Useful Game Feel videos :
Quick AR Maze test
I made a quick AR puzzle game before Unite2018, but hung it up after learning about ARFoundation. Switching code base and applying these concepts to something bigger.
ARFoundation foundations
After Unite2018, I found out that I have some work ahead of me!
Along with frankly mindblowing new Entity Component System, and fresh (for me) news of Tiny Unity, I also learned that Unity is hard at work on a lot of fantastic AR features, wrapped up in ARFoundation.
I picked it up and started playing with it today, after downloading the example project from here : https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/arfoundation-samples
Below, A quick code snippet for anyone who needs it. Its a kind of foundational thing, being able to subscribe to an event, but especially with something as integral as the session state of the AR Session, it seemed like a good place to start. From this information you can give prompts in your app to control the basic flow of the app.
using UnityEngine.XR.ARFoundation;
public class SubsystemStateManager : MonoBehaviour {
private void Start() {
ARSubsystemManager.systemStateChanged += Change;
}
void Change( ARSystemStateChangedEventArgs e)
{
print( "state changed to : " + e.state);
}
}
The Crash
Over the years, I have worked off and on trying to build an RPG. Progress on it ramped up for most of 2018 up until a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I would post some info about it.
I put together a 3d procedural tile system which appears like a natural environment. Green forests, clearings, and hillsides which all fit together nicely. The archery system got some improvements. The compass was put in, and I set it up so that it rotated to the view of the camera and blips for enemies and POI appeared in the same direction as they would in the view. I put together a scripted AI system which can be changed in the editor, and hired another programmer to help me put together some behaviors towards that end.
Then I started working on some core game-feel things and I realized that I had a long way to go, and I was nearing the end of my budget, and have since put it aside.
I decided that I wouldn’t be going a ‘AAA’ style, and experimented with a new pixelated look. What do you think?
Art below was done by Marek Jarocki, who you can find on Instagram : ‘marekjarocki’.
Here are some screenshots!
Action RPG Prototype Released
Streamfall.4 was just released to the Apple App store.
Find it here on your iOS device.
The app is a combat prototype which shows archery and the basics of melee combat as well as the camera system.
Many thanks to those who’ve contributed in some way!
- Charles Gruenert
- Chris Tran :
-
- Instagram.com/thedorkarts
- tranmonster.artstation.com
-
- Michelle Routt
- http://routtstanding.com/
- Gabriel Cordero
- https://www.facebook.com/gviinoir
- Meggie Rock
- https://www.facebook.com/meggie.rock
- Darsyn Irwin
- https://soundcloud.com/darsyn
- Hanah Harris
Road Map
- Demo with tutorial, mini-story, and refined gameplay
- Better lead for archery
- Lewt
- Multiplayer/local co-op support?
- Team formations and strategic pc play
- Deep magic system
- Randomly generated environments
- Episodic story with linear and non-linear elements
- All-new character models
- Shield and blocking system
- Android, iOS, other touch-based systems
- Enemies with fun combat ai
~ feedback please ~
That one time I worked on a movie franchise
Working 14+ hour days and sleeping under desks is no longer a thing I care to do, but I wanted to share with folks this fun thing I helped make. Starship Troopers: Invasion “Mobile Infantry” is still up on the store with some decent ratings. Give it a download and play some time. I worked on the UI portion. I’m proud of this, and would like to work on games again.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/starship-troopers-invasion-mobile-infantry/id554052059?mt=8
fuel.tech
FuelFX is taking names in the world of VR!
The video showcases some things that I worked on – and it seems as if they have accomplished a huge amount of new things in VR since.
Lots of new faces there. Nice to see forward momentum for a company I used to be a part of. Hi guys!
Pokemon Go and Education
Update! With new ‘native’ AR APIs for Android and iOS for single camera devices, we’ll be seeing these tools get better and better, and with more battery life. BTW, Unity3D has a plugin for the iOS ARKit and will surely have an Android version soon.
The devices are ubiquitous. And behind closed doors and walled off areas, educational opportunities abound. For developers such as myself who want to help educate and perhaps make the world a better place outside of the trouble riddled world of public education, producing an augmented reality approach to education seems to be an obvious route.
