#environmental storytelling in the flesh. in our world and our reality and it tells a story of someone who cared about something

[tautokoshannonreid]

week one reading notes

Summary 

Places are made after their stories. Just as place names describe complex, and conflicted, place-making aspirations, so with all marks associated with the marking of places: tracks, the symbolic representation of these in song, dance and poetic speech, indeed all the technologies that join up distances into narratives - they all inscribe the earth's surface with the forms of stories. Of course, these are not the same as the foundational myths of imperial cultures, whose aim is to displace any prior discourse of place-making. They are stories of, and as, journeys: passages in a double sense, constitutionally incomplete because they always await their completion in the act of crossing-over, or meeting, which, of course, is endless. (Paul Carter)

Imperial cultures

Thus, the cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting and imposing a culture, usually that of a politically powerful nation, over a less powerful society; in other words, the cultural hegemony of industrialized or politically and economically influential countries which determine general cultural value

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These can be understood as geo-political issues of space and place. 

changing our relationship to our places is as important as techno-scientific solutions

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But other memories are dark and painful.” Participants were able to recreate detailed childhood landscapes, highlighting “the primacy of place in human experience”  (Schroder, 2006, p. 312).

Place

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The place has the potential to offer alternative storylines about who we are in the places where we live and work in an increasingly globalised world. 

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place functions as a bridge between the local and the global, allowing us to comprehend the ways that global processes, such as climate change, affect local places in particular ways

  It is through placemaking and storytelling that place and identities are known and transformed.

Place studies

 place studies, a subset of cultural studies, offers insights about the relationship between cultures and environments. 

. Place studies emphasises the more-than-human aspects of our places as active participants in our knowledge-making, and explores alternative understandings of our relationship to place. Rose (1996, p. 7)

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for example, reports, that for Australian Indigenous peoples, “Country is a place that gives and receives life. Not just imagined or represented, it is lived in and lived with. … People talk about country in the same way they would talk about a person: they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, worry about country, feel for country, and long for country”. 

spaces and places, place studies offers a conceptual tool for important cultural transformations.

They are in a unique position to articulate what it means to learn about place in the newly emerging global context, “a postcolonial and reflexive contemporaneity” (Carter, 2006, p. 684).

 Education generally, and schooling in particular, is potentially an important site for learning about place. 

 schooling is the quintessential project of modernity in which we unlearn our earliest sense of attachment to places. 

Pedagogy

he method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.

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Deconstructing such storylines is therefore part of the process of ‘decolonisation’. These dominant storylines depend for their justification and legitimation on the suppression of alternative stories that already exist, often as the shadow side of dominant stories.

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 In Volatile Bodies, feminist philosopher Liz Grosz proposed to interrogate philosophy by “putting the body at the centre of our notion of subjectivity” 

 Place learning that derives from a deep, embodied sense of connection gives rise to a different ontology, an ontology of self becoming-other in the space between self and a natural world, composed of humans and non-human others, animate and inanimate; animals and plants, weather, rocks, trees. 

The contact zone has been theorised in different ways, depending on whether the focus is on hybrid productions from ‘the third space’ (eg Bhabba, 1994) or on difference.

contact zone

91, Pratt defines contact zones as "spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly. asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery. or their aftermaths as they are lived out in the world today" (34), and then puts the term to use in theorizing a teaching.

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 The notion of the becoming self is well developed in feminist poststructural theory. 

Such an ontology needs to incorporate elements of our past self history (ontogeny), who we imagine ourselves to be, and our embodied relationship with others. It also includes our participation as bodies in the ‘flesh of the world’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), a reciprocal relationship with objects and landscapes, weather, rocks and trees, sand, mud and water, animals and plants, an ontology founded in the bodies of things.

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(Firstly I want to acknowledge my Ancestors of my country and I want to acknowledge where I come from. Where I come from I owe to my parents who are both Elders who have passed their knowledge on to me. My way of knowing comes from them.

 Looking out of the window now I can see the tarook on the lake. My Indigenous knowledge tells me that in the spring, it comes back green, and that’s when you can pick the tarook. When I look out the other window, I can see the wattles are in bloom and I know through my Indigenous knowledge from my parents and Ancestors that when the wattle is out, it’s time to gather the eggs. That kind of knowledge wasn’t privileged through my education process. My schooling experiences were nonIndigenous and I really only learned one way of thinking, doing and being. )

( I found this part really interesting talking about different ways of learning and things that they have taken from their culture. And modern colonialism there's really only one way of doing things and one way of looking at things especially in the idea of knowledge and learning within the educational system. But connecting to our personal roots And ideas of indigenous cultures And their ways of learning and interpreting the world. There isn't just one way of looking at things even though Society is taught as differently. )

Many of the authors in this book address their position in relation to two major waves of globalisation - the colonisation of the world that created the nation of Australia in the eighteenth century, and the current wave of economic, cyber, and environmental globalisation. 

