Week 2: Oculus Launch Pad 2018 - Due July 16 @ 11am PST

[Anonymous]

Please share your update by July 16th. Please note that no late exceptions will be made. If you have any challenges posting, please send an email to launchpad@oculus.com. Paste/Copy submissions via email are not accepted. 

Lets see what you are all up to! 

[QuixoticHero]

I'm going to go ahead and post my Development vLog for the week. In the video, I wanted to quickly go over a solid concept, the tasks that were completed, the refocusing on a simpler story, and a general task list for the next weekend. 

A link to the video:
https://youtu.be/T2XBjJU7Z6I

I quickly went over the high concept in the video, so here's the whole version in text. Some of it may change based on the locomotion. 


Blue Yonder Falls - Overview:

Blue Yonder Falls is a VR Second Person Platform Shooter, that focuses on intense hand coordination as you guide you rocketeer through waves of bullets. As you are a kid holding an action figure, you’re letting your imagination take control of the adventures that unfold before you. A growing up tale about learning to live with adventure, and creating those moments with your friends.

As there is a story to be told though the circumstances of life, nothing is better than an over exaggerated tale of a grandfather reminiscing about his past from when he was a jet fighter, “like a rocket strapped to my back”. The grandfather’s grandson, Morgan, with a highly active imagination begins to think that he has a generations of rocketeers in his family tree. Thus the tall tales spread, and in one little residential court Morgan’s friends joins the fray with their own action figures in hand to protect their realm of creation.

As you’re Morgan, living his adventures through his action figure, you would be moving around Morgan and his friend's residential court. From the beginning, the enemies will surround you from the sides as you the player face the middle of the court. You will be able to see where the enemies are coming from based on this circular track. As the story progresses, the levels will reflect the mood of the main character, Morgan, from the level being packed with enemies to where the level itself is the enemy.

[Anonymous]

Week 2 Developer Blog

I've got my storyboards completed (old fashion paper & pen), chose a relevant title, setup the Oculus Store listing and finalized the tech stack decisions. 

I setup my laptop for the development so I can work on this during my travels for client work too.  I got through the weirdness of learning how to build / compile for Oculus Go and started developing my project in Unity3D.

My project is focused on putting viewers into a unique pleasant VR Environ that is best described as Indiginous Futurism.  I'm enjoying an organic creative process while figuring out how to get my Onkwehonwehneha AI bot(s) into the environment. 

I prefer to announce the title and environment details after they are built out and available to download as alpha or maybe even wait until it goes into beta phase. I want to do this because it's always been a memorable pleasant experience when Bam! something unique & wonderful appears out of nowhere & available for me to experience (Avatar movie was like that for me > I had no idea it was being made before I saw the public trailers).   

I would like to create that same pleasant wonderful surprise for anyone that stumbles on this piece of work. I will say it is like an Innocent Pure Love Note to the Universe at this time. I'm bringing the best I have to share at this time to the table and enjoying the process of creating a unique pleasant VR Experience for future Oculus Go users.

Here is a picture of the regalia that some women in my community wear for ceremonies, special events and just because it feels fabulous to be covered in flowers & symbols from our beautiful Americus Empire Woodlands. This is what I typically see during my lifetime and it does influence my work as a software architect, endangered language revival activist and now VR Producer.  I grew up learning how to bead with specific stories behind each symbol, specific numbers of beads in specific numbers of circles for each symbol and specific stories told in Kanienkeha are related to each symbol.  

After I posted this, I notice under my post it says "Current Project: Father Sun VR" 🙂  That is the project I am working on with the Oculus Start Program, so I will not be submitting it for the Oculus LaunchPad program because I already put it in alpha before our OLP Bootcamp in Menlo Park.  

[abaraka]

Hi Everyone,
I have been making myself crazy with camera tests around VR cameras. It might be super ambitious but I would like to create a 360 3D cinematic experience. With that comes questions about where to put lighting and how to create depth. Additionally, I have to answer questions about if movement is possible. 
So, I have be testing a ton of VR cameras both stereo and mono. I've been testing movement. I have not had the opportunity to test painting equipment out because post is not my strength. I would love to collaborate with someone here about this. Knowledge is power. We can collaborate to make even better content.
Best,
Ayana ayanabaraka@gmail.com

[ladykillmonger]

Week 2 Developer Blog

EDIT:
**I was unable to get access before 11AM last week so please refer to prior post**
**Posting this early to ensure the deadline isn't missed..correcting for typos*** 

Team: Jasmine Roberts, Kanu Jason Kanu, Katherine Mimnaugh

Intended Weekly Deliverables: Crafting storyboards, Narrative Development, Networking Framework, UI Design Board (quickly done and subject to change after completed prototype.) 

Concept: The concept of our application is primarily to facilitate non-physical emotional relationships. Currently, most dating applications are for lack of a better term centered on "hook-up" culture and the transience of a person's physicality.  The prevalence of mobile devices  has led to an emotional stagnation in communication. Our application seeks to reimagine communication as a visceral experience. This experience will leverage multi-user communication and other personal modalities aside from physical identity. It is our belief that having stylized human-like avatars does not facilitate empathetic communication and that presence can be invoked through other means like voice. 

The ultimate endeavor is to build an experience in which users are connecting with one another not through their physicality, credentials, or embodied avatars, but through empathy and shared experience. 

