Week 6 : Oculus Launch Pad 2018 - Due Aug 13 @ 11am PST

[Anonymous]

Looking forward to seeing those updates! 

[charlesniu]

Project Locomoto Development Blog #7:
Updated Website and Mission

Hello Launchpad,

This week's work has been most visible in the branding/ideation department. In the effort to complete the midpoint checkin, I answered a lot of questions for myself about the mission of my game and my goals in this industry in general. I also experimented with some cool potential aesthetic directions for Cosmonote, which I used to guide my redesign of the website. Here's my new website header (will continue to iterate on the design as I go, but to me it's good enough for a temp placeholder at least!):



You can check out the website here: https://www.projectlocomoto.com/
Let me know if you have any feedback on the design/layout!

No gameplay video this week. I've started refactoring to allow for some more robust mechanics I want to add, based on testing feedback I've gathered this past week. Hopefully I'll be able to show off what I've been cooking next week!

You can read more about my thoughts behind the designs as well as what my defined mission for Project Locomoto is in this week's Medium blog update: https://medium.com/@projectlocomoto/developer-blog-7-updated-website-and-mission-4eaf925c09aa

See you all next week,

Charles Niu

[MichaelAdrian]

BUMPS IN THE ROAD

Despite the best-laid plans of content creators, inevitable there will be something that goes way off the rail. I guess it was my turn this week. I simultaneously lost both UNITY Developers as well as one actor. The developers (a brother-sister team) decided to drop out after realizing they would be under the same contractual agreement as everyone else on the team. No one gets paid unless we all do. That’s what being a part of a team is about. We rise and or fall as one. I’m am on the hunt in earnest again.

The actor dropped due to apprehension on their part that SAG-AFTRA would approve the paperwork in a timely fashion. I completely understood and was actually the one who made her aware. Luckily the process of auditioning affords the option of a lot of backups. This should not be a problem.

On other fronts, we have a bit of great art being cranked out by some great artists and by using some amazing assets. 

We begin rehearsing today August 13th, and we have almost secured locations for the scheduled principal photography. I received 3 different pieces of music for three different sections of the film from a great composer Joanna Karselis which have inspired little tweaks to the film. I have called scheduled this week to possibly bring on board if not sponsors at least those who will help with the marketing of the project by lending their name and contact lists. Also, we have some more camera tests as well as some MistikaVR play, taking place today and Friday which will likely determine the final script adjustments.

Bumpy rides lead to smooth landings in great destinations.

[Anonymous]

After some consultation help and gathering some quotes, I've got my business plan and budget together for the mid-point check-in! Making a game with a team is expensive; however, the people that I've contacted are excited about the vision and want to make it work!

I've arrived home from one event, and am ramping up for two more. I'm going to speak at PAX Dev on some tips on showing a game at PAX as an indie on a budget (Panel: Booth Builders 2: Eclectic Boothaglo). Then, I'll be doing a booth at PAX West again! What's even more exciting and ambitious about that is... I want to start getting feedback on this new VR project there! So as soon as I'm done with the booth arrangements (complicated because people keep asking to go and then deciding that they can't make it to help me), I'll be working to make sure a playable prototype is done.

Is the prototype anywhere near my complete idea for the game as outlined in my midpoint business plan? Nope. After settling on exactly what I wanted in the game, it's a little bigger than the small, one-person project that I tried to plan for. However, I can get some of the concepts done and ready for player testing. I can set up my Rift and get some very early alpha feedback! That'll be enormously helpful in deciding what to move forward with in the next prototype, and what to scrap. I've done some redesigning of the booth to better accommodate VR in it.

This will be my first time showing a native VR game and not a port/adaptation. That's amazing and nerve-wracking. Just having any VR at all results in much bigger lines, more wait time, *but also* much more interest in the booth. This is going to be crazy and hard but awesome.

I'm so appreciative of the opportunity and help from everyone. Friday's talk was so good. Thank you, OLP team and peers!

[madomfeh]

This week I drafted the budget and polished the storyline a bit.For the demo I was able to tweak the VR control to accept Thumbstick locomotion for a walk effect rather than teleportation. 

As for the puzzle aspect, I realized the possibility of a very interesting music interaction with rube-goldberg machine concepts. I'll be exploring that next.

While researching Quill/Unreal Interactions I found several people and companies doing very cool things with it! I'll be reaching out to them this coming week for their insights.

Have a great Day!

[renwang]

Learning to use Unity

From this OLP I started to learn Unity. At the beginning I thought I was only going to do the concept design of environments. Soon it occurred to me that I need to build the Unity scene myself. 

For a person who has zero experience in Unity before, I found it very intimidating at first. When learning a software I’m very eager to grasp the sense of how it’s being constructed, like what’s the relationship between project, scene and all the assets, how materials, prefabs, effects live in the project,  and where to assign the scripts. Now I finally have a general idea.

