Melody Painter is a major-crossing project sponsored by NYU Tisch GSO. I cooperated with one of my classmates, and a student from ITP, another department in Tisch. I am the lead programmer and designer. I made the major contribution to the feeling, concept and the core mechanics of the game, and implemented the core gameplay and juicy visual effects.

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The initial creative challenge we faced with is how can we combine music with VR. And I imagined a satisfying experience that people are playing music, but actually, building their world in the game. It will be a relaxing game. To some extent, it is more like an interactive application more than a game. Because there is not an explicit goal in the game. I also thought about designing some challenges for players. Players will try hard to protect their creatures from nature disaster by dealing with the situation with different music spells. But due to the scope limit, I decided maybe we can leave it to be developed in the next stage.

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We are thinking of how to play music in the game at the beginning. As I am unable to play any instrument, I wish people like me could play it. So I suggest we can sing a song to create creatures and buildings. But soon, we found it a bit embarrassed to sing a song in front of the public for the people who are weak in singing and the technology to detect tone is not accurate enough. So we changed it to play the piano, which we think is the most popular instrument. Even though the players don't know how to play it, they can pretend to play it. And we made the music spell short and comprehensible - matching the key with number 1-5. So that the player can easily learn how to play a piece of melody.

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The second design problem we encountered with is that how the player moves in the game. My initial thought is that players can't move around but get higher and lower to see more view. But then I recognized the creators must want to travel through the world they create. And as the player is the god of the world, he will not be blocked by anything and fly to move instead of walking and jumping. In this way, the player can go anywhere they want as a real god.
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Finishing all the core mechanics, I desired to add more feedbacks and vivid effects to the game. 

Feedbacks will give the player more sense of achievement. For example, the only sound that the player can hear at the beginning is the sound of the sea. After they create their first island, the background music will fade in. And the sound of the key is an inherent feedback to the players. Playing music - pressing keys and making sounds - makes human satisfied naturally. 

To make the world vivid, I added a day and night cycle, attached the light to what the player created, and made the light appear one moment and vanish the next. The island will rise from the ocean and other objects will grow from small to large.

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For the usability, I added instruction of spells which will be disappearing when moving and procedural generating surface of the sea to make it infinite.
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Before we showed the game to others, I was worried about people will feel aimless and leave the game real soon as there is not a goal they need to achieve and the challenges they are supposed to solve. But surprisingly, people love it and enjoy it so much. Almost all the player will play it for over 15 minutes, immersing in the feeling of building their own world. Players said it is a game made them feel peaceful, satisfying, and enjoyable. A player appreciated it so much, described the feeling as "as if I were in the heaven". And another player said it is the best VR game she ever played, which surprises me so much. I am aware of the emotions that VR games can give to the players are abundant, waiting to be explored.