Pokemon Go smartly generates content around the globe algorithmically. I need to think about how such a thing could be done for content that is very particular to the location. Wouldn’t it be great if user generated content could come into play here?
Some ideas :
- Historical markers and other points of interest could be augmented to show speeches and moments along the timeline where important things occurred. How could that be user generated?
- Layers of rock in a cliffside could be augmented to show the layer where the KT event occurred and show the abundance of life before and the relatively quiet period after.
- Outside of an electronics station or power plant, students can learn about the insides of the plant and satisfy their interests about how power is produced there.
- Hooking up with a site like Coursera would allow course content to be developed around a single topic which would be augmented to show meaningful real-world things and how they work.
Problem points
- The devices which are ubiquitous have capability for image tracking, imprecise gps, and an IMU. Pokemon GO likely has an accuracy of around 9 meters. This isn’t good enough for pinpointing interesting things. Notice – in GO, you can’t walk around a Pokemon. This is because the tracking is poor – likely something like a Vuforia user generated image target, which gives loose tracking to whatever is in front of the camera. These image targets are shareable but are likely very hard to reproduce. Lets say a person takes a snapshot of a rock formation. That image target uses points of contrast (or perhaps a SLAM approach, which is a combo of GPS + CV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_localization_and_mapping). Changes to the environment such as lighting or plant growth would dramatically make such a thing hard to place. Pokemon did it right though.. a gps coord + a loose tracking may just work. (edit – this is no longer the case, as SLAM tracking has gotten really good!)
- Too much content. We are talking about a world worth of content. Server infrastructure alone could break this (this is likely workable..). However, developing content for this as a studio would be impossible. So user generated content is likely the only way to go!
I want to think more on this. Please stay tuned.
Project Tango is Here! Path-Finding App Development & Work with ARCortex
Check out ARCortex here : ARCortex’s company site
Built in Unity 3D, this early demo shows off a real-time mesh generating system and early path-finding between two user-generated pins within the mesh.
Please view the videos below to see some of these first steps into this application:
E3 2016! VR Galore!
Michelle had been really fortunate lately to have acquired tickets to E3! She had gotten them through a friend in the gaming industry, as a guest, and was extremely lucky to be able to attend. Attending E3 has been a long-standing dream for the team.
Of course, Michelle took the opportunity to do some research for Streamfall Interactive while there.
With VR on the rise, and devices becoming more consumer-friendly (price-point wise), there was a lot of content to be seen from all manner of developers. Unfortunately, no Hololens(AR) to be seen and no Nintendo NX, but Oculus and Samsung had a strong showing. All these new technologies are looking nice to get into, but we do wonder – which set will win out in the long term?
Samsung put together a great booth unusual VR demos. Michelle tried VR long-boarding a couple of times, in particular. With a 360 degree video coupled with a moving-in-place long-board to stand on, it was a unique VR / 4D experience that felt close to the real thing. A few qualms : since you couldn’t see your arms or hands, it was hard to balance, even if you had really experienced long boarding irl. Fortunately, handle-bars were provided to grasp on, but this did ultimately detract from the experience.
Samsung had other 4D VR experiences to try, including a rollercoaster VR simulation. As Michelle had never been on a rollercoaster before in her life, the experience definitely was amazing and terrifying at the same time. It was incredible how much of a reaction such a simulation could elicit, even if you logically knew that it was merely a simulation. Needless to say, the crowd around the booth was amused, seeing her react as she did.
There were no shortage of VR games at E3, with some officially released by organizations like Oculus–Michelle had played a Zombie shooter type game that actually proved more difficult than anticipated. There were plenty of Indie devs there as well. Michelle particularly liked “Sisters” from Otherworld Interactive. They had a horror game demo that looked to be promising, definitely a jump-scary experience!
Overall, the experience at E3 was unlike anything that Streamfall had experienced at other gaming-specific shows. With so much information on the new and emerging technologies, and up close looks at unreleased games, it was a truly packed week full of great opportunity, fun, and inspiration for future projects.
Denver Mini Maker Faire
At Streamfall Interactive, we definitely consider ourselves “makers”. We have a passion for building cool things – software, 3D printing, projectors and installations, etc. When we heard about the Denver Maker Fair in town, of course we had to be there, surrounding ourselves by other makers and their cool collection of tech, tinkering, and teaching.
