Blog Posts

6/7/2018

New Oh, Captain! Logo

Short, mini-update for you guys:
1) Oh, Captain VR now has its own page! Yes, yes, this is only a coming soon page, but it does have our new logo!
2) ...Oh Captain VR has a new logo! 2 new logos to be exact, but they're both variations on the same one.
Check it out!
(Click to enlarge.)

Thanks for reading,
-- Judah Mantell
President, MidnightCoffee, Inc.

6/5/2018

Water Problems and Solutions

Originally the boat the player is on had only one main deck (floor) along with a climbable mast with a crows nest. This worked fine because the ship seemed to float in the water, with the lower part of the boat resting below the water for a convincing illusion of displacement and buoyancy.

I recently modeled a below-deck area (also called a Hull) that the player can climb down to and it adds a ton to the level. On a real pirate ship, anything below the main deck is effectively underwater, with the water displacing around it (a basic property of water). In game engines this isn't so simple. Unless there's a complex liquid simulation, there is no displacement. The water is just a flat plane (a flat piece of 3D geometry) that will show up inside an object when it's collided with.
This means that the hatch to get to the Hull looks like its submerged in water. Not what we want.

My solution:
Add water tiles as child objects of the boat placed carefully around the boat so that A) it doesn't interfere with the Hull, and B) that it gives an illusion of the the boat being surrounded by water. This means that when the boat moves, the water around it moves too.
Additionally, this means I don't have to manually place water down throughout the world because the water will always follow the boat. There is enough water around the boat to convincingly make it look like there is water as far as the eye can see.

Enough techy Rambling, what does this mean for players?!
It simply means that there will be more parts of the ship to explore! Nuff said.

Thanks for reading!
- Judah Mantell,
President, MidnightCoffee, Inc.

6/4/2018

Cannon Mechanics -- Solved!

After much deliberation, I have solved the cannon issue!
Now, the player can aim the cannon, pick up a cannonball from a basket and put the cannonball on the cannon. Once the player does this, the ball will shoot out the barrel, and a new cannonball will spawn in the basket. I was overthinking the way it should work and found that this was A) the simplest solution and B) the most intuitive way to do this.

Techy Stuff:
For attaching the cannonball to the cannon, I used a Snap Drop Zone with parenting (so the ball will move with the cannon, as opposed to joints or kinematics) from the wonderful VRTK Unity Package. I made the zone smaller than the actual ball, so it will shrink to nothing then fire, for an added visual effect. (I plan on adding particle effects soon). On snapping the object (cannonball) to the zone, it calls a function from the script on the ball that both shoots a prefab out of the barrel, destroying after 2 seconds, (or collision with an enemy ship) and repositions the ball to the basket, making it look like one shoots, and another one spawns. This allows for really easy management of the scene because I only have to use one script on one cannonball object.

Thanks for reading!
- Judah Mantell
President, MidnightCoffee, Inc.

5/31/2018

Cannon Mechanics

So lately I've been extremely focused on one element/mechanic of #OhCaptainVR : The Cannon.
In the game, the player can grab onto a cannon on the side of the boat and aim and shoot it at oncoming enemy ships. The problem is finding a good way to trigger the cannon. On one hand, I can have it shoot automatically every 1.2-2 seconds as long as it's being grabbed (like the laser gun in Rick and Morty VR), but that seems too easy.
I tried adding a button to the cannon, but it seems clunky.
I'm thinking of adding a lever next to the cannon, so the player can aim/turn it with one hand, and pull the lever with the other.

Techy Stuff:
Rather than adding a hinge joint in the center of the cannon to make it rotatable, I just used a rigidbody and locked it in position and rotation so it only rotates around the center.
Then I used a VRTK rotator track grab attach on it and it worked perfectly.
The one challenge is finding a good way to make it fire (mechanics wise, not script wise)

Thanks for reading!
- Judah Mantell
President, MidnightCoffee, Inc.

5/23/2018

My Game Development Setup

So a few people were messaging me asking what hardware (and software) I use for development, so I figured I'd write a little about it.
Because I originally used the Windows Mixed Reality program, I didn't need that great of a GPU. This meant that I was totally fine using a laptop, rather than a larger desktop.
Despite the fact that it was below the recommended specs for SteamVR, after switching to SteamVR, it still runs fine (well, even!) It even runs great in games such as Batman Arkham VR, Rick and Morty VR, and The Lab!

So, without further ado, here's what I use!

(Everything linked to Amazon)
Hardware:

A Dell XPS 15 9560 with a GTX 1050 and a 7th gen Intel Core i7. I run this with an external monitor on an extended desktop for extra screen real-estate.
I also use a 2017 MacBook Pro 13" with Touch Bar with Intel Core i5 and Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650. It is underpowered for what I do, so it's more for art asset creation, script writing, and blogging on the go, being a smaller, lighter computer.
A Dell Visor Windows Mixed Reality Headset. This doesn't require any external sensors like the Rift or Vive, so I can easily take it to conferences and events.

