This week has left us completely done with art assets and writing, leaving us only to continue iterative playtesting and polishing. Our playtesting found that many players were interested in the narrative, but had more fun when the narrative was just given to them as they were exploring the world that we created instead of being revealed after doing some action. As a result we are going to explore what that looks like in our final playtests, and continue to polish the gameplay.
Here is a quick look at a view of a small part of the level we have been working on:
Good luck to everyone in these final weeks!
Here is a quick look at a view of a small part of the level we have been working on:
Good luck to everyone in these final weeks!
Rashad West
CX Labs
Week 12
Last week during the hurricane I left out of the state of North Carolina to make sure I had power and avoid flooding. During this time I went to NYC and DC to gather some more 360 video and to meet with people in the industry. The pictures below are of Dyckman and Barry Farms famous courts.
We have completed the majority of our build. We have additional features we would like to add now. We are starting to enjoy the process.
We also did some greenscreen work along with incorporating some motion capture into our experience.
It was difficult getting back home with all of the cancellations but I made it. We hope to get everything finished up this week for our project.
Thanks,
Rashad
CX Labs
Week 12
Last week during the hurricane I left out of the state of North Carolina to make sure I had power and avoid flooding. During this time I went to NYC and DC to gather some more 360 video and to meet with people in the industry. The pictures below are of Dyckman and Barry Farms famous courts.
We have completed the majority of our build. We have additional features we would like to add now. We are starting to enjoy the process.
We also did some greenscreen work along with incorporating some motion capture into our experience.
It was difficult getting back home with all of the cancellations but I made it. We hope to get everything finished up this week for our project.
Thanks,
Rashad
Hello again Folks,
This has been a productive week of development on my project BHX1619.
Goals Completed
- Play Test.Play Test. Play Test
- Debug. Upload a build
- Refine mechanics and puzzles
- Record final character VO
Test promo material of a key character from my project
Goals for week 13
- Play Test.Play Test. Play Test
- Refine UI design
- Refine mechanics and puzzles
- Cleanup character VO
- Upload a build
Good luck on your projects beautiful people!
Good morning!
Marlon and I are making the final touches of our VR Tropical Realidad prototype, as our experience will be ready for testing very shortly.
We're adding background context (i.e. additional subway characters) & finalizing sound effects for our piece.
Flying dinosaurs & creatures, as well as narration from our alebrije, will really give it a Hans Christian Andersen vibe as she moves around the world.
Look forward to seeing you all at OC5, and showing people a glimpse of our experience!
Best,
Marlon and I are making the final touches of our VR Tropical Realidad prototype, as our experience will be ready for testing very shortly.
We're adding background context (i.e. additional subway characters) & finalizing sound effects for our piece.
Flying dinosaurs & creatures, as well as narration from our alebrije, will really give it a Hans Christian Andersen vibe as she moves around the world.
Look forward to seeing you all at OC5, and showing people a glimpse of our experience!
Best,
Image: Some prototype 3D art created by our 3D modeller Virginia (please ignore floor textures :), with some outlined-when-selected checkpoints placed within. The "Roseland Theatre" in Desmond's story is starting to come together very nicely.
Introduction
This past two weeks have been bringing everything to a focus point that exhibits our "experience loop" to make it easy for Oculus to see the potential in our proposal, as well as its intent for the future. Unfortunately two tornados hit our city this weekendand so some of our content-creators are without power for another day or two. Fortunately none of our living spaces had been destroyed; but our hearts go out to those that have been more critically affected.
Past
The front-end is is mostly complete with some fine-tuning of user flow and design to be done yet. Our back-end appears to be solid with only a few features left to implement. 3D Content is coming along nicely; and starting to finally nail out some WebVR interactions that will help make this easy to use for anyone.
