I now have the basic terrain system with water working for Zotbox. This all runs very smoothly on the Quest 2 with a lot of headroom for future CPU/GPU needs. I use the Quest 2 for testing since this is the baseline. The terrain is scalable so on Quest 3 there will be a larger view distance for example. Getting to this point hasn’t been easy and I am very excited for where this is… Continue reading
Some more Blockbench models I made with my meager modeling skills. These are for underwater and beach details. Stones, seagrass, shells, corals, and starfish etc.
I am currently building a biome system which will control the detail models. For Zotbox there will be a mixture of blocks and detail models that make up the terrain. Detail models will work just like blocks being easily created or destroyed and tied to mechanics.
I have been slowly working on rebuilding the entire terrain system for Zotbox with a Minecraft style voxel terrain while also shifting over to the URP from the legacy built-in renderer. I am now at a point where I am excited to reveal all the coolness of where this is heading. Zotbox and No Future were originally created using a tile based terrain system that was flat with each tile being 10mx10m. This provided a… Continue reading
I am thoroughly enjoying making models in Blockbench. It is simple and intuitive but has a lot of flexibility. I can see why it’s a really popular tool in the Minecraft community for working on mods.
For someone who does programming for a living I can actually put out some good models with this tool. It is also the art style that helps. Having things more blocky/chunky/low poly and being able to paint rough textures makes all the difference.
Minecraft has been so successful because of it’s simplistic art style. That simple retro pixel art feeling is so nice and comforting. I really want to go in that direction for Zotbox but take it up a notch like Hytale.
Here is the hello world of modeling – a crate!
I feel like I have been making some good progress on No Future and my underlying VR ARPG sandbox lately and want to share details. One of my various efforts towards a vertical slice is building some zombies and I am at a new milestone with them. Check out this video which I captured on the Quest 2. These are the zombies from the Synty Studios Simple Apocalypse pack that I am currently working with. They… Continue reading
I love the foundation of physics interactions in Half Life: ALYX and I want my VR ARPG sandbox to essentially work the same way.
Hands shouldn’t go through objects. Grasping and interaction should feel natural like real world objects. Things should seem like they have weight with some requiring two hands to move. This kind of interaction is important and creates a sense of presence.
Hurricane VR is a physics interactions framework that has everything to achieve this. There is also a companion physics based rigid body controller that integrates with it called HexaBody VR. Together they form a starting point for BONEWORKS or Blade & Sorcery levels of interaction.
I have been working with both frameworks and highly recommend them. There is a significant learning curve with them but they are well written and actively being developed with a great community on discord.
These assets are definitely bringing next level interaction to VR developers!
So why am I creating No Future? My primary motivation is my VR ARPG sandbox called Zotbox. No Future is simply a fun choice of something that will help drive the creation of that framework. My hope is to eventually develop several VR games using it. So what is it? Zotbox is essentially a codebase for a VR ARPG sandbox inside Unity with built in level editing and generation in VR. The world is created… Continue reading
I thought it was worthwhile writing a little about how Oculus is unlocking the Quest with the new App Lab distribution process. App Lab is a new way to share early access concepts with the Quest community that finally breaks down the extreme walled garden that Oculus aka Facebook has built around the platform. For Quest it will be the only way someone can distribute content for the device without being chosen and blessed by… Continue reading
Since it is now 2021 and I haven’t been doing any posts for a while I started feeling like I am neglecting the blog and wanted to introduce my new hobby project No Future. I have been pretty busy the last few months with a variety of work projects – some Unity/XR related and some not but a really nice mix of things and all in the realm of real-time 3D. I guess that I… Continue reading
I recently found a great channel if you are interested in learning the new Unity XR framework. Valem is really cool and he has a series called Introduction to VR in Unity – UNITY XR TOOLKIT that provides a nice foundation for basic cross-platform VR interaction. This is excellent for beginners and is pretty easy to follow along. I just love listening to this guy!
Recently BUG had a great presentation by Jonathan Linowes of Parkerhill XR Studio on the new multi-platform XR framework that is now in Unity 2019.3. This is a replacement for the existing legacy XR integrations that were built into the engine in recent years. If you have been doing any VR development since the DK1 you have likely been through the ups and downs of Unity VR integrations which have been quite the ride. There… Continue reading
I have been having fun building out the damage system for Alien Assimilator. During the assimilation run the human army is attacking your ship and as alien overlord you need to protect it fighting off various units like a wave shooter. However at the same time you must keep consuming material to power the shields, weapons, and other systems along with harvesting humans from the city – with your ultimate goal being to harvest as many as possible.
The ship is a simple working system with a variety of modules. These include lots of things like blaster cannons, snatcher beams, shield generators, matter to energy converters, energy storage cells, and thrusters to keep you aloft. If you lose to many modules your ship is going to start to fail ultimately crashing. There will eventually be a variety of designs with different trade offs to unlock – probably even a Borg Cube like one! I will also probably have a simple editor to make your own designs as well.
Looking for something with many of the features of GitHub but you want it on site in your office for your team so you aren’t paying for a hosted solution along with the storage and bandwidth costs associated with larger projects like games? If this is you definitely check out Gitea! I decided to experiment with it primarily for myself as a way to work on various projects that i am accessing via different machines.… Continue reading
After four amazing years at Wayfair doing really cool XR projects I am now moving on! I am hoping to find some new and exciting projects to get involved in. Going forward I plan to work on some of my own concepts while looking for freelance Unity development opportunities!
I have many years of experience with Unity and leading XR platforms and devices – SteamVR, Oculus, Magic Leap, HoloLens, Google Daydream/Cardboard/ARCore etc. I also have plenty of experience doing mobile development and performance optimization with Unity including on standalone devices beyond phones like Oculus Quest and Magic Leap One.
I am willing to take on any project. I am reliable, detail oriented, and passionate about what I work on. Check out my LinkedIn profile to see more about my skill set, past projects, and published experiences.
If you need help with a Unity project feel free to contact me via mike@pixelatedramblings.com or reach out through LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.
Lately I have been trying out ideas for what the humans should look like in Alien Assimilator. After getting some inspiration from lots of voxel characters and looking at voxel games and their art styles I have settled on a style that I like.
I will be working on a lot of different ones following this art style. I decided I wanted a very simplistic design so that the vertex and triangle counts would not be extremely high. Plus these guys are little maybe a couple of inches tall on the ground so you won’t see lots of detail unless you get close to them.
They are modeled in MagicaVoxel as a body, head, arm, and leg. I put them together via script and do simple movements for the legs and arms while they wobble walk. They just wander about and look around right now. I plan to add some more states to them – one is to run around in circles hysterically waving their arms in the air. They can also turn into a rag doll and float when being snatched by the assimilator.