 In his chapter, Carter begins with the idea that we all come from another place. He uses examples from museum practice, urban design and innovative community arts projects to show how the new places where we are now located can be connected to those places where we come from. 

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Carter proposes an ethic of ‘care at a distance’ as a way of acknowledging what we bring with us from the places we have left behind. 

 Its doubling of poetic and linear logics allows for a nuanced account of historical, environmental and spiritual realities moving with the changing character of specific places. 

 These include specifically using arts practices such as quilt making and performance, but also include different ways of writing and thinking about place. 

learning between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge systems through the methodology of ‘deep listening’. A number of Indigenous research students from different Indigenous language groups in Australia developed the methodology of deep listening in collaboration with Brearley for researching aspects of Indigenous cultural knowledge and community leadership. 

deep listening methodology in this chapter: cultural ways of knowing, reciprocal and respectful relationships, talking circles, stories in conversation, and community protocols. 

community school where Indigenous children can learn the cultures from which they have become alienated. With Laura Brearley she explores the place making practices of Peruvian indigenous quilt-makers where the quilts become narrative forms that allow for multiple meanings to emerge. 

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conclude by proposing that re-ordering our understanding of relationships is the key to co-creating a place where Indigenous and non-Indigenous people can work together. 

The act of possession is realised as “A force that maps and names but also shoots and legalises … the east coast of New Holland into Australia, a silencing into a discovery, the presence of people into an absence”

 depended upon a profound historical repression–the erasure of prior human and non-human ecologies. This was a poetic as well as a practical project.”

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 social inclusion is made possible through an unlikely arts scene that is “resilient, interesting and often low budget”. Creativity here is seen to offer a mode of resistance to the present and to an obsession with ‘the way things are’. 

Creative place-making is suggested as a way to imagine what might be possible, ‘resisting the inertia of the present’. 

 In her chapter, ‘If you see a bubble coming up’, Jennifer Rennie draws on her research in the Tiwi Islands to challenge hegemonic notions of literacy that privilege western knowledge. Rennie highlights a lack of understanding, valuing, and acknowledging of Indigenous community literacy and numeracy practices, by western schooling systems.

 School, in contrast, is a place of limitation that fails to acknowledge the literacies demonstrated by these students in reading and writing the landscape. Through stories from the Tiwi children, the multiple and creative place knowledges are made visible. 

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 Rennie concludes that understanding literacy as occurring through a range of different 

modalities, which include visual, oral, kinaesthetic, digital and written forms, requires a new approach to literacy. 

Teachers who do not recognise the opportunities of tapping into children’s rich existing knowledge risk perpetuating their exclusion. The alternative is to take a different approach and welcome the place literacies these children bring to the classroom to open up social futures for them and expand the knowledge of their classmates

 Parents who can afford to choose, send their children elsewhere, leaving behind in public schools a larger proportion of students who lack the social capital to take up the opportunities school offers.

Hayes’ research team used narrative methodologies to seek a complex hope in which schools may become places of possibility.

These particular teachers believed in their students’ abilities to learn, and in their capacity to teach them. One of the teachers was found to employ specifically spatial strategies by constructing an inviting, relaxing and stimulating music space where he would move around as a facilitator rather than a teacher. The chapter contests deficit narratives of social positioning, and identifies possibilities for teachers to exert agency. Alternative spatial practices can transform the possibilities of the classroom as learning space. 

e. The children involved in the place-making project worked across architecture, communication and education to create new learning spaces.

Through this experience the children developed new literacies of place and they learned to become social actors and agents in their own lives, active members and participants in their societies. 

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She defied warnings about her physical safety by walking home rather than being chauffeured, in a metaphor for her move from the inside space of the classroom to the outside place of East Timor. 

 In this new spatial practice the talk between teacher and students turned from the routine functions set out in the Australian textbook to talk emerging from the contingencies of place, not only alluding to past trauma, but also discussing the construction of a new nation. 

Jane entered the uncertainty of a contact zone which opened up new spatial and temporal possibilities to enable a different connection between teacher, student and the production of spatial history.

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‘How do places become pedagogical?