Present
Within the front-end design Tetsuro is doing a great job - we are just about there. I have also moved our remote system to our new domain for "circles" and it is mostly just fine-tuning user flow and design now. Within the back-end Grant is working hard on getting our system for inviting others to form a "group" that can traverse worlds together i.e. "creating the classroom". We are hopeful we can get it done for the prototype.
With our content-creation Virginia is doing a wonderful job in making our concepts for Viola Desmond's worlds stronger; and I am extremely pleased that my old cello teacher, friend, and spectacular musical engineer Kirk Starkeywants to help out in the sound area. Sound is such an important part of any VR experience, particularly one where we are trying to create worlds that feel "lived-in"; but I haven't had the ability to focus on it just yet. With Kirk in though, I have no doubt that we will have some spectacular ambience and foley for the final product. At the very least, we want to show intent and with someone like Kirk helping out we are showing the amazing talent that wants to help this project succeed.
On the WebVR end I have been focusing on building a system of interactions that will help define the intent and scope of our "experience/game loop". This includes creating a system that takes into account best practices for VR, especially when working with users that have likely not used it before (i.e. students and teachers). For example, creating system for checkpoints and teleporting, as well as outlining during select to make selection state obvious, across desktop, mobile, and the OculusGO seen below (definitely inspired by the Oculus Education team's non-social "Breaking Boundaries in Science"experience for the GO). It is interesting that the closer I get to what we want to show the more anxious I get about showing it ...
https://twitter.com/PlumCantaloupe/status/1042465926912700416
https://twitter.com/PlumCantaloupe/status/1044243847860051968
Future
These last two weeks will be crucial for creating an experience that the Oculus team can easily digest understand, and believe in. I do believe that it will be challenging showcasing both a WebVR and multiplayer experience as it will be a bit trickier to make sure we submit correctly, and that the Oculus team can easily test; but I am confident that the pay-off should be worth it. All types of VR development have a place; but when it comes to creating something more accessible within educational spaces WebVR seems the only logical choice, especially when the amazing Oculus browserand Firefox Realitybring together VR and the 2D web almost seamlessly. We are not building for today we are building for the near-future. To quote one of the most famous Canadians, and likely one of his most over-used quotes 🙂 ...
"Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been"
- Wayne Gretzky
Despite losing my computer for most of last week (or maybe because of it?) I managed to get most of what I wanted done for prototype review (except for all the bugs!) Having no physical way to work on the game meant I really had to plan things out to not waste time. You don't always have time to slow down and reorganize in the middle of production so it was interesting to have that opportunity forced on me. I ended up drafting a lot of scripts by hand first, which I've never done before. It gave me a good high level understanding of exactly what needed to get done, and where the priorities needed to be.
I currently have the bare minimum I wanted to implement as a proof of concept, which is: The first week in the "conveyor belts" scene (there isn't a conveyor belt at the moment so I guess that's weird,) where you read approved reading materials and destroy unapproved ones.
An intro scene in the inspectors office where you receive a letter stating the purpose of the game, and put on goggles to enter VR.
And after completing the task, you are sent to the station where you can talk to NPCs and explore the area in between weeks. That is the most bare-bones area right now, but it currently shows you the current date, has a bed to sleep in to pass the time, and a "transporter" to start each weeks activity. There's also one NPC there currently who will offer you an Immigrant's handbook. That doesn't do anything yet, but ultimately talking to NPCs will further their storylines each week, and modify gameplay in small ways e.g. having a handbook that makes the next week easier. I have a high level concept of the NPCs I want, to get a range of how the system affects different types of people. How their storylines end up being implemented week to week is going to tie very closely into the gameplay decisions.
