Busy, Busy, Busy!

So over the past week or so I have done work on not 1, or 2 but 3 projects of mine! Third year sure makes you be productive.

Firstly I have started developing a AR AI companion app for my Final Project. Inspired by the real life (and super expensive) robot companions you can buy, my aim is to create something similar using the magic of Augmented Reality! 

I've already got a prototype up and running with Vuforia for Unity, coded some basic variables and animations to go alongside them. I am using the Unity-chan asset as she is a high quality, fully rigged model that already comes with a boatload of animations, and being mecanim, I can add almost any other kind to her easily. She currently has differing Idle animations depending on her mood states, and will emote when you feed or complete a game with her! I am currently looking into text input registration for her as well, so you can ask her questions and talk to her, and later, hopefully this will change into speech to text interaction!

Secondly, I've spent about two days working on a little game for a little game jam we hosted at the university (a casual thing) with the theme of  Contrast! Its uploaded to itch.io and you can play it here! Its a simple platformer that uses the Contrast theme to express mood changes, and how things for someone with depression can seem or suddenly turn ill favourably.

Its a extremely simple game, and I decided on the art side of things being a main focus to get the theme across, everything is hand drawn and coloured by me. If you do check it out, well thanks for playing! I am currently also looking at getting D.va Dash to work on there and hosted too if possible!

Finally I did some more robot modelling this evening and created the angry bulldozer himself, the mighty Shunt! He has no wheels because I will be throwing him into the robot game for funsies and i am also currently working on that Gauntlet arena I mentioned, but finding it hard to find time in between university work to crack down on it, lest assured the interest is still highly there and I want to continue it!

I'll try and keep this updated with any future endeavours and updates on all of these current projects as they progress!

Robot Wars Project and VR Development Tests.

Oh hey there! Surprised at myself for being able to make another post so quickly!

We have a 'Emergent Gaming Technology' module here at uni, which has given me the opportunity to experiment with different hardware! I've chosen to go with the awesome Google Cardboard VR Headset.

I chose this for a variety of reasons:

- Its cheap and accessible to anyone with a smartphone that can run VR apps (AKA have a gyroscope sensor)

- Its easy to develop for, as technically they are just Android built games.

- Its a great entry for VR development, being as I have no previous experience at all.

- Should be fun! Hoping to come up with lots of great ideas.

- The material is easy to customise.

I have already modified my own headset with extra elastic bands to secure my phone while playing, cut a hole out for the camera, as well as strengthening the Velcro tabs with some glue. Alongside printing off and making Realiteers RealControl 'RealTrigger' VR controllers. All made out of cardboard! They work by having the phones camera tracking a QR code attached to the controller. Coupled with headphones, the headstrap and the RealTrigger controller, this makes for a surprisingly decent and immersive experience, for way way WAY less than a Vive, Samsung Gear or the Rift, and thats what I love about it all.

In other news, my Robot Wars inspired game is coming along nicely! I try to do a little bit each time and be productive on it. I have a working arena Pit of Oblivion and Flamepit working, hooked up to some player health UI. I am currently working on weapon systems and have a good overall system I am hoping to attached to most weapons in order to calculate damage. The arena flipper is fiddly, as well as getting robot flippers to actually flip and not just lift, but I'll keep working on it.

All hail the Kingbot Robby! (inspired by a friends reaction to the bot)

I also have a wide variety of prototype 'base' bot designs, inspired by real world machines such as Tombstone, Firestorm and Hypnodisc. I set these up because they give a great playable robot base to build my own designs on, or even recreate them faithfully and experiment.

Developer Update! Semester Start!

-Gasp- Is that? Yes! Ladies and Gentle-bots, we have our first 3D draft model of a bot! Bow before the mighty axe of King Robby! Still in his early stages as I am still focused on arena hazards and a HP system before I dive into the fun modelling aspect of things, as well as being busy with university work!

In other news, our little group is going to enter a game jam with a Game Boy theme! 160 x 144 pixel resolution and MASSIVE 4 colour colour palette to pick from! We already have a idea and will hopefully be getting it done before the end of the week! The idea is a simple music themed rhythm game, which I made some concept art of tonight.

I'll keep trying to work on my Robots whenever I get the chance, hopefully I can keep ontop of university to do so! Final Project, why must you hate me so?

T^T