‘rhizosemiotic play’ 

designed to develop deep consciousness of particular places through a learning activity that involves the interweaving of knowledge about wildlife with personal stories and social relationships. The qualities of this as a pedagogical activity makes the experience more like an Indigenous way of knowing place, and less like a field trip for science or walking for sport. 

 Mayne questions a discipline where people are analysed at a remove from the places they shaped, and which shaped their lives and identities. 

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 Characterising ‘parables of place’ as global, temporal, spatial, ecological, political, imaginary and personal, Kenway argues that teachers need to be provided with opportunities to develop a nuanced understanding of place and thus of the places that they are teaching in. It is vital that they are able to rise above place prejudice and to move beyond simplistic and romantic views of place. The curriculum that guides teaching and learning needs to attend to this spatial paradox, to have an intimate global sense of place.

[sepiadice]

NavyDice Campaign (2019/12/30): Evil Snowglobes

Finally finished. Three months of schedules just not working out, and nearly before the year was out, and I had to teleconference in because I had a cold that made driving to NavyDice’s place and back an excessively inadvisable idea, and the call froze a couple times[1] so I know there’s details that got lost, but the story of Maple reached a conclusion!

Which means I’m in a great place to make the 2020s the decade of the DiceJar Adventure Club! Especially since I’ve got a new campaign with a set schedule starting January Third!

Still need to set up a personal website to host it and my other projects. Stand by for an announcement.

But first, the final Maple Write-up!

Acer ‘Maple’ Palmatum (SepiaDice/Me) Level 9 Elf Fighter. Knows honesty is easier than coordinating cover stories.

Garland (LimeDice) A wizard(?) and educator. A worryingly squishy wizard who probably should see a doctor. Or take up jogging.

Grumble (Ichi) Bard and chronic mumbler. Best investigator since he’s good about not getting killed early.

Poppi (Ni) Also a spellcaster. Probably the most invested in the actual mechanics of what’s occurring.

Game Master (NavyDice) Everyone else, most of whom need a good punching.

Cycle 11

In the darkness, Maple shares the plan I’ve been over-thinking for three months.[2] The rest of the party is on board while also working their own angles.

My plan was sheer elegance in its simplicity: Maple was going to beat Masem to the marketplace, fake the deaths of the brigands, then delay Masem until the Lord arrived, at which point Maple would use her knowledge of the location of three orbs to prove something wonky is up, then reveal the Lord’s Advisor is working both sides of the conflict for mysterious and probably nefarious ends, and it would be very helpful if the Lord would go with her colleague to retrieve the ice orb. Also, I’d hoped to use this massive revelation to get Masem to work with the Brigands/ the Dawn.

After which, Maple would go talk to Eli, who is made of clay, which is a weird thing that hopefully ties into the Earth Orb that still needs finding.

The actual attempt to execute this plan got derailed by Masem stabbing Maple with a dagger. Like a jerk.

But that’s jumping ahead.

There’s a knock on the door, and Maple runs off to get her plan in motion. Meanwhile, Grumble occupied Masem to buy some time. Garland and Poppi, meanwhile, went to the Lord’s manor to try and get the ice orb.

Poppi took point as Garland played decoy in the foyer. Poppi snuck into the Lord’s room and found the hidden chamber with the instant death field, and discovered the room also has an anti-magic effect, so Poppi can’t cast anything. She puts her fire orb through the death field as an experiment, and destroys the orb. Oops.

Eventually the Lord arrives and Poppi stealths around to get out of the anti-magic chamber and turn invisible again to observe.

When passing through the field, the Lord’s skin gets wrinkly and generally in a bad state, which is suspicious. The Lord pockets the Ice Orb and leaves.

Grumble goes to investigate the church, claiming to be an interior decorator to access to the catacombs. We’ll return to this later.

Which brings us to the Marketplace: Maple and the Dawn do their very cool and very fake combat, and Maple gets control of the vest as Masem arrives. Maple does more wild talking to keep Masem occupied until the Lord arrives, along with Poppi and Garland.

Turns out there was a massive flaw in my plan: there was a traitorous conspiracy occuring, but it wasn’t Masem behind it.[3] Also the Lord was swapped with some sort of skinwalker. And my plan hinged on those two being who I assumed them to be. Oops.

Poppi discretely alerted me to the suspicious effects the death field had on the Lord as he retrieved the ice orb, but I had already turned the two against me, I didn’t have an alternate plan, and we might learn something if we proceed with my plan anyways.

So Maple refuses the invitation to go somewhere discreet to discuss her concerns, Masem stabs her, and Maple punches Masem’s stupid face and combat ensues, during which Bane possesses Masem.

