Hello Everyone!
There has been
considerable reflection this week on how the OLP program has been such a
blessing for our family.
Angela and I have
been working on our game studio for a few years, navigating the unique benefits
and challenges of working at home with young children. This has created a
unique teaching dynamic that we have found beneficial for their education.
It's not too big of
a surprise that they have developed a big interest in programming, making apps
and VR development. They have amazing ideas, like most children, their
imagination is without bounds so when they brainstorm VR ideas, the ideas are
limitless.
Our daughters are
free to develop in Unity right alongside us which we think is wonderful!
We would like to
introduce you to our 9 year old daughter, Yeva, who may just be the youngest VR developer in history 🙂
This is her virtual
reality experience where she created a virtual reality Doodle for the Doodle 4
Google contest. It's a 35ft
playground and rock wall that's climbable in VR. She decided to build this
because she wanted a rock wall but we had nowhere to build one - so she created
one in VR.
As for our project
this week, we've been discussing marketing of the app. The Tech Talk on
Friday was particularly inspiring, we thought the discussion was so helpful for
our process. It's interesting to find the balance between having as many users
as possible through a free model while also finding a way to make a living.
Surf's Up!
Keith "At The
Beach" Patterson
"Make Every Day A Beach Day!"
Week 3: VR Sea Legs
Our goal for VR Sea Legs is to be the first VR game you play after introductory Oculus apps like First Contact. To make spaces for players to interact with, we’ll need to start with level design.
Design of the first level in our game is critical to the success of this project - this will, ideally, be one of our users’ first experiences of movement in VR. We’ll also be introducing the user to new concepts, such as “grab and throw,” UI interactions, crafting, and weapon mechanics.
Level 1 Goal: Introduce a movement system in a comfortable setting to build the user’s VR movement experience base.
In the first level, our user will:
Learn grounded movement;
Use a dialog to interact with game characters;
Complete a quest;
Perform simple material interactions.
We will teach them to use the movement system though fetch quests and crafting quests, creating situations to focus the user’s attention and develop flow as the intensity of the movement experience increases.
Production Status: We’re currently blocking out the first level (and later levels, so we get a jump on development for those). The setup for the first level is surprisingly breathtaking, even with the stand-in elements. We’re planning the quests that will take you up the hill and through the city.
The art direction for this area is PBR stylized, a bit on the cartoonier side, along the lines of games like Overwatch and Fortnite.This first area is a seaside town, featuring some models from a game concept of ours called Dragontooth Island.
These models are older versions and will need to be reworked to fit VR style, as they were originally created for mobile. You can check out some of these models here on Sketchfab:
https://sketchfab.com/3lbgames/collections/dragontooth-isle
Up next... the Lab!
Neil D. Short
OLP18: Week 3
Project Title: Adventures of PICL Jones
Type: VR Game
Genre: Comedy/Adventure, Sci-Fi/Western
After handing off descriptions to our concept artist, the
writing teams continued working on the design document and outlines for an intro
and two scenes. After considering the scope of our story and the requirements
for the prototype, we decided to scale down to just the intro and first scene.
I promoted one concept artist to art director and added an
additional concept artist to the team. They will begin character and location
art next week and I’m looking forward to including their work in the design
document.
Conversations are currently underway with a rigger and
animators and next week will be a big push to recruit Unity developers. I’m in
the process of securing mocap facilities and I have booked an actor to play one
of the alien characters.
We are also working on what mechanic to use for our
emotion/language system. We’re brainstorming options and are currently thinking
of a wrist-worn device (like a Ben-10 watch) with emogies for the player to
select. We plan on keeping the choices limited for the prototype.
Hi everyone!
I’ve been off the grid for half of this week since I’m currently out of the country without my VR laptop since Thursday and returning Monday. However, I do want to share the user flow for EmpowHER VR to show how we are setting up our users to understand the different parts of self-defense and how we are gradually introducing the concepts to them from practice modes to higher fidelity. The goal is to prevent emotionally overwhelming the users, especially if they’ve experienced any sort of trauma in their past.
My team is building multiple environments for the experience, which includes locations assaults can happen: 1. Parking garage 2. Bedroom 3. Kitchen 4. Office. To add a layer of control for the user, we are allowing them to select their environment for each exercise. Next steps for this coming week is to get all the assets for each of the scenes prepared to be placed in them and gather a list of scripts for the user to say in the verbal module.
Double Eye - WEEK 3
We have now worked with another set of actors: Will Sturdivant and Jake Ford. These actors chose to work with classical text; William Shakespeare’s great tragedy Julius Caesar. This scene could not have been farther in style from the contemporary scene Cheney and Tendler performed; this was a scene of heightened drama.
The scene Sturdivant and Ford chose is between the characters Brutus and Cassius (Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene 3). This scene runs the gamut of extreme emotions with the climax when Cassius’ offers up his own dagger and willingly exposes his chest to his dear friend Brutus.
Backstory: Brutus and Cassius joined forces commanding troops to kill Julius Caesar. In this scene there are accusations of bribery, questions of morals and at the root of everything is the loyalty of their friendship. The scene concludes with Brutus revealing that his wife Portia has killed herself.
We ran actors Sturdivant and Ford through a series of art styles and the actors did an excellent job keeping their energy high through this very tense scene.
