So, what does it take to utterly blow your mind? VR! It has happened twice now for me. The last time was experiencing VR for the first time with the Rift a year ago. This time it was experiencing the famous Valve demos that everyone has been talking about since the beginning of the year. I am convinced more than ever that this new wave of VR technology is going to change the world. There… Continue reading
One of the major issues with Lost Loot was that when you are on the surface of the ocean your body did not rise and fall with the waves properly and as a result you could often see under the water without the underwater system turning on. This regularly broke the immersion and additionally there was no way to have anything floating on the water either, such as barrels, crates, or even the little red… Continue reading
My entry in the Oculus and IndieCade VR Jam is taking shape. I am creating a casual treasure diving game designed specifically for VR. Here is the official description: “LOST LOOT: A casual exploration game designed for VR and the Oculus Rift. It combines relaxing gameplay with an interesting environment and a touch of adventure. Dive for lost treasure! Search submerged ruins and ancient shipwrecks for gold, jewels, and artifacts. Watch your air supply and… Continue reading
I am currently in the process of prototyping the character setup for my game. I am developing a game that has a first person perspective and allows you to look down and see the body of the main character you play. This main character is also wearing human/alien hybrid tech that is composed of a tablet/visor system. The tablet is used as a main control device for the related visor which acts as an augmented… Continue reading
Well, it has been about two weeks since the Oculus Rift arrived. I have spent many hours with the device glued to my face, exploring what it feels like to be inside a computer generated world instead of looking at it through a flat window. The experience can best be described as stunning, with a sense that this is the beginning of a new paradigm for anything involving three dimensional graphics, especially games. There is… Continue reading
After some time away, I have started to dig back into AOS. Things have been progressing a bit more slowly since the end of last year and I have had a number of side projects going on that are taking away from my time working directly on AOS. However, some of them will eventually be beneficial to this project over the long run. I have reached a point in the development of the framework and… Continue reading
I finally got to my first game jam this year. I have wanted to go before but never took the time out of a hectic schedule and committed to one. I have to say that it is a lot of fun and everyone who gets the chance should try and go to one. It is fun, you get to meet new people, and you really can go wild with ideas and do whatever you want. My only… Continue reading
This is the second part of my series on better looking environments in Unity. It has been a while since the first post and Unity has made a lot of improvements since then. In this part I wanted to cover the post processing effects needed to achieve a more dramatic look, like the one in the current set of screenshots that I posted over the summer, which can be found in the Media tab. With… Continue reading
Well, it seems VR has made a comeback with the Oculus Rift HMD Kickstarter. Inspired by a dedicated hobbyist named Palmer Luckey and supported by John Carmack from Id, it seems we are going to have something very special in the coming year. The Oculus Rift is unique with a wide field of view and low latency tracking. It will be a consumer version of a true immersive stereoscopic HMD. The hype level surrounding the… Continue reading
I have successfully updated my project to 3.5 and switched to using external version control, moving it into a Mercurial repository. I am still a little dismayed that Unity doesn’t work a little more smoothly with things under version control. Having a second set of meta files for everything means that you need to manage moving and renaming everything yourself and then doing the proper commands to your VCS when you do that. Workflow like… Continue reading
I found a thread on the Unity forums on lighting tips a while ago that had many good suggestions and came up with one I posted there that people may find useful: I have been playing a bit with the lighting using the deferred lighting rendering path and dual lightmaps. I played around with a technique to make it go from day to night with the same lightmaps by changing the directional light color and… Continue reading
After developing a prototype forest scene a while ago, I wanted to somehow improve the terrain textures to look sharper and have more detail. I have been thoroughly inspired by the environment art of an indie action RPG that is in the works called Grim Dawn. After some pointers by other Unity developers I recently found a way to get the terrain in Unity to incorporate bump mapping. I have been pleased with the results… Continue reading
I was recently browsing the unity forums and discovered another post of someone wanting to build their own RPGs. They naively ask the question, “How do I make a game?” Like someone could answer in another sentence or two with the steps. It started me thinking about the framework I am toiling on and just how much further I need to go to reach some kind of critical mass. I seem to be drawn down… Continue reading
When I was in college, or should I say in a previous life, since it seems so long ago, I remember playing games with great intro movies. I always commented to my friends, hovered around the monitor, how one day not too far away, the actual game will look as good as those scenes. Of course, by standards today, those scenes looked like a student animation project done at the last minute with poor art… Continue reading