The “Lord” gets killed and Poppi attunes with the ice orb.

Maple decides to let the vest explode and cause a lot of damage to Bane!Masem, and thus Maple dies again.

Bane!Masem survived, though heavily hurt. I believe Poppi fled while Maple and Garland lay dead, hiding away to attune to the Ice Orb.

Fed up with the day, Bane!Masem limps off to take his frustrations out on Eli before hanging him with cruel efficiency.

Grumble, meanwhile, searching the church crypt, finds a mysterious obsidian coffin that needs a key to unlock. He doesn't have a key, so Grumble leaves to meet up with the party at the marketplace. Where he sees the mess, so he goes to the jail and catches Eli’s execution, at which point Bane relinquishes his hold on Masem.

Grumble talks to Masem, and finally convinces him that something way above everyone's pay grade is happening. Also, as the only party member neither dead nor occupied with attuning to an orb, it falls on Grumble to investigate Eli's corpse.

Grumble and Masem attempt to run to the crematorium before Eli is cremated. They don't beat the furnace, however, and find a pile of melted clay.[4] Grumble senses magic, and inserts his hand into a lump of hot clay, which hurts. Grumble successfully pulls out the Earth Orb. Yay! 

The orb begins petrifying Grumble, solidifying his hand as the effect moves up. Masem cuts off Grumble's hand to save the dwarf, and it's decided that there's nothing further to be done, and we wait for the end of the loop.

Cycle 12

We’ve got things pretty much figured out. Poppi gives the Ice Orb to Garland to attune to before she heads out to reclaim the fire orb, which fortunately wasn’t removed from reality when she put it into a Death Field.[5] Grumble obtains the key from the mysterious murdered man, and heads to the church crypts.

Maple, meanwhile, has to get the final orb. So she runs to the market, fakes a battle with the Brigands, goes to bomb the jail,[6] and talk to Eli in the escape tunnel.

Maple tells Eli she’s got a lead on where the Earth Orb is. Eli is excited and totally game to find it and Navy really laid it down thick to make the reveal more awkward. But Maple tells him that the Orb’s in his chest.

Eli takes a breath, rips open his shirt, and braces for whatever’s going to happen.

A greatsword is probably a bit unwieldy for a medical procedure, so Maple grabs the smallest cutting instrument she has: a hand axe.

Eli winces in pain as Maple cuts through the skin, revealing clay beneath, which he doesn’t feel. Continue cutting deeper, and find a darker brown lump. Maple takes a moment, and starts ripping out his heart, which Eli does feel every agonizing portion of, screaming in torturous pain. But Maple’s a trained soldier, so she powers through.[7]

Earth Orb in hand, Maple attempts to attune with it by inserting it into her sword, while the artifact turns her into stone. Eventually and unfortunately, she’s rendered entirely in stone. So that’s not ideal.

In the church crypt, Grumble applies the key to the obsidian coffin, which causes the lid to flow off and reveal stairs to a mysterious chamber. Within is an obsidian wall with indentations and markings hinting at three amulets and a sword. He goes upstairs to find Poppi and Garland waiting for direction. The absence of Maple is troubling, but her location shouldn’t be difficult to parse, so Grumble goes after her.

The Bard finds the Fighter in the escape tunnel, and casts Greater Restoration on her. Maple is now flesh again, with a boosted AC and a stronger sword.

The flayed corpse of Eli is not remarked upon.

Everyone reunites at the church, they descend through the crypt, through the obsidian coffin, and to the JRPG-styled final checkpoint. The orbs are inserted and the wall melts away, revealing a room lined wall to wall with shelves holding many glass orbs of various sizes, each holding a looping moment in time. The party locates the one belonging to us, which is one of the larger[8] orbs, and has a noticeable crack in it.

Maple picks it up. It’ll make a good hostage as the party proceeds through a door on the opposite wall.

We enter a room I imagine is round, but I might’ve missed the proper description. There’s a throne near where we enter, upon which sits Ricton (the former leader of The Dawn) with injured hands. Good environmental storytelling, there.

Bane arrives, and starts doing the usual villainous “you ruined everything, why couldn’t you be content to be heroes in this time loop?” which the party happily riffs, because what are TRPGs for except to undermine the particularly egregious tropes by talking over them?

Anyways, Bane asks us to return the orb, and Maple just drops it so it would shatter on the ground. The room becomes the hiccuping world we last saw in Cycle ??. Bane says he wished we didn’t do that. Roll for initiative. Maple rolls pretty low.

