Clinical Encounters: Medical School

News

AnnouncementsBurnout ImpactBurnout InterventionsBurnout PrevalenceCause of BurnoutVR Solution

A Move to VR

Creating a game that truly connects with the user was important to us when creating BurntOut. We want those who are playing our game to feel more prepared to take on the issue of burnout in medical school. We decided that we may be able to evoke a stronger connection in VR, where the player feels …

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Integrating Scenario 1 – ICU Clinic

Creating a Playable Version We have been able to create and polish a working visual novel version of the BurntOut gameplay that uses 2D sprites as actors. The Scenario The ICU Clinic is the first scenario that the player is exposed to in the game. Here, the player plays as a 3rd-year clerkship …

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Updating Level Structures & Polishing Actor Editor

The New "Central" (Level Selection) With the addition of new models and updates to the old ones, we began to redesign and polish the level selection scene (named "Central") for the game. The area now looks a lot more structured and resembles the look of being in a hospital environment, unlike before …

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Reworking the Scenario Structure

Expanded Narrative Structure When we began work on BurntOut, the idea was to have several scenarios in a single scene. As the project progressed, we instead realized that having scenarios that spanned multiple scenes was a better-suited approach for the task. We've since changed the narrative …

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An Object-Oriented Editor

A few weeks ago, we mentioned our frustrations with Unity’s editor system while building BurntOut. It's pretty simple and easy to use if you want to expose a few of an object's fields to the editor, but if you want to do more with it, it starts to become a pain. We wanted to have the narrative …

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Refining Point & Click Mechanics

This week's focus for BurntOut was to get the point and click mechanics in the scenarios up to par by refining the system to make it fully functional and compatible with the overarching original gameplay elements - such as movement and character interaction. Currently, the point and click system …

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Inventory Modeling

Graphics play a large role in making a game immersive and engaging. As such, our graphics team has been focusing on how to best render the environments for our different areas in the BurntOut game. One of the team members details how he set about to create the elevator and computer assets that will …

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Redefining Movement

In BurntOut, we are paying specific attention to how the player moves within and interacts with their environment during game-play. While we have not yet committed ourselves to one particular method, we are finding the exploration to be beneficial to not only this product, but other games that are …

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Gameplay Cycle & How to Increase Player Engagement

Gameplay Cycle The main focus of this week's BurntOut development was to create a functional, healthy, well-rounded gameplay experience that incorporated all the main elements proposed in the design document. The cycle has various win/lose conditions that impact the end result. We have added some …

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Early Development Stages

Game Concept BurntOut is a single-player, first-person, role-play simulation to help medical students identify and address burnout situations they may encounter during medical school. In the first 2 weeks of development, we were able to create a minimal viable product that incorporates the …

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