|
I should preface this by saying once more that the demo I'm working on now will be released for free via the upcoming Steam Page.
Since the last post, I mainly just added some sound and particle effects. Not too much technically, but wow do some added particle effects make the difference. Killing enemies feels so much more satisfying, and swinging the sword around and chopping down trees is so cool! The one "feature" I've added (or currently working on, rather) is treasure. To put it simply, when enemies die, they drop treasure, which you can then grab and add to your overall treasure amount. For the demo, the focus will be more on arcade-y gameplay (rather than a full open world like in the finished game), with all the same mechanics, where you try to last the longest, and collect the most treasure for high-scores. In terms of timing, because I'm very busy with college applications, development will slow down a bit for the next month or so, but after then, I plan on having so much more content! (*Ahem* Local Multiplayer *ahem*) Techy stuff: There's currently a bug that prevents the spawned treasure from being destroyed in the scene which is causing a bunch of trouble. It's trying to destroy the original asset, rather than the instance in the scene. In any case, this will be worked out eventually. Thanks for reading! - Judah As mentioned previously, I am working on perfecting a demo to release on Steam for free!
It has all the same mechanics and features of the full game, just in a more arcade-y, smaller, more enclosed environment with a focus on getting high scores. While the full game is much more expansive (literally ten times the size of the demo), this demo should give players a taste of what's to come. In terms of what exactly is in the demo, well, here's an informal list in no particular order!
As to when the full game will be released... well, it's still in active development as we speak! As stated on the game's page, I might go for an early access approach, releasing a full, albeit smaller, game, adding content regularly until it becomes what was originally planned. This would allow players to get their hands on more content faster, expecting updates frequently. As always, more to come! Thanks for reading! - Judah This past Thursday I had the pleasure of attending Playcrafting NYC's Demo & Play event at Verizon's Alley FiDi.
It was my first Playcrafting event, and I hope to attend more in the future! I got to show Oh Captain VR to a room of about 50 people, along with 9 other amazing developers showing off super cool games. (Shout out to Game Revenant's Where Shadows Slumber, an awesome puzzle game now on the App Store.) I showed the trailer, explained what I've been working on, and answered a few questions. The response was super positive, and I got some great feedback about both VR game design, and adventure/survival game design in general. After the presentations everyone split up into little stations for people to play the games. Because I needed some space for the VR game, I was lucky to get a whole office to myself! Most of the people there have never tried VR, so I had to explain what to do a little more than with a regular game. Because of this, I realized (and this really applies to any game) that, while the developer might know exactly what to do in a game, that doesn't necessarily mean the people playing the game will. After the event, I ended up rearranging the demo environment so the player starts out in the Tavern, where they can pick up weapons, teleport around, and get a general sense of what to do before venturing out into the island. Since then, along with those environment changes, I've made some more modifications to make the game easier to play. While the full game still has quite a ways to go in development, I hope to release the demo for free soon... More info about the demo to come! Thanks for reading, Judah So, it's been about a month since my last post...
But, that's only because I've been working hard on Oh Captain VR! The biggest change right now is the building system. I mentioned the idea briefly in the last post, but now it's almost finished! By pressing the left touchpad, a new cursor will appear showing the log and your amount of wood. Then, by pressing the grip button, you build a new log in that position. This allows for quick building for when you are trying to ward off enemies and deliberate, meticulous building for creating large structures! The combat is another thing that I worked hard on this month. While there is a lot of fine tuning to do, it is a ton of fun with a good difficulty level. It's more hack and slash than realistic melee combat, which I think is perfect for the tone of the game. Also, there is now a demo! It's being shown for the first time at PlayCrafting's Demo & Play event in NYC this Thursday night! (If you're in the area, come check it out!) Then, by the end of the week, It will hopefully be released online for anyone to download! But, it still is in Beta, so there might be bugs! More to come soon! Thanks for reading! - Judah So, hm...