He raises four pillars, from which emerge our shadow selves. Navy also asks how many times we’ve died, with Maple getting the high score in that. So that probably means Shadow-Maple has Six respawns.

Everyone else takes their turns (stuttering internet means I likely missed details, so forgive me if I don’t lay out their cool turns), and we come to Maple.

I raise an idea I had, but didn’t want to do without getting the group’s consent. I would run back to the previous room to start smashing the other orbs, hoping the influx of other looping memories would disorient or otherwise inconvenience Bane.

However, it’s decided to keep the fighter in the fight.[9]

Instead, Maple starts attacking the pillar of her own doppelganger, using the full range of level 9 fighter abilities on it, as well as bardic inspiration from Grumble, to sink a bunch of damage into the pillar that maybe she should’ve saved for Bane, but whatever.

The party takes it in turns to destroy the pillars, as they seem to mitigate damage Bane can take while they’re still standing. Once the pillars are all down, attention is turned to the Anthropomorphic Iron Throne man.

Bane summons another pillar, but short work is made of it. He follows by trying to entangle our heroes in dark thorns. However, Maple was already positioned to attack him and the others have range, so not a great strategy, and everyone is free by the next round anyways.

The commotion rouses Ricton, who is also channeling the spirit of Eli. Eli!Ricton and Bane move to confront each other as the combat continues.

Garland hits 0 health and falls. Garland had very low HP.

With the help of Eli!Ricton, Bane is finally slain, and the Stuttering world and the chamber we were in fades away, leaving the party in the Marketplace

Cycle 13 (but not really)

We’re a little further back chronologically than we’re used to, and also a physically different location, to the point we’re able to identify that Masem was the one who killed the bloodsoaked man who gives us the key before going to grab our heroes from their bed and breakfast.

Time to try to set things right permanently.

Maple goes and tries to get the Dawn to stand down, doing the identifying bird call and such. Unfortunately, she fails to convince them their task is unnecessary. Maple decides to just let them go spring Eli.

Poppi went to look into Eli, to discover the man in prison is someone else. Still Eli, just not the one we know.

Grumble goes to talk to the Lord to nudge the governmental reform forward quicker. It goes well.

I’m afraid I forget what Garland did during this time.

Maple and Poppi follow the Dawn back to the hideout, where the advisor shows up to say that they’ve succeeded in getting their reform and that everything is going to be okay. Maple interrupts to ask why he was playing both sides, which annoys the advisor but he explains anyways, but I’ve forgotten his explanation! I think it wasn’t as profound as I hopped.

In the coming days, the reform is announced, Masem is discovered to be conspiring a coup with the help of the skinwalker that’s been stealing the Lord’s identity the last few rounds,[10] and time moves (mercifully) on.

Garland sits by a fountain to grade papers he’d apparently been putting off, and has either Eli or Ricton come talk to him and thank him. Garland barely acknowledges them. He goes on to continue searching for a cure for his wife’s infliction.

Grumble goes on to found a department store with his player’s previous characters.

Poppi searches for Ricton, and asks him if there’s other places in a similar state, as we saw many time orbs before the final battle. Ricton reveals a steamer trunk with a chamber containing the orbs, and the two quest to find the places the orbs correspond to and set them right.

Maple leaves and continues to walk the Earth, stone sword in hand, fading into folk legend. She’s a simple elf, and such a fate felt appropriate.[11]

Thus concludes one of the few campaigns I got to see from start to finish. I really enjoyed it (outside one player having difficulty letting unimportant arguments go), and would gladly play with most of the group again. Maybe the whole group if some growth happens.

Now it’s time for me to take the GM screen again. This one’s got scheduling commitment involved, so hopefully reports will be consistent!

Until next time, may your dice make things interesting!

-

[1] It was my first time using Discord’s video system, so i don’t have enough data to know if the fault lies on my end, Navy’s end, or Discord itself. Historically I’ve never had issues with just voice, so… [2] I attempt to avoid planning too far in advance as both GM and Player so I don’t get disappointed when the narrative in my head doesn’t play out. Usually try to stick to what’s immediately actionable and a few branches, then hold back to improv the rest. But three months is three months. [3] I still don’t know what’s up with the advisor. I did ask, but I was sick and connection was unstable, so I don’t know if I got a satisfactory answer. [4] Not sure how a kiln and the cremation process lines up, but now I'm curious. [5] Though imagine if it’d have. Defeating the evil demon by removing his super weapons would’ve been interesting. [6] So disappointed we didn’t find a more subtle method to accomplish this. [7] Were I not sick, and if the group wasn’t dedicated to finishing tonight, I might’ve taken the time to play up the horror. But conditions weren’t ideal. [8] It was mimed as being held by two hands, but the accuracy of that is iffy, considering I assumed our orbs were about soft-ball sized when they’re truthfully about the size of a large marble. [9] The reason why I like playing rogues is they get plenty to do outside of combat. I’m mentally tuned to playing with the world over the system. [10] A subplot we totally missed, and one that I’m not… completely satisfied with? Masem was unwillingly taken over by Bane, and was the only guy who seemed to have it happen to him, and doesn’t recall the time he’s controlled. This innately puts Masem into a sympathetic narrative light as an unwilling puppet, so making him a bad guy just seems weird. [11] Mostly she just didn’t want to deal with Poppi’s barely restrained violence anymore.