Since I came from a “traditional” 3D background using software like Rhino & 3DS Max, and render engine like Vray, I initially thought game engine is something similar. But instead of being a 3D authoring tool, it’s a compositing tool. This way I can still utilize my skill in the software I know, rather than learning 3d modeling again like in a Blender. Also with a huge assets store, which means endless numbers of better skilled 3d modeler & builder than me, I can buy the assets and assemble them, instead of model them from scratch. This too is greatly encouraging to me. Stay tuned.

[tkanelli]

This week marked the first internal milestone: delivering a v1 lesson to the teachers for user testing and feedback. Though we are still in the process of finding and resolving bugs, we sent over two lessons: ocean vocabulary and interior design. 

To reiterate past direction, we want the user to problem solve while hearing instructions and hints in another language. We also want the students to have a ton of fun. By coupling the lessons with adventures and problem solving, we can engage deeper critical thinking and in turn increase retention.

The next steps will be to user test with students this week, gather feedback, and implement. 

[stepha_]

This week our team prioritized working on our mid-point checkin proposal, timeline, and budget.  After detailing the work that needed to be done to have a completed prototype through September, we began discussing what a fuller experience would be like.  There were several directions we could go — further into optimizations and polish, or adding additional scenes with new content (using the existing systems).  Ultimately we decided to propose a hybrid of the two options.  We also did some research into how to create a realistic budget; budgeting and estimating timeline were probably the most difficult parts of this process for us, since it’s taken longer than we originally expected to get where we’re at now.  Beyond that, we mocked up several displays that would guide the user into having the intended interactions within the experience and fixed some small bugs that we came across.  Looking forward to continuing the work this week.  🙂

[thegladscientis]

This week we welcome a new dev onto the team, Kris Pilcher. His past work has been featured on Netflix and RedbullTV, and he is aligned with the project in passion and mind. Very excited to have his expertise join the project!

Beyond meeting and onboarding Kris, a lot of time went into preparing logistics and timelines for moving forward with the second half of the Launchpad program, as well as discussing and preparing the midpoint check-in materials (pitch deck and budget).

We also worked on branding, and here is a preview of the cover image for the experience! 

[NeildaLikeZelda]

Project Title: EmpowHER VR
Contact: Neilda Pacquing (neilda.pacquing@gmail.com)

A few weeks ago, we did some user testing on our current prototype to see how other people experienced it for the first time. We had about five people test and took notes as I observed them. There are a few things that stood out:

• When users first enter the lobby and see the three modules, they automatically selected “Physical.” Ideally, modules should be taken in sequential order.

• The bracelet/amulet we placed for the user to interact with to start and go back to the menu was not intuitive enough.

• During the “Where’s the Exit” challenge where the objective is to identify objects around you that you can use to throw at the perpetrator and find the exit as quick as possible, the interaction to throw the objects were a bit buggy. When the users miss the target, they wanted to try again, but there aren’t enough objects to throw.

Changes to be made based on the feedback:

• Find a way to instruct the user in the experience to start in the first module presented.

• Remove the amulet and find other interactions to go back to the main menu and begin, pause, and continue the challenge.

• Organize the phrases in the “Voice” module so that users can see what they can use to defend themselves and what they can use to make someone feel good.

• Add more interactable objects in the “Where’s the Exit” challenge.

• Add timer at the end of each “Where’s the Exit” challenge.

Outside of iterating from this feedback, this week I’ll be updating our website, branding, and marketing plan.

Till next week!
Neilda Like Zelda

[asierarranz]

Hello all,

This week I have been closing all the storylines as best as possible to reflect them in the Pitch-Deck, while building different terrains and deciding which one has the best approach for the experience. I have been experiencing slowdowns in the framerates when drawing objects on Oculus Go, so I have been testing different occlusion culling aproaches

Terrain

One of the goals of this project is moving inside a huge terrain (1000 acres), while rendering objects with high detail in Oculus Go, so a lot of optimizations are being made. The terrain has a huge forest, mountains and a lake.

 

My own occlusion culling system

I have tried some occlusion culling technologies, but they are not very optimal for Oculus Go, still there are a lot of draw calls and a lot of milliseconds wasted in the CPU for the occlusion culling script calculations, you need to balance GPU and CPU usage. So I ended developing my own system, in this way I can give more or less importance to the things I am drawing, giving different priorities to objects, and saving script executions by creating groups of objects. The battle for the 60fps is hard, and reaching stable 72fps seems impossible without LightWeight Rendering Pipenline (LWRP), that could be possible in a few months with Unity 2018.3, LWRP still is having a lot of issues with different shaders and it is in a very early beta stage.

Have a great week, we are in the Equator!!

- Asier