SkyIslands VR

[erica_layton]

Hello, from a world where islands float in the air, and an ancient guild of mages once lived, only to vanish. Clues about who they were and the ecological disaster they wrought can be found in the landscape. Your mission is to help restore balance, and set their ghosts to rest.

I'm actually a few months into the process of building the SkyIslands game. It's slow going, because I'm doing all parts of it myself:  game mechanics, 3D assets, coding, sound design--whatever is needed. I've also been doing various contract work on the side, but focussing as much time as I can afford to on this project, with the goal of publishing it for GearVR on the Oculus Store.

Participating in the Launchpad has given me the encouragement I needed to continue working towards my goals for this game!

So far, I've produced a demo. Here's a walkthrough, captured in GearVR. It's not very interesting yet: I'm currently re-writing the mythos for the world (Thanks to Bernie Yee for great advice!), out of which will flow stories, strung together with puzzles and games for the player.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ybZEH8c5I8

[erica_layton]

Redesign of Guide Creature

floating instead of walking : player "floats/drifts" as well
non-deforming mesh : solving weight-painting woes while looking awesome
has some kind of "arms" : tells player to "touch memory of finger to memory of right temple"
translucent/glowing : is a ghost; tested and seems ok for performance

Sketching...then will take it to Blender!


Pinned a bunch of refs: https://www.pinterest.com/3ricalayton/guide-spirit-character-design-refs/

[erica_layton]

Figured out how to "draw" with vertices in Blender.

 Much better than extruding everything! Also, seems easier to avoid awful edge-flow issues..
("Look Mom, I'm using my Sculpture degree for something!"   😉 )


For anyone who's curious about adding individual vertices in Blender
It's in Add-Ons: turn on the "Add Mesh: Extra Objects" add-on. Then, in Edit mode, do "Add>>SingleVert>>SingleVert"

I also brought in a photo of my sketch, and stared by constructing outlines of major elements, in the x-z plane.
Then I began tweaking and adding verts. Trying to use mostly triangles, as it seems to give better edge-flow than quads.

[erica_layton]

Larger environment test build!
Seeing some issues with anti-aliasing, and it looks like I won't be able to get away with large translucent things (frame-rate drop). Lots of fiddling and testing to do. Also, I've got a couple of FSMs to build: laying the splines out on the map, so the Guide will have paths to walk..

https://youtu.be/jxhKtQtJbk8

Something feels "off" about this map, but not sure what. I've got a design contract next week that involves a lot of quick VR world-building, so maybe an answer will occur to me during that experience. 

[Anonymous]

I have been having a similar "open world feels off" issue, I think it's the lack of objects in the scene, which of course, the more you put in there, they more frames start going down, so it's not that great of a solution. I've been trying to look at some other applications that are keeping you on a rail instead of letting you go anywhere, and where I think that's one way to solve the "not feeling so empty" problem, it limits movement of the user, which isn't good either. There has to be some other solution we just haven't thought of yet!

[erica_layton]

Very brief update: I have a contract job for a startup this week that involves spending all day in Vive, building worlds. No nausea, but after 7 hours in VR yesterday I was quite dizzy/lightheaded for about an hour afterwards! Maybe because the geometry I built got too complicated and the frame-rate dropped, near the end 😛  
Will hopefully get back to working on SkyIslands by this weekend.


Still working on getting the waypoint system working with the recorded dialogue--next post will probably include a video.

I also re-built the terrain, splitting the main island in two, and making it a lot smaller. There has to be enough space that the player is walking with the Guide who is talking, but not so much space that as @MissFacetious said, it feels too empty..

[aprilarrg]

I am really curious about the story behind Skylands, I'm not sure if I missed the post but it feels very exploratory yet I know you are working on different characters. Care to get into that if you have a minute? Or point to the post where I can catch up on that? Awesome concept! 🙂  

[DrSzilak]

@MissFacetious  I think sound can help fill the space and guide. Thoughts? 

[erica_layton]

aprilarrg said:

I am really curious about the story behind Skylands, I'm not sure if I missed the post but it feels very exploratory yet I know you are working on different characters. Care to get into that if you have a minute? Or point to the post where I can catch up on that? Awesome concept! 🙂  

I've been trying to keep my posts brief, and focussed mostly on the tech and visuals...

Here is my treatment for the demo scene (It kind of gives an overview/hints about the story: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1immR0kRl2MA3fDC1ZJDXUk2m1kC72rjPRuE1rTFkicw/edit?usp=sharing

Here is my GDD, with more complete story that is now badly in need of updating, to sync the details with the demo: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WDahF1nGw_kH2rqmteCm0KQ6P1jyy4qx_9nLwM4g_wg/edit?usp=sharing

Please let me know if you need additional permissions to view these on g-drive 🙂
Also, feedback is welcome!!!

[Anonymous]

Sound is a great idea to pull the player to an area, but as for the empty feel, I think that needs to be visual. I ended up adding some "walls" in the form of floating Polaroid pictures (believe me, it makes sense in the project). You are also prevented going too far away. In another context I think I would add mountains, trees, or buildings as walls, maybe for Erica's project that would be other islands that aren't accessible but still have some value for being there?

[erica_layton]

I made a waypoint coroutine that works with Playmaker FSMs by doing StartCoroutine action and passing in the index of the desired destination waypoint (in an array of waypoints defined in the script from game objects)

It's super crude, but should work for testing.
Will (hopefully!) post a video, once I get it set up for all 27 waypoints, and figure out the timing with the audio.

Here's my coroutine. To use: put this script on the GameObject that is your waypoint walker. Create new Playmaker FSM on walker. In FSM, create a state for each waypoint. Add "StartCoroutine" action to each state, and pass in parameter int = index of waypoint you want the walker to walk to in that state. Add a "Wait" action to the state,and set exit condition to FINISHED (to give the walker time to walk to the next waypoint)

I wish that the Playmaker action let me pass in more than one parameter to StartCoroutine, so I could re-set the speed at each waypoint! Oh well...there's probably some other way to do it at runtime  😛

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class WaypointsCoroutine : MonoBehaviour {

	public GameObject[] waypoints;
	public int num;

	public float minDist;
	public float speed;


	IEnumerator Walking(int num){

		while (true) {
			float dist = Vector3.Distance(gameObject.transform.position, waypoints[num].transform.position);
			gameObject.transform.LookAt (waypoints [num].transform.position);
			gameObject.transform.position += gameObject.transform.forward * speed * Time.deltaTime;
			Debug.Log ("dist =" + dist);
			Debug.Log("waypoint num =" + num );

			if (dist < minDist) {
				yield break;
				Debug.Log ("got to waypoint");
			} else {
				yield return 0;
			}
	
		}
	}
}