#SepiaDicePlays #NavyDiceCampaign #Dungeons and Dragons #Fifth Edition #maple #NavyDice

[entergamingxp]

6 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Playing Half-Life: Alyx in VR

March 23, 2020 1:15 PM EST

After a long, long wait, Half-Life: Alyx is finally bringing us back to the world of Half-Life. Here are our tips to get the most out of it.

It’s not an understatement to say that it’s been a long, long, long wait for a new Half-Life game, and thankfully Valve has finally delivered with the highly-anticipated Half-Life: Alyx. With the game’s release today, everyone will get the chance to dive back into the world of Half-Life through the eyes of Alyx Vance, and more importantly, utilizing virtual reality to make it all feel that much more real.

With the game releasing today (and our full review out now), Half-Life: Alyx presents a unique experience for both longtime Half-Life fans and VR players. Technically-speaking, it is one of the most impressive and fully-realized VR games that has released to date, and gives Half-Life fans a new experience in the series that is built entirely from the ground up for VR.

Whether you’re new to the series, new to VR, or (like myself) a longtime fan that is eager to see what Valve has in store, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of playing Half-Life: Alyx.

Find the locomotion settings that work best for you

Before you get too deep into the experience of playing Half-Life: Alyx, one of my first recommendations would be to spend some time in the beginning area of the game (the first segment in City 17), pause the game, and just go through the settings. While the game itself will take care of visual and graphical settings automatically based on your hardware configuration, you should spend some time in the game’s locomotion and controller setting menus. Thankfully, the starting area doesn’t have much happening in terms of action, giving you plenty of time to acclimate to playing in VR.

As a VR game, Half-Life: Alyx supports a number of different configurations for both gameplay and what type of locomotion you want to use to move Alyx throughout the world. In terms of play style, you have the options of playing standing up, sitting down, or utilizing room-scale VR to completely immerse you in the experience. Likewise, for locomotion, you are able to use either continuous motion (like a traditional FPS), blink (move your character instantly), or teleport (seamlessly move Alyx to a new area).

If you’re coming to the world of VR relatively new, it’s important to get a feel for what systems work best for you; this depends on your tolerance for motion sickness or disorientation. Personally speaking, I don’t do well most of the time with standing up and playing a VR game where there is a lot of movement. So, the best system for me in Half-Life: Alyx was playing sitting down and using continuous motion with the Oculus Touch controllers. To me, this both helped avert motion sickness and basically felt like playing previous Half-Life games. However, if you have a higher tolerance and have the space for it, going for either standing play or room-scale VR will definitely let you get the full experience Valve has to offer with Half-Life: Alyx.

Take breaks while playing

This is a pretty standard rule of thumb for most VR games, but especially in the case of Half-Life: Alyx. With the game taking about 10-15 hours to complete (I finished it in 12 hours), it’s a lengthy experience compared to the shorter play sessions most VR games typically offer. If it helps to keep track: Half-Life: Alyx has 11 chapters that are each roughly an hour to 1.5 hours.

With the game broken up into this chapter structure, playing for an hour or so (until you get to the next chapter) gives a good opportunity to take a break and give your eyes a rest, as well as warding off any discomfort or motion sickness. While reviewing the game, I was able to play Half-Life: Alyx for roughly 2-3 hours pretty comfortably during a session (since I was played seated), but your mileage may vary depending on how you are playing and what your VR set-up is.

That said, even though it’s easy to get sucked into the story and world of Half-Life: Alyx, be sure to give yourself a chance to take a break for a bit before diving back in for more.

Explore every area thoroughly

The Half-Life series thrives on immersing players in its world and using the environment to tell its story, and Half-Life: Alyx is probably the best example of this yet. Using virtual reality, the storytelling moments and world-building are really given a chance to shine, aside from just being a stellar showcase for what VR can do in a narrative-driven game.

