I’ve been working on the lighting system for Zotbox, and here’s a sneak peek of the block-based ambient occlusion applied to the blocks and detail models including the blocks the detail models ‘occupy’! This really elevates the block visuals and helps to ‘anchor’ the details in the terrain.
Just wanted to give a shout out to WordPress.com since they have done a great job helping me move my blog. It started out as a Amazon LAMP server with WordPress that I built and managed myself. That was almost 10 years ago!
Although fun I just don’t have the time to deal with all the additional work to maintain it. The linux image was no longer supported and the php version needed to be upgraded again and I decided it was just time to let it go and move on to proper hosting. There are huge benefits to that with lots of integrated extras!
Anyway if you are doing a WordPress site I highly recommend them.
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 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 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!
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!
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.
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.
Another open source gem I have been using for a while is called diagrams.net (previously draw.io) which is a great free diagramming tool that I wanted to share with anyone who hasn’t already found it.
It works really well and integrates into Google Drive and many other services providing numerous diagrams right out of the box. I particularly like it because it is really easy to share diagrams from Google Drive.
It has a nice set of UML diagrams which I am used to and also a large variety of other diagrams for all kinds of needs. Here is a simple flow chart for Alien Assimilator showing the game flow.
Hi I’m Michael! I have been working with Unity and dabbling in XR for ages. I started this blog back in the Oculus DK1 era which now seems like an eon ago.
I am passionate about building immersive worlds and want to create them, explore them, and tell stories through them. I am currently developing a VR sandbox called Zotbox that is inspired by Minecraft as a platform to do exactly that!
If you need help with a project I also do freelance work. Feel free to contact me and we can chat about what you are working on and see if it's a fit.
Follow me on Bluesky for updates on everything including Zotbox and it's first mini-game Lost Loot!
 | Michael Schenck on LOST LOOT Alpha Progress… |
 | CHris on LOST LOOT Alpha Progress… |
 | Kevin Gulling on Wave Height for Unity’s… |
 | cirovenpao.science on VR Just Got Real |
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