Kokiri Forest - Update 1

Saturday, January 18, 2014

I'm happy to say that after a brief time of questioning my continuation on this little project, I resumed work on it.

I now have it at a point where only polish work is left to be done. Compared to my old screenshots, what are the major differences?

All the objects are now in. Bushes, signs, rocks, truth stones, and even some Hearts and Rupees.

Fences now are visible from both sides and have proper colliders, meaning you can't walk through them, and can stand on top of them.

The ladder to Link's house, and the vines leading to the Lost Woods can now be climbed. My ladder code isn't great, but it's all I could come up with right now and gets the job done.

The Sky looks more true to how it looks in the real game.

The waterfall and river now animates and very closely resembles how it looks in the real game.

The worn away paths are now in and look close to how they do in the real game. I'd like to work on these more though.

The ground texture looks closer to how it does in the real game.

There's been a lot of misc tweaking of texture alignment/tiling. Rave's version showed what the scene looks like with little work fixing that stuff up, and my old screenshots showed vast improvements over that. But there was still more fine tuning to be done.

The cameras size/height has been set to around Young Links size. I went with this rather than Adult Link as this is a recreation of the Kokiri Forest of the past. And a child's size should help you get lost in the experience. Also, think about it, its a village of little Elves. It's designed for people of that height. The height of the signs are a good example.

The Hearts and Rupees now spin, and do so in a way close to the real game.

I added a particle effect system for the area. The particles are very similar to the real game, but not as exact as other things are. I think most would agree they're close enough.

Now for some more news. I was hoping for some feedback on whether people minded having to use OculusOverlay to view the demo scene with the proper RiftWarp. I didn't really get any of that feedback, but oh well. I was able to get a Unity Pro Trial license! It won't last long, but it's enough to get this out the door.

After this is released, whats next?

Well, my plans were never to go beyond just a walk-around scene demo. I didn't plan to add more scenes from the game, characters (including Link himself), sound effects, or any game play type of mechanics of any sort. I'm still learning 3D modeling and game development in Unity. I just doubt I have the experience, skills, and hardware to actually produce a quality experience on the Rift right now.

Yes, I said hardware. Truth be told, I don't even own a Oculus Rift DK. I don't have much money, and it's hard to justify the expense for development equipment when I'm not developing something that has any hope of recouping the cost. Basically I can either afford the DK1, or the Consumer Model when it's out. Not both. So I've been forced to choose waiting for the Consumer Model. I wish I had the DK1, and have jumped at the chance to enter every contest I could to win a free one (about all 2 1/2 of them), but no luck.

Anyway, that's part of why I didn't plan to release this for awhile. I wanted to be the first one to experience my work in the Rift. I won't be, and I accept that. So rest assured, this is still coming out soon.

With that all said, it's not out of the question for me to continue on with this in some way. If there's enough demand and support for me to do so, doing so enhances my learning rather than distracts from it, or if a DK1 were to magically fall in my lap, why not? My hope is to acquire enough skill to make a indy game worthy of selling some day. But I try to be realistic with that and assume that won't go to fast. In the meantime there would be room for smaller projects such as this.

I might release the source of this some day. If I ever do, it's not going to be to soon. It could be sooner, but if I did it would probably be after I get my very own Rift. And after I feel I have nothing more I want to do with the project at all. Doing so is made more desirable considering my Unity Pro Trial will be up next month. Releasing the source at the least would help ensure others could compile it with any additions, mine or someone else, with a Pro license.

Now, here's a screenshot.

EDIT: Here's an alternate version I made as an attempt to get the RiftWarp closer to proper. It shows particles too.

If it looks odd on the Rift, I think it's just my local settings which I haven't figured out how to revert back to default. I think the separation is to much.

Stay tuned! My next update on this should be it's release!