Hello again Folks,
This has been a productive week of development on my project BHX1619.
Goals Completed
- Combined all scenes for play testing with dialog story pacing
- Completed Mocap and character animation test (HUGE!)
- Created UI and player progression design concepts
- Created player hands
- Play tested with dialog and story beats
- Recorded sound FX(HUGE!)
- Implemented final music for prototype (HUGE!)
Promo material of a key character from my experience
Goals for week 12
- Refine character model and rig
- Play Test.Play Test. Play Test
- Debug
- Refine UI and player progression design
- Refine core mechanics and puzzles
- Recorded character
- Sound editing
Good luck on your projects beautiful people!
This week will be short as we want to be able to get evaluated for prototype with working code from "paint" to 'story" sections (share will have to be later and on Go as we just want to validate ALL parts of the app work before deciding specific features for share (3D post, going on Facebook Live seem like the most likely solution, but since mobileAR isn't evaluated, ARKit and ARCore would come later since it's out of scope for current part of this program.
We're all about stripping down features and given my confusion about funding and of course, fighting scope creep, and making sure we have all the pieces we need for a successful app.
1) Team update
Philippine government events in SF and Philippines (3 separate events upon launch)
We met up with the Philippine Consulates Consul General Henry Bensurto, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Climate Change Commission (random introduction following our meeting as they are interested in VR and tech apps for climate change), DTI had set up pre-planning with many key stakeholders of the Philippine startup ecosystem to pre-plan events with other key industry leaders in Philippine tech for March (after our release) anticipating we move forward with launching everything on Rift for the program. I learned from Kristian there were Congressional bills that were passed supporting Baybayin and so our project becomes even more significant given that the official policies and bills recognize the preservation of culture and language that has been endangered for quite some time. They pre-planned a small event in March and hope for a larger one (even mentioned Ignite a larger conference) so we can demo for a larger audience, as well as a very first local Bay Area kick off event at the SF Philippine Consulate or Filipino Cultural Center (other FilAm news leaders recommended a larger venue for VR demos and for more media buzz).
One of my team members is a starting new job so it makes it a challenge, but we're working together to make sure everyone's code is on Unity Collaborate to integrate the controller UI, multiplayer (Rift-Rift), with the rest of the story. I've started on the proposal and other marketing materials and will have Kristian take over some of that so I can help out more with technical tasks and overall integration.
2) Technical update
We decided to cut a lot of functionality, and for sound are minimizing it to just a few to make sure they are all the key ones so that the story trigger isn't delayed. I'll also be working on making sure the Avatar SDK works (hands) with the controller band to make sure nothing is too buggy since it's a custom controller that we are mapping our buttons to with the paint.
3) Information Architecture
Getting clear on this is important so we had decided to use the Tutorial/Learn version as our test playground to validate everything and use that to try the submissions to the store make sure it works? I think because of seeing how it was buggy for some other OLP participants to submit, we've cut down the scope of our project a significant amount to make sure whatever we submit we know is fully working and polished.
4) Creative update
Here are screenshots of the story sequence moving forward
Title (from above after these birds)
Here's screenshots of the controller UI and the buttons we stripped down to (we have like 8), and the 4 we want to validate to keep everything to a MVP (Minimal Viable Product) scope so we don't try shooting for the moon and failing horribly, but keeping realistic to what we can do within the constraints of the next few weeks to have working mutliplayer, even if without mobileAR that we know works.
Hope next week we can show video of prototype submitted for feedback with all the pieces working and know that submission process isn't too buggy. While one of our teammates is out of state we can also make sure we validate all our multiplayer on Rift is working in real time (and not just locally).
We're all about stripping down features and given my confusion about funding and of course, fighting scope creep, and making sure we have all the pieces we need for a successful app.