Having just moved to Denver from Kentucky, where we had our offices in a maker-space, we were both excited to be seeing the new local community. We made some great connections, and even reunited with people previously met at other meetups and networking events!
Michelle volunteered two of the days, helping and networking with local makers. Afterwards, we both attended and geeked out over the things we were seeing. Our friends at Serenity Forge were there as well, showing off their interactive musical game, made specifically for children’s hospitals.
The thing we were most impressed by was the amount of activities for kids, especially in getting them interested in programming and STEM subjects. With so many people offering classes on Arudino, basic circuitry, front end development, robotics, and the like, we were a bit jealous in some ways that we were not young enough to take advantage of all the opportunities presented!
Unite 2015 – Teams, Tech, Parties, and People
Our first Unite was, in short, amazing.
We were happily grinning most of the time and said to each other, “I never want to miss another one”.
Our buddy, Josh Montute over at ThinkSquirrel, reached out to us and asked if we wouldn’t mind helping volunteer at his booth for the week – answering people’s questions and trying to upsell his awesome plug-ins for Unity.
We at Streamfall actually have used his products – Fluvio and Camera Shake – in the past, so of course to talk these products up was no sweat as we were genuine in our enthusiasm. (You may have seen us – ThinkSquirrel was the only all purple booth at all of Unite!)
Michelle (art lead on the team) was able to experience Unity’s official training day on Sunday before the event. This covered building an entire game from scratch (aside from premade 3d assets). The whole process was rewarding to her as an artist, as she is gaining more skills in the programming side of her skillset. It was a bit of a last minute placement, but we are grateful to the Unity staff for accommodating us so quickly.
The event started with the keynote. In which, the Hololens was debuted for the first time live in public. Up until now, we were skeptical of the capabilities as marketing had corrupted our trust in the past. It works! We can’t stress how excited we are for that future. It was also great to meet one of the senior engineers on the project, Patrick, whom urged us to attend one of Microsoft’s Hololens academies sometime in the future. Depending on where we are with work, we’ll see if we can follow up with it!
AR / VR was definitely a hot topic the entire week. We are glad to be a part of the wave, building incredible apps for the next set of future technologies.
Networking was phenomenal as well. We returned with a bag full of business cards, and are in the process of following up with these people.
A highlight of course was Google, who were handing out free Tango dev kits the entire week. Luckily we grabbed two, after waiting a couple hours in line. Our wireframes and UI mockups for upcoming Tango projects are complete, so this will greatly help our ambitious aspirations.
Special thanks to that Google Tango team. The staff was kind, helpful, and always full of energy. They were great support in answering our technical questions concerning our previous work experience with the Tango. Oh, and did we mention that we got to meet Johnny Lee? Bryan was a little star struck, but we are happy to have seen him!
As we happily said to each other, we will definitely try to make the effort to get out to future Unites. The experience was incredible, gaining lots of new knowledge, contacts, and excitement for future projects. (Of course, it was also way fun to geek out with fellow Unity developers and to talk shop with people from all different parts of the world).
Streamfall Interactive at PAX Prime 2015!
This has been a happy rest while working on excellent client projects. Being at PAX, surrounded by game makers and players alike have renewed the passion and interests we have in working with games, and game engines. It’s nice to see people excited about this artform, and to see what people have been coming up with – what is on the horizon.
It’s fantastic that indies and smaller studios are so heavily represented every year at PAX. More often than not, we get to talk one-on-one with these developers and talk shop a little. One of the game
s that really caught our attention was Lucky’s Tale, from the guys over at Playful Corp. (http://www.playfulcorp.com )
Never have we experienced such a great Oculus game! This gives us such excitement and hope for the future of VR games, that they would be comfortable and fluid, as this one was (man, what a sexy camera rig they had set up!!)
Another exciting thing for us now: ECO. Yep, we’re getting into the modding community! (http://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco/) Walking by in the indie megabooth was exciting, and actually playing the demo gave new ideas as to what is possible with the source code (which we purchased). Can’t wait to see what’s possible with a little bit of tinkering.
