Quick update about how I’ve changed my environment. For no real reason, I’ve been reading a lot of spooky stories lately. That reminded me of the bonfires I used to have as a kid back at my parents’ house, and I realized that, extending from the empty bus stop I built last week, I wanted to make some sort of ambient bonfire environment where people can tell ghost stories. So, what I did was create a forest and a bonfire element. People spawn at the bus stop, and then get guided to the bonfire in the forest. When they’re there, they can tell spooky stories or look at the night sky or such.
Testing:
I had ~6 or 7 people come through the space over the course of a few hours. There were never more than three people on at once, unfortunately. People seemed to appreciate the ambient noise I put in, which is a summer night cricket kind of sound file, and the atmosphere as a whole was well received. The controls, which I hadn’t modified at all, received some criticism from people who thought they were unintuitive, so I think I might need to go back and revise how people navigate.
Going forward I’d like to work on the lighting, just to make it more nuanced if possible, and possibly have some other stuff to explore in the forest besides just the bonfire. I also tried to set up spatialized sound around the bonfire so that people could hear it crackling, but that ended up not working (another thing I’ll have to look into).
