Week 3: Oculus Launch Pad 2018 - Due July 23 @ 11am PST

[Anonymous]

Week#2 had some really interesting updates. Keep going on the updates they look great. Keep in mind only 2 paragraphs are necessary with a few pictures, anything above that and you are killing it. We do not give points on blogpost but they are required for the program. Please add your post by adding a "COMMENT" below. Have an awesome week! 

[EVExactly]

This week I began working on the set of items that my player would find in the main character's closet as well as the possible interactions that one would have with the items. Some ideas I've been mulling over: 

a stuffed animal of a distinctive fictional character that is made up for the world of my game, the player can press its tummy and it will say a variety of phrases

a TuTu that is iridiscent and the player is able to put it on and spin around

a Choo Choo Train that the player can place on floor and move by drawing a path for it

a deck of trading cards for an in-game Pokemon-esque game that are animated and move around when the player looks at them

a "journal" that is filled with non-sense language that shifts and changes as the player holds the book

I also am starting to nail down the "mood" of the phase of the game I am planning to finish for the prototype. I want all the art to appear as if from a child's perspective and will likely be trying to use a cel-shaded approach for this effect. I don't want things to seem realistic and want to think more about how to capture a child's perspective. I am still hoping to do my initial feedback session and asking folks about how they think children might perceive the world. 

Next week I need to continue poking around with the environment I am building in Unity and consulting some friends about building out art as well as potentially smoothing out my code. I am nervous, but plodding ahead.

[marmishurenko]

Hello! This is Maria and Gordey!
This week we made a main gameplay loop and tested it at the Thursday playtest at NYU. General reception was very nice. We got about 15 playtesters, almost all children and only one person said that the game sucked :smile: It's a good percentage for young testers!
Also we might have an extra support — one of the NY community leaders, Playcrafting want us to show the prototype at their upcoming game convention to entertain kids!
Another experiment with painting and UI is currently on hold. We'll see what the future brings :smile:

[ortht]

Hello, I hope everyone had a great weekend. I just got back from the Chicago XR Summit and had a really great time! Got to meet a lot a great people working in VR and catch up with friends who are doing some really cool stuff. One of the things I was most impressed with was this game someone was showing off that featured full body estimation for VR. That was the first time I have seen such a thing and I thought it was pretty neat that they could do such a thing without dedicated tracking equipment.  Also a first for me was someone that I had never met before complimenting me on one of my 360 videos I had previously posted, so that was really cool. All in all it was a great event, definitely the biggest in Chicago so far, and it is great to see the community growing. It was sponsored by HTC and Microsoft which leads me to ask, Where U at Oculus? 🙂 JK and in all seriousness on the way to the event I actually saw a very prominent billboard advertising the Oculus Go, so in any way, shape or form it is good to see VR making an impact in this part of the world. As for my project I have started doing some camera tests streaming through different services to test their quality. Streaming is still new to me so doing the most I can with limited bandwidth will definitely be a challenge and figuring out how to distribute and promote the stream is still on my list of things to do.

[nicole_babos]

Blog
Post # 3

This week I worked on finalizing all the textures for the
hospital scene. I completed normal maps, ambient occlusion maps, and color
maps. Then I compressed them all into one file and imported into Unity. The
scene is looking good and I’m ready to move on to texturing the next scene.

 

Here is a picture of the hospital room with all the textures
applied. In the bottom left corner is the picture from last week, where it was
grayscale for comparison.

All that is left for this scene is to add the two characters
– the father and the daughter. Both have been modeled but they need to be
animated and fully textured. Texturing them is on my to-do list for next week.
My partner has been doing some animation and has been chugging away at
modeling. Our goal is to have the hospital scene finalized and one (hopefully two) memories finalized for the mid-point check-in. 

Here is a screenshot of the interaction objects for the
hospital scene. These objects are ones the player can interact with in order to
view a memory.

[lildub]

Character Conceptualizing -Oculus Launchpad Week 3 

REFLECTION ON THE PROGRAM

Since the Weekend Event

I was online for this week’s presentation It gave me a lot to think about, and I came away from it wandering about about how to market our experience, and find our audience to let them know it exists. While it’s still early, I feel strongly that our team hs a strong concept that well executed could create a really unique experience for participants, one that would be difficult to have in a medium other than VR.

PROJECT UPDATES

DEVELOPING THE CONCEPT

Now that we have a clear sense of the overall concept we began to focus on developing different aspects of it as well as how they will interact to create an integrated experience.

Character Design

Over the course of the week our Character Designer Oona Holtane completed several iterations of explorations of the character of the young girl. After she worked in parallel on three different design directions for a round or two we all agree on which of one of the characters stood out the most. Oona then completed a further round of refinements of the character that was selected.

At the same time Oona also managed to share early developmental sketches for the character of the cat. One stood out immediately, and she quickly followed up with a more detailed design based on the initial rough images. She did several poses for our Modeler Kyle Houseman who completed his work in a few days. Kyle passed off his completed model of the cat to Character Rigger Michael Schabbing who has started rigging the cat.

