Autodesk Maya, furniture and the likes, trying out the layout and colours, since I wanted each room to have a different look. Two of my biggest inspirations for Lacuna were Gris and Sea of Solitude. Like Gris, as you move along the rooms the colours start to change, going from bright to dark. The last room particularly was more influenced by Sea of Solitude, with the contrast of bright glowing orange against the dark of everything else. I wanted to add my personal touch though, and since my illustrations are marked by textures, I also wanted to add that to my 3D models.

Once I had the basic furniture modelled it was time to move on to Unreal Engine, which I got to admit, was a struggle - at least in the beginning.

Since I had never used Unreal before and having little to no knowledge with coding, I leaned heavily on Youtube videos and forums to get the answers I needed and learn how to do what I wanted to do. In the early phases I still switched between Unreal and Maya, fixing up some of the assets and adding new ones.

Then it was just assemble everything together, creating the rooms, adding the different textures, adding lights, adding blueprints for the animations of the door, the shadow moving, the flickering lights and other elements. Creating the mechanics and interactions I needed for the game to work, like which buttons to press for the character to walk and open up doors and pick up objects. This was the hardest part and took a lot of trial and error to get everything to work properly.

I feel like one the most important elements was the sound. I wanted my project to be as immersive as possible. Because each room would represent a different symptom, the ambient sound also had to reflect that. So I gathered some sounds from free libraries like Freesounds and Soundly and created the sound compositions on Audition. I wanted the player to feel where the sound was coming from. I wanted him to able to tell "there's someone walking around me" or "that rat is moving from left to right". I wanted the sound to be as real as possible.

After I added the sound compositions to my project on Unreal it was like it added another dimension to it. I feel like it really added a whole other experience.

Once all of that was done, it was just tweaking some stuff here and there, making some final adjustments, designing and making a functional menu and packaging the game for testing.

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