Wow. Just, wow. I started converting the art assets in "Car Jumper" from the Legacy mobile shaders to the new physically-based Standard Shader in Unity 5. The difference is shocking, which is a testament to how powerful Unity has become. After I've finished converting all of the shaders, I'll start in on the GUI. I have to rewrite the GUI code, implement some visual feedback for power-ups, and add some art to the actual UI elements.
Oh man, this is cool...
Finally broke down and started playing with my Project Tango Dev Kit. This thing is AWESOME. Unfortunately, the mesh Constructor app doesn't quite work the way I thought it did: I assumed the color camera was producing an actual texture map on the fly, when in fact that data is being applied to the mesh as a vertex color. I can't decimate the mesh without losing color information, which means UV unwrapping these things at full resolution is gonna be... Interesting. Should be worth it, though: something came up that requires me to build a prototype with scanned rooms. More on that in a future post...
One Thing at a Time...
Finally back in the swing of things after an amazing week in Boston for UNITE. I really had no intention of exploring VR before the conference, but since demoing so many different projects for Occulus, Morpheus, Cardboard, and Project Tango, I see some pretty amazing possibilities. The fact that I managed to score a free Project Tango dev kit and a Google Cardboard only make it harder to focus on my current projects.
Next up: overhauling the GUI for "Car Jumper" to add some visual feedback to power ups, then gutting the artwork to take advantage of physically-based shading and global illumination. I'm shooting for an App Store shippable demo by next month.
There aren't enough hours in the day...
It's time for UNITE...
It's 4am and I'm packed and about to head to the airport. Unite kicks-off in 2 days, and I actually pulled it off: 3 prototypes on my phone. I honestly didn't even think I'd get "Car Jumper" running, let alone 2 other projects. This year, when I pitch "Car Jumper", I can follow-up by handing them the actual game. Playable.
Wish me luck.
Kaiju Demo
I'm pretty psyched about this one. When I was younger, I wanted to be a filmmaker. I grew up as Hollywood was making the transition from analog to digital, and after the novelty of CG wore-off, I found myself missing stop-motion, puppets, rubber suits, and even the rough look of photo-chemical compositing. While I love the power and potential of digital tools, I prefer practical effects whenever possible. I saw "The Evil Dead" when I was 15 and it pretty much ruined me for life. The 80's was an incredible decade for creature FX in general. Godzilla was a staple of family movie nights.
I was also a pretty obnoxious gamer growing up. "War of the Monsters" was a fantastic multiplayer brawler with a 50's sci-fi B-movie aesthetic that just pushed all of the right buttons for me. It came along at a time when Sony was constantly cranking out new IP for the PS2, but we never got a sequel (I think we can blame "God of War" for that one, but I'm definitely not complaining).
Then Guillermo del Toro made "Pacific Rim". I remember reading that one of his directives to the design team was that Robots and Kaiju alike had to maintain human silhoettes, as if they were to build practical suits. My reaction was, "why didn't they just build suits?"
It was around this time that the PS4 had also been announced, and Sony was talking up the power of the hardware. Then it hit me: a "War of the Monsters" clone, inspired by Kaiju movies of the 60's, 70's and 80's. Characters that look and move like people in rubber suits, film grain, and cutscenes that composite "soundstage" monster footage with "live" crowd footage. I wrote it off as impossible, until Unity announced its version 5 update. Between physically-based shading, global illumination, and a significantly more powerful physics engine, it looked like there might be a possibility of getting this working.
Once I booked my trip to the Unite 2015 conference in Boston, I knew I wanted to try and get some kind of realtime demo running alongside "Car Jumper" and Top-Down Shooter. I'm still in shock that it's not only possible, but that I've got it running on my phone.