That being said, be sure to give yourself a chance to explore each area in Half-Life: Alyx, as you’ll find a ton of smaller details and moments to flesh out both the environments you are walking through and the greater Half-Life universe. There are some particularly memorable setpieces that you’ll want to spend some time going through and soaking in all the details, though I don’t want to spoil anything.

Most of all, taking time to explore each environment and poke around is crucial to collecting ammo and other supplies that you’ll need along the way. This is especially important for resin, which are small pieces of cylindrical ore hidden in the environments that you can collect and use to upgrade your weapons over the course of the game.

Be observant if you get lost

Thankfully, like its predecessors, Half-Life: Alyx progresses in a linear fashion, so the game funnels you through to new areas pretty clearly and efficiently. There are only a few instances where you’ll get to areas that might be a bit more open or that you may have to backtrack a little. However, if you find yourself lost or unsure where to go, just try looking around and taking a keener eye to things. In particular, look out for objects or items that are yellow — generally, those will help point you in the right direction for either areas that you need to go in or objects that you might need to utilize.

If you’re stuck on a puzzle or some other kind of environmental challenge, make sure to take an extra look around in case there was something you missed; this might be a hidden switch or another item behind another object. Valve makes full use of what VR can do in Half-Life: Alyx, so be sure to poke around and play with objects. Likewise, if you truly get stuck on a puzzle for a longer period of time, occasionally Alyx will ask Russell for a hand to figure things out, giving a helpful clue or hint of what you need to do next.

Try to conserve your ammo and supplies

Half-Life has always had elements of survival-horror to it (look no further than Half-Life 2‘s Ravenholm level), and Half-Life: Alyx continues that tradition with some harrowing segments that will test your stress levels. Even when you’re faced with a barrage of headcrab zombies or Combine soldiers, the most important thing is not to panic, and to try and limit how much ammo you’re using at a time.

Generally, Half-Life: Alyx will give you the ammo and supplies that you need at a given time, but there were definitely a few situations that I ran into while playing where I was running short on ammo, so be conscious of how many shells or cartridges you have for the pistol, shotgun, and Combine SMG. My suggestion: make sure to take advantage of explosive barrels in the environment to take out groups of enemies, or in the second half of the game, make use of grenades, which you’ll be able to find an abundance in some areas.

Likewise, each enemy has their own unique “tell” of when they’re getting ready to attack or when they’ve been eliminated, making it easy to both identify which enemy you’re about to face and when the best time to take them on is. Once you encounter them, you’ll know immediately the best ways to take on enemies like headcrabs, zombies, barnacles, and Combine soldiers and the most effective ways of eliminating them.

Use the game’s physics and VR to your advantage

As a VR game, having the ability to freely move around the environment in Half-Life: Alyx and interact with objects has its advantages that other games wouldn’t normally offer. Coming from its predecessor Half-Life 2, one of those elements, in particular, are the ways that you can use the game’s physics engine to your advantage in combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving.

Alyx’s pair of gravity gloves are especially important in Half-Life: Alyx, as they give the ability to pull in objects from afar, even from some longer distances. This can be used to your advantage in a number of ways, from grabbing hard to reach collectibles, ammo, and supplies, to more combat-heavy purposes like grabbing an explosive to throw at an enemy. You’ll also need to use them for a variety of puzzles that you’ll come across in the game, especially in instances where grabbing crucial items for your next objective might require some tricky physics manipulation to accomplish.

Given that it shares a lot of similarities with Half-Life 2, there are many moments where you’ll be able to utilize the physics engine to help you out in tough situations. With tons of objects around each environment, don’t be afraid to get crafty with how you use objects; this can range from makeshift weapons to tools for puzzles. Also, remember that gravity can work to your benefit, like one situation where I delightfully dropped grenades from above on an unsuspecting group of headcrab zombies. *Chef’s kiss*

Half-Life: Alyx is available now on PC through Steam, and supports Valve Index, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality.

March 23, 2020 1:15 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/6-tips-for-getting-the-most-out-of-playing-half-life-alyx-in-vr/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=6-tips-for-getting-the-most-out-of-playing-half-life-alyx-in-vr

[ahowardnua]

First draft.

This is the first draft of my essay, there where a lot of problems with it. Mostly the problems came from me getting definitions mixed up, making the proposal confusing as it went on. I think this will be the main thing that needs fixing, possibly even re-defining. I’ll continue to work on this until our one on one session with Lynsey.