User Flow: The user is in an experience with another user with whom they are matched. Both users enter a shared virtual reality experience (game).  As they are completing the game together a series of questions for them to answer appear. Note that ideally there are multiple experiences (games) the user can enter---we are only prototyping one of these experiences

Design: Currently building the environmental design for one of the experiences. This environment will be highly stylized. We figure it is best to get the environmental design out of the way in the beginning so we are not obsessed with polishing it later on as the networking will be the primary challenge.  

Networking: Designed a matching algorithm that pairs users based on interests and gender identities. Debating whether or not to use Photon for the back-end. Most likely will...this would be ideal to integrate via the web in the Facebook platform. 


tldr; thinking about MULTI-USER COMMUNICATION + creating ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN + tying it to EMPATHY + testing in VR   

[shashkes]

Super excited to report we got a back end up and running and can now send our movements between two users anywhere in the world!!!
In the video we show you the demo and explain a bit about the different GameSparks possibilities for sending data and why we chose what we did.





You can also check out our patreon for more:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/20057322

[asierarranz]

Hi Launchpaders!!

After expending two weeks trying different concepts with a Flight Simulator, MMORPG and a volumetric video experience, I have focused into an underwater experience. Why? Cause the current limitation we have in the Field Of View with VR Glasses is actually a feature when you are scuba diving, cause it increases your feeling of being wearing glasses.

The initial idea will be an adventure game with different unexpected experiences, from rescues to treasures and probably some surprises involving mermaids with no so good intentions, so I would like to keep this game balanced between the exploring and horror-games area.

The second phase will be a MMO, but I would like to focus first in the Single Player experience.


A lot of work to be done yet! But excited about having a focus!

Looking for advisors for the project, and I am happy to advise you too!!

[asierarranz]

Hi Launchpaders!!

I am excited to share that finally I have a focus! This always has been very difficult for me cause I like to create almost any ind of experiences!

So after prototyping a Flight Simulator, a MMORPG and exploring the possibility of making a volumetric video, I have decided to make an underwater game for Oculus Go, and why? Cause the Field Of View of the VR Glasses is usually a limitation, but in this case it is a feature, cause it simulates very well the real FOV scuba glasses have.

The game will try to be realistic in some way, being an adventure+horror/surprises game where you will need to do some kind of rescues, find treasures, ancient relics, and maybe some surprises involving non very friendly mermaids...

So excited to have the focus! 

Cause one of the goals of this program is to encourage collaboration with each others, I am looking for advisors for my game, and I am offering my advising too in any kind of experience you have!

Best regards, and hope you like my first approach!

<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fw52cVcXCaM" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>

[meredithwilson]

Week 2 Dev Blog

Hi Everyone!

Preproduction for my Rift FPS is going swimmingly with the exception of me waiting for my new computer and OLP Rift to arrive. In the mean time I’ve been working with my concept artist and 3D modeler to come up with some great alpha builds for the “good guy” aliens and “bad guy” aliens of our game. Below are some pics of our concept art and hand models (plus a bad guy head). Earlier this week my producer asked me to put together a list of needs, i.e. things we absolutely need to complete our launchpad demo, and stretch goals, i.e. things that we’d make if we had all of the time and money in the world. With this plus a dependency graph of everyone working on the game he’ll put together our production schedule. Hopefully we’ll be able to stick to it and he will continue to make order out of the chaos I give him.

While waiting for my dev computer, I’ve been putting together a shopping list for the Unity asset store. For quick and fairly polished looking terrains that are VR compatible I’m opting for Gaia and Gena, and for FPS mechanics I’m using UFPS which has a really good reputation and has been used in an number of successful indie games such as “Gone Home”. Our more complicated enemy AI will be handled by Tactical Shooter AI since it it supports UFPS integration and has everything we need in terms of enemy behavior. They’re not the cheapest assets but in the grand scheme of things they’re much less expensive than contracting the work out. This coming week I’ll be working on level design, figuring out the pacing of the gameplay.

Until next week!

P.S. I’m also happy to announce that my long time friend Evan Hedges from SYFY’s Face Off will be joining us as a character designer and 3D modeler 🙂

[thegladscientis]

Week 2 Blog: Supergroup Assemble!

Locations: Berlin

Team Building

Early in the week I was able to skype with Jan and Tinah, an absolutely incredible blind couple from the Netherlands. We discussed in detail their past work creating immersive experiences, the kinds of scenarios they had been creating, their audio techniques for spatialization and what worked and what didn't in their context, and also how the process was received by their audiences. I also went over the project in detail and described what I want to achieve by enabling visually-impaired creators and invited them to come on as co-authors for this experience. Long story short, they accepted, and I have booked a flight to meet them in person and experience their work at the end of week 3!

A couple hours later I was able to sync with Kedar in between his flights to an international singing competition, and the conversation went somewhat similarly. Man, he has so much insight on building this kind of experience from scratch from his past work with Blackout VR and seems to understand all of the pitfalls...and also all of the correct and innovative ways to implement ingenious spatial audio. We were upfront and honest about budgets, payouts, and also about the kind of role he would want to play (he is commonly in Wwise arranging and implementing sounds, but wants to be more creative and design sounds as well for the project, which I 100% respect). We synced later in the week about budgeting and project management details, and clarified everything else, and I am so happy that he is down for the cause. 

Research

Much of my research this week was related to UX design and implementation for this kind of sound-first, minimal visual approach to VR. While I have pages and pages of it, I'm trying to keep the sharing succinct here. To summarize, the research branched into a few areas: architecture design, sound as a tool of vibratory disruption, and affect and its meaning.




Opportunities Ahead

At the end of the week, I had a great call with the curator for Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier, and shared with him the project. He was very excited about it and our conversation could not have been more positive. 

More updates coming next week!