Fades

The internet is my school. One quickly discovers that people on community forums are not teachers. They want to help, but there can be long threads of pure confusion when the answer can be quickly listed in a few steps. Some programmers read the question and write "learn programming before asking a question." Yes, there is such a thing as a stupid question so I carefully research before posting one.

Patience and persistence are key here. With these skills I recently discovered how to create fade in / out effects and animations. I made a heavenly gate in Blender from scratch also. I'm still figuring out vertex painting.

It's very neat that I downloaded Unity 3D less than 3 months ago and now I have a 9 level "escape the rooms" game that plays smoothly.

I made some sound effects and music in Garage Band and Final Cut Pro. Fun times.

Yes, that's The Pod which I can apply effects to voice and guitar.

My friend is a talented artist and working on the Dreamcatcher for the game. I told her January 30th deadline, which is when I want to be submitting the game to OUYA. The playtesting / debugging race is on!

Glowing figures and a knife

The deep freeze of Winter is upon me, and work on The White Rooms Rooms has escalated! Yesterday I created a couple eerie figures using Make Human and brought them into Blender then Unity (with much difficulty after making some tweaks to a hole in the devils head in Blender - Unity didn't like the changed .fbx). These things animate spookily behind their halo lighting effects:

I had to make sure in the preferences that Unity was able to import the Make Human files. Then I made a knife model from scratch in Blender and attempted to vertex paint it. I couldn't get the brushes to paint correctly even after watching a couple Youtube tutorials so I ended up unwrapping it and painting it in Photoshop. There appeared to be some weird pixels on the blade but it was a happy accident - they made it look rusty and used.

Now that I look at it, the colors are somehow reversed - I wanted the handle brown. What the heck?

I shifted level to to level 1 and remade level 2 from scratch in Blender then added it to the scene (scaling it to 3500 as always). Today I go through all the levels adding the new enemies and making tweaks to the levels. 

Entering The White Rooms

I'm making a videogame from scratch! How? Well, I'm figuring it out as I go and I'll be writing journal entries on this blog about my journey. 

I didn't go to computer scientist school and I don't know much about programming languages. So- is it even a possible venture for me? In November of 2013 I decided to find out. I downloaded the Unity 3D game engine. My school will be online videos and tutorials. 

I know what I want to make. The game is called The White Rooms, and it has a few dynamic goals. It will:
-be a first-person perspective
-look like a virtual art gallery
-be simple yet refined
-poetically combine reality with a real mystery of life

On to a quick description. On the title screen there there will be a die button. When you select it you'll hear a car crash. 

Fade into the first circle of the afterworld, which is a maze of white rooms. The goal of the game is to collect memories to piece your mind back together so that you may return to your body before you pass the point of no return (in which case you die forever). The idea being that our memories make up our lives. There will be nine circles to complete (loosely based on Dantes Divine comedy nine circles of heaven).

I began work on the project around the middle of November, 2013. I created a few circles in Blender and exported them to Unity. I taught myself how to add an HUD, timer and memory counter using javascript coding. Here is a temp screen shot of how it's coming along:

Now that it's Winter time, I have have time to work on this game. So, more on The White Rooms coming soon!

 

Mysterious App Store Rejection

I recently submitted my second location based game to the App Store. It is very similar in functionality to the first game I submitted, Bushwick Dimensions. However, this one was rejected seemingly at random like so many others. A developer once joked that it depends on what the reviewer had for breakfast that day that determines what his decision is. Sometimes you can just resubmit it and it will be approved, I was told.

Apple stated that it: "Was not intuitive. For example, there was no "back" button from the Map page. We have found that your app does not sufficiently take advantage of the iOS platform. It would be appropriate to include iOS specific interactive features to enhance the user experience of your app."

I replied with a photo of my Map Page with a BACK button (it DOES have one) and they replied with the same copy / paste rejection notice and a photo of the map page with the bottom 1/4th of the screen cropped off. They said they were using iPhone 5s. So I loaded the app onto my friends 5s and took a screenshot of the fully functional map page with BACK button. 