Software:

Unity3D Game Engine and Visual Studio for level design, writing C# scripts, and overall software development.
AssetForge by Kenney for asset creation. It allows for rapid low-poly model making for prototyping. It's like digital Lego and is a ton of fun--Highly recommended! :D
I do use Blender a little, but not too much.
The usual mix of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro for textures, trailers, and web asset design.
Bonus: I proudly use Weebly for site and blog hosting.

So yeah, thats about it! That's all the hardware and software I use regularly for development of Oh, Captain!

Thanks for reading!
-- Judah Mantell
President, MidnightCoffee, Inc.

5/22/2018

New Site + Logo!

(Really short update :P )

After a long while of making change after change, I've finally finished the new site and logo!
Check them out!

Thanks for reading!
-- Judah Mantell
President, MidnightCoffee, Inc.

5/17/2018

Oh, Captain! Game Mechanics

So the mechanics have all been prototyped and everything's working perfectly!
I discovered the hard way that VRTK will add Rigid Bodies to any interactable object, automatically making anything climbable fall to the ground. After unchecking respond to gravity (a stupid mistake, I know), I started flying around the world while holding onto this ring-thing (that fits into a part of a different model). This was wrong. I just removed the Rigid Body component entirely and that fixed the problem. Shows that it's usually the simplest things that will completely screw you over.

Thanks for reading!
- Judah
President, MidnightCoffee, Inc.

5/14/2018

VRTK and controller animation issues

I started using VRTK in my Unity Project and it's amazing. For some reason, it gave me all sorts of errors when I tried to use it with NewtonVR, but I'm working around it.
I also added animations to the hooks, but for some reason, it just loops every second I hold down the trigger for. Gonna be working on that.

Thanks for reading!
- Judah
President, MidnightCoffee, Inc.

5/8/2018

Reflections On the Jeremiah VR Experience

Teachers and students react to The Jeremiah VR Experience

The Jeremiah (יִרְמְיָ֖הוּ) VR (Virtual Reality) Experience allows students and teachers to step into a museum exhibit which goes verse by verse through the first chapter of the book. The experience includes animations and fully modeled environments, teaching the biblical verses in a way that’s impossible in the standard classroom setting.

Using state of the art VR technology backed by Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality program, the user's head, body, and hands are all fully tracked in 3 dimensional space. This allows the student to walk around, pick things up, and interact with the virtual world as if they were actually inside the narrative of the book.

In The Frisch School Evening of the Arts, for example, many students and teachers were able to beta test the VR experience for themselves, to great acclaim. One student remarked that he “never realized the passuk (verse) could mean that before!” Similarly, a Judaic Studies teacher commented that it helped him visualize the text in a way that he never could using traditional learning techniques.

As someone who has been a game developer for a few years now, I already had a general understanding of the technology and how it works. However, in order to develop for it, I had to master C Sharp in the context of the Unity game engine, a programming language that I have only briefly used in the past.

Building The Jeremiah VR Experience allowed me to dive deeply into the text in order to make it more accessible for the user. Along with this, working in a context where I was required to document my progress has been extremely beneficial to help me reflect on my work. I intend on adopting this workflow in the future.

The student-teacher collaboration aspect of the project was extremely helpful, as opposed to other projects for my gaming studio, MidnightCoffee Inc. where I primarily worked by myself. It allowed me to see the development process differently. Whereas I’m usually really messy in my workflow, having a teacher, Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky, to guide me throughout the process kept me organized, knowing where to start and end with different parts of the project.

I think this type of mentor-disciple relationship is lacking in the standard classroom, with teachers just assigning work, as opposed to being “the guide on the side” to facilitate student growth and learning throughout a complex, multi-step, real-world project, like the creation of The Jeremiah VR Experience.

Thanks for reading!
- Judah Mantell
President, MidnightCoffee, Inc.

5/3/2018

Using Unity3d for VR development

So, as stated in an earlier post, I'm using Unity3D to develop Oh Captain!. I originally used Microsoft's Mixed Reality Toolkit package, but then, of course my project crapped out on me, making corrupting all the scripts I use. Of course.

I switched the project over to the fantastic NewtonVR asset and everything's worked perfectly since! It runs with SteamVR, but the WMR headset works fine with it. Plus I can publish to Steam, a significantly larger platform than the Windows Store.
If you're developing for VR in Unity, I highly recommend NewtonVR.

Thanks for reading!
- Judah

<<Previous

Forward>>

YOUR CART