What's new? Almost everything. You can now teleport wherever you want, as opposed to only fixed points. After much playtesting, I see now how annoying it is to not be able to walk that extra inch to get somewhere that looks cool. So now there's that. Also, instead of multiple mini islands that I used for testing, everything is now in one giant island. This means that you can easily go from place to place, but also poses challenges for the player: surviving in the jungle, for example... There also now is swimming! Yes, you can actually swim in VR! Trust me, its cool. It's essentially climbing horizontally. You grab anywhere in the water and pull yourself forward. It works well, feels great, and is a ton of fun. I'm considering adding in a building mechanic so you can upgrade your fortress/ship, etc. Techy Stuff: To make the larger island perform better in VR, I used Unity's built-in occlusion culling. This actually works really well, speeds the game up, and is not noticeable when in VR. But, because of the size of the island, I have to merge some meshes together to get around having ten thousand (literally, 10,686) grass meshes. For that many it takes a while... Along with that, there are three new screenshots on the webpage! Check it out! Thanks for reading! - Judah This week I mainly focused on combat, creating a fully working grappling hook system for going from ship to ship, and making the teleporting enemy AI, along with the basics of what will become the naval combat system.
My biggest challenge this week was working on the inventory system, but it seems like, because of the way the game is structured that I was overthinking it. The game is level based (though not explicitly called so), with each location being a level. Going from level to level follows a story that makes up Oh Captain VR's campaign. In addition to this, there will be a free play mode where the player can explore the islands and fight baddies, loot shops, hijack other ships, and more! Thanks for reading, Judah Yes, I haven't posted in a while...
No, this post isn't about how to annoy your animated characters, (though if people want it, I can post my methods) it's about how frustrating they can sometimes be in Unity!
Because the characters in the world are specifically supposed to be robots (more details to come soon!), using traditional animated FBX models didn't give the effect I wanted. So, instead what I did was export the characters' bodies separately from their limbs, eyes, and mouth, and animated them using Unity's built-in timeline. This actually worked much better than I had hoped, and allows for that robotic, R2-D2 movement. Thanks for reading! Judah Mantell, President, MidnightCoffee, Inc. So, I know I haven’t posted in a while, but rest assured, I’ve actually gotten a lot done on Oh Captain VR. After some basic play testing of the main mechanics of the game, players have shown to hate the parrot… so yeah.After much trial and error, I’ve landed on an idea that actually works perfectly: Make the captain… a captain! I know, right?!
I did some basic modeling and actually came up with a character that works pretty well. He’s a short, stubby little pirate captain (think Reginald Van Winslow from Telltale’s Tales of Monkey Island) that kinda just does his own thing while you do all the hard work. This turned out to be much funnier than the parrot (who was just plain annoying). Having another human figure in VR is not so easy to get right. If it’s too realistic, you get into uncanny valley territory. But, because we’re going for a low-poly aesthetic, this isn’t an issue, and the captain fits right into the world Sadly, bringing animated meshes into Unity was pretty taxing on my laptop (GTX 1050), causing it to overheat and shut down randomly more than once. This wasn’t fun. I do save after almost any change I make (a little crazy about it), so I didn’t lose that much at all. Hopefully in the coming weeks (months?) I’ll be getting a more powerful machine that can handle VR much better. Thanks for reading! - Judah Mantell, President, MidnightCoffee, inc. After much deliberation and hours of playtesting, I finally got the helm (the ship's steering wheel, for lack of a better phrase) just right!
I originally thought the helm would control the ship, like the driving mechanic in LA Noir VR, but from what I've seen, it causes motion sickness, and the player will just get lost in the open sea. Now, instead of moving the ship directly, when the player grabs the wheel, a little menu pops up above it, and an arrow appears at the top of the wheel. The menu consists of miniatures of the different islands you can go to, and turning the wheel highlights the one the arrow is pointing at. If you hold the wheel pointing to a place for a certain amount of time, you, along with the ship, will "teleport" to that island. Thanks for reading! - Judah Mantell, President, MidnightCoffee, inc. |
RSS Feed
Powered by
Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Create your own unique website with customizable templates.