1) Team update
Philippine government events in SF and Philippines (3 separate events upon launch)
We met up with the Philippine Consulates Consul General Henry Bensurto, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Climate Change Commission (random introduction following our meeting as they are interested in VR and tech apps for climate change), DTI had set up pre-planning with many key stakeholders of the Philippine startup ecosystem to pre-plan events with other key industry leaders in Philippine tech for March (after our release) anticipating we move forward with launching everything on Rift for the program. I learned from Kristian there were Congressional bills that were passed supporting Baybayin and so our project becomes even more significant given that the official policies and bills recognize the preservation of culture and language that has been endangered for quite some time. They pre-planned a small event in March and hope for a larger one (even mentioned Ignite a larger conference) so we can demo for a larger audience, as well as a very first local Bay Area kick off event at the SF Philippine Consulate or Filipino Cultural Center (other FilAm news leaders recommended a larger venue for VR demos and for more media buzz).
One of my team members is a starting new job so it makes it a challenge, but we're working together to make sure everyone's code is on Unity Collaborate to integrate the controller UI, multiplayer (Rift-Rift), with the rest of the story. I've started on the proposal and other marketing materials and will have Kristian take over some of that so I can help out more with technical tasks and overall integration.
2) Technical update
We decided to cut a lot of functionality, and for sound are minimizing it to just a few to make sure they are all the key ones so that the story trigger isn't delayed. I'll also be working on making sure the Avatar SDK works (hands) with the controller band to make sure nothing is too buggy since it's a custom controller that we are mapping our buttons to with the paint.
3) Information Architecture
Getting clear on this is important so we had decided to use the Tutorial/Learn version as our test playground to validate everything and use that to try the submissions to the store make sure it works? I think because of seeing how it was buggy for some other OLP participants to submit, we've cut down the scope of our project a significant amount to make sure whatever we submit we know is fully working and polished.
4) Creative update
Here are screenshots of the story sequence moving forward
Title (from above after these birds)
Here's screenshots of the controller UI and the buttons we stripped down to (we have like 8), and the 4 we want to validate to keep everything to a MVP (Minimal Viable Product) scope so we don't try shooting for the moon and failing horribly, but keeping realistic to what we can do within the constraints of the next few weeks to have working mutliplayer, even if without mobileAR that we know works.
Hope next week we can show video of prototype submitted for feedback with all the pieces working and know that submission process isn't too buggy. While one of our teammates is out of state we can also make sure we validate all our multiplayer on Rift is working in real time (and not just locally).
This week we rigorously tested Wwise Reflect with geometries of different underground environments to see what worked best. We were also able to test out our walking stick mechanic in a more finalized environment, giving some great insight on what works and what doesn't. Complex geometries are challenging for the system, so we are simplifying it a bit. We also started replacing our placeholder objects with the character models and prototyping minimal visual styles using shader graph.
This coming week we will finalize our environment for the prototype submission and test submitting a build it so that if we run into any problems we can get in touch. We will also design and create sound assets for all of the environmental sounds for the prototype.
Small sample of the bobtail squid animation (non-glowing). Really excited it is coming along so well.
I am in the Uk, then in Basque Country the next two weeks; touching base is getting into a rhyrthm - it helps that I am ahead by 11 hours: I can get work done, pose questions, etc. before they are up in Hawai;I - then check back in the next morning and repeat!
Water level had to be scaled back for the demo - apparently it was causing issues. We’ll see if we can add in a few more of the beautiful extras - if not, there’s enough there for the demo level and we’ll focus on it for the full experience.
(Next up - chant and music...)
Have a great week everyone!
I am in the Uk, then in Basque Country the next two weeks; touching base is getting into a rhyrthm - it helps that I am ahead by 11 hours: I can get work done, pose questions, etc. before they are up in Hawai;I - then check back in the next morning and repeat!Water level had to be scaled back for the demo - apparently it was causing issues. We’ll see if we can add in a few more of the beautiful extras - if not, there’s enough there for the demo level and we’ll focus on it for the full experience.
(Next up - chant and music...)
Have a great week everyone!