Apple sent this response, in BOLD:
10.6: Apple and our customers place a high value on simple, refined, creative, well thought through interfaces. They take more work but are worth it. Apple sets a high bar. If your user interface is complex or less than very good it may be rejected. We appreciate your feedback and have scheduled a call with an Apple representative in order to discuss your concerns. We anticipate calling within 3 business days.

Apple called when I was at a bar. I stepped onto the sidewalk and had a 10minute conversation with cookie cutter apple employee named Steve. In short, he told me my app wasn't set to "iPhone only." That could be the problem right there, then he told me that apps are tested on iPad as well and therefore MUST work on iPad regardless if it is set to iPhone only or not. Usually iPhone apps display the same way on iPad only smaller (and can zoom to 2x) so I don't know why it would crop off my back button?

Oh yeah - he then told me the app would crash after it played a video. Why wouldn't that be written in the initial rejection notes? Who knows. In closing, what I need to do is submit again (sometimes that's all a developer needs to do and it will go through even without changes) after I check iPhone only and perhaps port it to my iPad and see what happens. If all goes well you'll get a treat this Spring with a link to my location based horror survival game set on the streets of Gowanus, Brooklyn!

The audience for Location Based Games

I attended the 1st screening of The Institute at Cinema Village here in NYC last month. 

The documentary is about an interactive art piece called The Jejune Institute that took place in San Francisco in 2011. It was instantly dubbed an Alternate Reality Game that blurred reality and fantasy. At it's core, the film embraced the idea of injecting ludic sensibility into the everyday landscape. I would have loved to participate in the Jejune Institute, but experiences like this are for a fixed period of time at a fixed location.

It will surely get you thinking. Are games like this confusing for a mass audience? Will our role in the game make a difference if there are no clear goals?

A fun fact: Jeff Hull, creative director of The Jejune Institute, has a striking resemblance to Johnathan Blow.

Winter is coming. When will the temps be acceptable enough to go outside again and play some location based games. By the time Spring rolls around, will there be a renewed interest in this form of gaming? Who wants them? Do people need to get their hands on the newfangled virtual reality headsets and wearable computers about to hit the market?

Shadow Cities closed down Oct. 7, and Wise Guys Events behind in LA only reached half of their kickstarter goal for The Augmented Detective.

I believe there is hope when the weather turns for the warmer with Clandestine : Anomaly and the latest full fledged app from Mark Skwarek called Play AR. Of course, you can always check ARGNet for games playing now online and perhaps even in your region!

Artcade 3000 Meetup Group is live!

The Artcade 3000 project is getting it's start through the Meetup.com website and we couldn't be more excited. The meetings will take place in my Bushwick apartment. We'll "study" all kinds of game innovation from mind controlled movies with Mindwave Mobile to 4 player Towerfall battles on OUYA. All on a projector with surround sound and a huge HDTV.

JOIN HERE

Hyper location based game design issues

A game made for a specific physical location has the advantage of using site specific objects, architecture and other features for enriching the story and creating puzzles. If that game must be playable at any time a player chooses, what happens when the environment changes? This is a hyper location based games fatal flaw. No big deal if the game ran on one night and was over, but an ongoing game existing for more people to play would have to have some safety nets in place for the inevitable. 

This is a problem I had with my location based interactive adventure game Bushwickdimensions. Bushwick is one of the fastest changing neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Buildings are going up and being torn down everywhere. I had puzzles based on murals and months later those murals were painted over with a single color and in two cases other murals. One mural was painted over three times in the past year!

What are some solutions to this problem?

1) I could implement a location sensor so that when the player enters a specific area this story advances automatically. What I would lose is some of the fun of interacting with the environment in a very direct way.

2) I could make the puzzles based on only more permanent structures that would have a less lesser likelihood of being destroyed or changed.

3) I can work the changing landscape into the story. The story needs to be maleable enough to change along with a rapidly shifting cityscape.

      4) The game is able to continue without correctly solving a       puzzle. This way, if the player is stuck because the        surroundings changed, they can still finish the game fairly.

And Bushwick Dimensions Version 1.8 is out now so download it and enjoy!