How has worldbuilding and storytelling been adapted for creating virtual worlds? (Extended essay, 5000 words)

The definition of worldbuilding varies with personal opinion, however, the general consensus is that it's the creation of ‘virtual' worlds and environments. This can also include the characters within the world but for this report it will only include the environments in which the characters exist Forster (2011). This proposal will include how I currently plan on conducting the research needed and the structure for the final essay. Throughout which I will refer to worldbuilding and various other words that need defining for context:

•         Virtual- worlds that are fictional in the sense that they have no live action aspects including books, video games, podcast etc..

•         Virtual reality (VR)- the computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way.

Currently, the research that has already been conducted includes analogue and digital resources. A few particular sources that have provided insight to my topic include the documentary 'Industrial Light and Magic: creating the impossible' (2010), the book 'Building Imaginary Worlds' (2012) and the bachelor thesis 'Graphical style in Video games' (2017). The documentary covers the advancements from traditional visual effects to CG visual effects and the impact on the film industry. Meanwhile, the book discusses various aspects of worldbuilding, including its history (1974). The thesis covers the development of graphical styles in games.

The final essays focus will be on the technological advancements that have impacted and shaped worldbuilding. Including considering the direction that aspects like VR could take it in the future. The report will mostly focus on worldbuilding in games, but will also include reference to older and newer mediums, from 'Dungeons and Dragons' to, as mentioned, VR. It will, however, exclude live action forms of worldbuilding, like film. That's not to say that films with CGI aspects won't be referenced.

My overall aims to answer my research question include:

Explore the development of worldbuilding, from analogue to digital variations.

 Analyse aspects of development in relation to a case study, giving comparisons of sales from various areas.

Investigate how VR could affect worldbuilding and storytelling in the future.

To achieve these aims I will need to conduct further research. Including gathering the statistics of game sales and reviews to form graphs or charts, gathering more analogue research by completing my growing reading list, watching other documentaries that I have lined up. Alongside this, I wish to gather some independent research on the opinions of people within the industry, and what direction the consider VR to be heading. However, with this I could face the problem of people not returning e-mails. Also, with worldbuilding being a broad definition, it could be difficult to find research specific to the areas that I wish look into. In relation to the e-mails, it might be that I have to replace them for open surveys, but it would be nice to have opinions from industry practitioners.

Chapter topics.

Chapter one (Worldbuilding Progression) will be focused on the developments in worldbuilding, from interactive games like 'Dungeons and Dragons' to modern day equivalents, like those from the game developers 'Tell Tale', with their 'pick a path' games. This will include how these types of games create an immersive environment by causing the player to be invested in the plot with more personalised gameplay. From this, the essay will continue with how worldbuilding has been adapted as a more literal art in CG, the creation of environments as a virtual 3D form and how this has developed environmental storytelling Worch and Smith (2010). This chapter will also include a comparison of how industry practitioners reacted to advancements in CG to how they could react to advancements in VR Iwerks (2010). From here I will transition into the second proposed chapter – VR as a genre.

With there being limited games that are currently exclusive to VR, this chapter will compare sales and reviews of games that both are and aren't exclusive. This should take into consideration weather a VR game needs to be backed by existing and well-known brands/ companies for it to be successful. Next chapter two should question if, as a society, we are becoming to obsessed with photorealistic games/ environments and dismissing the need for worldbuilding and storytelling. Analysing why this is and the potential futures of VR regarding it.

The final chapter would analyse how worldbuilding and storytelling currently work together, using statistics from more successful games that have both in-depth worlds and rich plots. This should reference what has previously been chapter two. Alongside this, 'showing not telling' should also be taken into consideration, as many games use this as a form of storytelling. Leaving the player/ viewer to infer what that can from an environment Worch and Smith (2010). When discussing this aspect of storytelling a case study of 'The legend of Zelda' franchise will take place. With such a large background, a comparison could easily be made between newer and older games and how they have developed in relation to what has already been discussed. This can include trailers of the games, difference in 'formula' and graphical improvement.

In summary, I plan on conducting a series of secondary and primary research as a means for myself to better understand developments within the worldbuilding and storytelling of virtual worlds. In doing so I hope to improve my knowledge of CG animation and its advancements with VR and other mediums. Also, I hope to understand how storytelling could be impacted by these developments, as it's an area that closely relates to my practice. The final essay will not only be helpful to myself, but it could also be an area of interest to anyone who enjoys CG in any form. As of currently, I believe there are some areas that need to be much more thoroughly researched before certainly saying that they will be included in the final version. However, as far as the structure of the essay is concerned, I believe that I have managed to flesh out a solid start to work from.

#proposalba2b #year2