The concept of ECO is as follows: a multiplayer Minecraft-like world that is on the verge of destruction by way of meteor. Work to gather resources and progress to technologies which can protect the planet. As you progress, the world is also impacted, as the waste byproducts of your production oozes into the environment. We really love this concept, and speaks to sort of the trajectory we were going towards in the Streamfall story.
Of course, panels were also really great this year as well (with a little bit of walking across the city, to get to the different hotels and locations, no less). A culmination of different thoughts, in regards to how to better think about Streamfall the game include but limited to:
- Includifying more of a larger community, and being aware of disabilities players may have (autism, age, poor vision, lack of money for a fancy computer, noise / flashing lights, depression, people with large fingers, color blindness, nonstandard keyboards, etc)
- http://www.ablegamers.com claim to be able to help design games around some of these modalities.
- http://www.unstoppablegamers.com is also a good resource to draw from for this user centered design
- Level design (concurrent voronoi nodes not separated by paths, room creators, generating lowest level of typography, cellular automata blocks, randomization of levels in general)
- How to better present Streamfall the game at future conventions, and how to create better and better demos
- Start testing early and often. Keeping a mind on the fact that people tend to get cloaked in visibility when you train yourself and others to ignore them or not ask what is up with them. Remember to entreat people of all manners to test and play!
All in all, another fantastic PAX. We do plan on being at PAX South in 2016 (just as attendees again) but hope to make more connections and keep attending panel after panel so we can keep gleaning more awesome information in regards to game making.
See you then!
Illusio – Choose with confidence.
Illusio’s new website is live.
This is a great fledgling company. I think that every plastic surgeon should be a customer, and I look forward to seeing this company grow.
I was lead apps developer on this project since last year, and I think it is a great tool for surgeons. It is so exciting to see it go live!
Bandit King
Your characters ( Phillip and Anita) power their way through the forest, following the footsteps of the Bandit King and his hordes. Use finger gestures to wield sword, bow, and shield to hack your way through the Bandit King’s forces in an attempt to reclaim your lost sister.
Voronoi Pathing / Areas + Runner + SwordStack mechanics = Bandit King! This will be a preliminary mini game leading up to full releases of Swordstack during production.
These are some of our initial stream-of-consciousness drawings, thinking about overall look and UI design.
Hold on to your pants.
WIP shown here
Making amazing things with Vital Medicals
We are very happy to announce continued work with Vital Medicals.
Vital Medicals is a great company which first got started with Google Glass and were inspired by what Augmented Reality could do for doctors.
Take a look : Vital Medical’s Site
Oliver Aalami, a surgeon from Vital Medicals, demoing a procedure using ODG’s R-6 eyewear and a prototype of the software.
Streamfall Adventure RPG
It is a pleasure working on RPGs. The development blog chronicles progress on my suite of RPG tools over the years.
I suppose the latest news is a new round of character concepts. Here are some, as drawn by Debbie Scheller.
Check out the Development Blog some time.
Universal Gravitation for Science Education
This is the first iteration of what could be an interactive and fun piece demonstrating one of the most important concepts in Physics.
The force of gravity exists everywhere in the universe. This simulation shows what a bunch of particles might look like if there were nothing more massive nearby.
This was an interesting technological challenge for me because these particles are not Unity3d GameObjects. They are actually Particle Renderer particles, being cached every Update(), are then calculated (hundreds of calculations per frame), then at the end of the frame – offset based off of the calculation, then pushed back into the ParticleRenderer’s array of particles. The amount would not be possible otherwise.
I’d like to do this on either a massive scale, with the viewer watching it as they please from different scales. Or, using an astronomy database (with a limited sample), then sped up to watch the universe do its thing. I think this would a really great thing to see in a classroom or a museum.
Looking forward to working on this more.
*To view demo below, please use a browser other than Chrome.
SmartPark Garage in Houston, TX
To view a demo of the project, please click here
Username: Admin | Password: adminpassword
This is a preliminary offering of an interactive parking garage. Intended to be used as a larger system, this particular piece would be used for parking attendants and could be used to great affect in places like hotels.
This was somewhat challenging to build because of the amount of draw calls. Not to mention the sheer amount of parking spaces to distribute.
Bryan was primarily in charge of bringing all the elements together, and coding, while Michelle handled UI design and implementation in Unity 3D. The 3D models were provided from a sub-contractor on the project.