Of course, making use of the extra time I scheduled and trying to get everything in for prototype review lead to a very buggy mess on the Go when I finally exported. A lot of the shaders didn't work so those might not get in, and the application load time is about twenty seconds, which is unacceptable I may have to abandon dynamically loading textures, which I think might actually be fine once I know the finite number of assets I'd need. I thought I'd need it in order to have all the writing I wanted, but I had to replace those with text on a canvas anyway (looks worse but doesn't cause a drop in frames when they're updated), so right now it's more useful in being able to iterate quickly. Most of the bugs actually seemed to be caused by me misunderstanding OVRInput, so that's my first priority. Once the major issues have been resolved, I plan to add some more art assets to the station and conveyor belts scene, and then I'm not entirely sure what the best use of my time would be.
Possible things I'd like to have in before Oct. 7th:
Easy things
More art assets for station and conveyor belts scene
an NPC model that's not just a capsule
Hard things
2nd week of content that introduces the writing mechanic
NPC storylines develop from week to week
"Scanning" an NPC to bring up their files in the inspector scene, then stealing their points for your own use or helping them to further their storylines.
I currently have the bare minimum I wanted to implement as a proof of concept, which is: The first week in the "conveyor belts" scene (there isn't a conveyor belt at the moment so I guess that's weird,) where you read approved reading materials and destroy unapproved ones.
An intro scene in the inspectors office where you receive a letter stating the purpose of the game, and put on goggles to enter VR.
And after completing the task, you are sent to the station where you can talk to NPCs and explore the area in between weeks. That is the most bare-bones area right now, but it currently shows you the current date, has a bed to sleep in to pass the time, and a "transporter" to start each weeks activity. There's also one NPC there currently who will offer you an Immigrant's handbook. That doesn't do anything yet, but ultimately talking to NPCs will further their storylines each week, and modify gameplay in small ways e.g. having a handbook that makes the next week easier. I have a high level concept of the NPCs I want, to get a range of how the system affects different types of people. How their storylines end up being implemented week to week is going to tie very closely into the gameplay decisions.
Of course, making use of the extra time I scheduled and trying to get everything in for prototype review lead to a very buggy mess on the Go when I finally exported. A lot of the shaders didn't work so those might not get in, and the application load time is about twenty seconds, which is unacceptable I may have to abandon dynamically loading textures, which I think might actually be fine once I know the finite number of assets I'd need. I thought I'd need it in order to have all the writing I wanted, but I had to replace those with text on a canvas anyway (looks worse but doesn't cause a drop in frames when they're updated), so right now it's more useful in being able to iterate quickly. Most of the bugs actually seemed to be caused by me misunderstanding OVRInput, so that's my first priority. Once the major issues have been resolved, I plan to add some more art assets to the station and conveyor belts scene, and then I'm not entirely sure what the best use of my time would be.
Possible things I'd like to have in before Oct. 7th:
Easy things
More art assets for station and conveyor belts scene
an NPC model that's not just a capsule
Hard things
2nd week of content that introduces the writing mechanic
NPC storylines develop from week to week
"Scanning" an NPC to bring up their files in the inspector scene, then stealing their points for your own use or helping them to further their storylines.
Hi Everyone,
This week I'm coming down to the wire putting together our prototype. I originally wanted to do a 360 filming to submit however when Launchpad rules were announced, we couldn't submit a prototype with a link which meant my CTO and I have to battle Unity.
For our prototype, we are attempting to build a VR classroom to start and stop each 360 experience. I want to use a college classroom since most students have never seen one.
Wish us luck!
Last--
I'm super excited b/c my outreach is paying off and schools are finally using our EdTech VR & 360 resources in their classrooms. Below is a picture sent to me by a teacher in VA.
This week I'm coming down to the wire putting together our prototype. I originally wanted to do a 360 filming to submit however when Launchpad rules were announced, we couldn't submit a prototype with a link which meant my CTO and I have to battle Unity.
For our prototype, we are attempting to build a VR classroom to start and stop each 360 experience. I want to use a college classroom since most students have never seen one.
Wish us luck!Last--
I'm super excited b/c my outreach is paying off and schools are finally using our EdTech VR & 360 resources in their classrooms. Below is a picture sent to me by a teacher in VA.