Environment Design

Riley Frambes our Environment Concept Artist completed the first illustrations of the child’s bedroom based on the design constraints he was given. Riley found a number of ways to further elevate the concept by making additions that followed from the design that we hadn’t spoken about when we handed offed the materials. It was exciting to see.

By Riley Frambles 

By Riley Frambles

Systems Design

The development team, Hector Manual, Joshua Chang, Roberto Rodriguez and J. Humberto Arriaga have met and talked about the flowchart of the experience, assigned follow up tasks, and are in the process of writing the code for the introductory tutorial, and testing it with placeholder animations.

ORGANIZING THE PROJECT

The systems set up in previous weeks for tracking work on the project, and coordinating and collaborating between team members in their various roles continue to be helpful. As we add additional team members and are further along in the development of the prototype we look for ways to make better use of them, or shift how we use them to accommodate the different needs of the people working on the project.

BUILDING THE TEAM

We added one additional person to our team since last week, Mario Gomez. Mario who is originally from Mexico currently lives in Seattle, Washington where he works as a dramaturg. The focus of Mario’s work on the project will be to offer a first-person perspective and conduct additional research as necessary on the culture of Mexico.

Thank you,

Lou + The Tinker Studio Team

[Russian_Nun]

Devblog #3

• Project Title: Kitten Cannon
• Type: VR Game
• Genre: Comedy/Sci-Fi

I'm getting better and better at balancing my full-time work and the project. 🙂 :#

This week I still worked at the concept art of weapons and sent my sketches to 3d modeller, and he has already started working on the 3d models.

I also start working on the  characters and developing the characters in Maya, for me it’s an easy way to see the shape and contour  of the future character.

https://youtu.be/wPqQ89lAZpI

About the style of the game I don't want things to seem realistic and want to make between cartoonish and illustration style.

Next week I’m planning to start 

• blocking out the first level

• building the prototype.

• UI/UX

• working on scenario for tutorial.

[charlesniu]

Developer Blog #4: Prototyping Music Mountain

Hello Launchpad!

Last week I discussed pivoting in a new direction - combining rhythm matching with climbing. This week I have a prototype that I've been demoing with to see whether or not folks would find it "fun." I call it the Music Mountain prototype - here's a short vid:


 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk7rYRFzhhI


 Additionally I worked on a new UI system using the Oculus Avatar SDK to make my tutorial clearer. I really like how springy it is! Here's a gif:




I've got more information about the Music Mountain prototype and I'm also sharing the code for how to do the springy UI tags in this week's Medium blog - give it a look! https://medium.com/@projectlocomoto/developer-blog-4-music-mountain-ac38d629e828

[Russian_Nun]

Devlog #3

Project Title: Kitten Cannon

Type: VR Game

Genre: Comedy/Sci-Fi

I'm getting better and better at balancing my full-time work and the project. 🙂

This week I still worked at the concept art of weapons and sent my sketches to 3d modeller, and he has already started working on the 3d models.

I also start working on the  characters and developing the characters in Maya, for me it’s an easy way to see the shape and contour  of the future character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPqQ89lAZpI&feature=youtu.be

About the style of the game I don't want things to seem realistic and want to make between cartoonish and illustration style.

Next week I’m planning to start

• blocking out the first level

• building the prototype.

• UI/UX

• working on scenario for tutorial.

[Kaley_Cho]

WEEK 3 (7/16-7/23)

Pre-production

• Wrote script for SC2

Production

• Modeled Quama

• Modeled Clock tower v02

• Drew turnarounds for the buildings of SC2

• Designed Mr.Gloomy

• Animated Idle animation for Mil

• Rigged Loxa

• Voice recorded SC1, SC2, and SC3

• Edited the sound effects, ambient sound, and voice recording

• Modeled the base environment for SC3

• Designed the Entrance Gate for SC1

Engineering

• Completed locomotion mechanics

For this week, we managed to complete all the scripts that will be needed to create a prototype and started voice recording the dialogues. We completed scene 1, 2, and 3 with the help of some amazing voice actors. I’ve been editing all the recorded dialogues and also sound effects that will used in the game.

Other than the audio, our 3D artists continued with modeling Quama and the second version of the clock tower. I’ve been also modeling the base environment for SC3 that is called the Aqua Jungle, and designed the Entrance Gate for SC1. Our concept artist drew turnarounds for the building designs from last week to give a detailed image for the 3D modelers. She also completed designing a character named Mr. Gloomy. Our animator is currently working on the idle animation for Mil, and started using the new Loxa rig. For engineering, our engineers completed the locomotion system for the game and will now work on the interaction mechanics for next week!

These are some of our work from this week:

[VRolga]

This week the main area of work was the actual prototype and the game design document. After brainstorming ideas we created 2 scenes for main locomotion and interaction. First, we decided to concentrate on the player locomotion and pet moving mechanics, leash functionality, hands, pick and throw motion and few other interactions to make sure it’s all comfortable and fun for players.

I also started working on a new concept for the characters to test 2 different styles in order to find out which one do people actually prefer. Below is one version, the second version is in-progress and will be smooth in style. The current version is low-poly.

https://vimeo.com/260197909

https://vimeo.com/260197918

Below is the part of the board from the brainstorming session with my team.