My Feelings on the Facebook Acquisition of Oculus
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Big news yesterday! And the result? An equally big storm and division in the VR community! No matter what side of the fence you're on, this isn't going to go away quickly.
Kokiri Forest v2.2 - Bug Fix
Monday, March 17, 2014
It seems that when I changed the ladders/vines to prevent users from falling through the world, I broke them in all of the scenes except for the main one. And for the collect mini-game scene, it was rendered unbeatable.
So I made a small update to correct this. The download links in the original v2 post have been replaced with v2.2.
Additionally, I built the mac version with Unity 4.3 as apparently 4.2 has compatibility issues on Mac rendering the demo unable to be played at all. However I never got confirmation that a test build I released a couple weeks ago works or not.
Kokiri Forest - Release v2 Post (Now with v2.2 Download Links)
Enjoy! =)
P.S. I know there's been a lack of progress news here lately. I am still working on Project: Ocarina. It's just there has been little to report, and most news I've been releasing on my twitter. So check that out and follow it by clicking its new link, the light blue square in the upper right corner of the banner logo for this site.
Labels:
3D Modeling,
Game Design
It's been one crazy month!
Friday, February 28, 2014
With a bit more traffic coming in lately, I'm realizing more and more that I should take steps at posting a bit more, lets say, professionally. And one of the ways to work towards that goal is to stop posting on a variety of topics in a single post, especially when I do some rambling! However, I will still post about my thoughts and things of a less project update oriented nature.
So what have I been up to, and what do I think about my latest project?
Announcement - Project: Ocarina
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
It's funny. Despite me saying otherwise, people kept thinking and saying I was going to continue on with recreating Ocarina of Time in Unity. I said there was a chance, but that was it. Well I'm happy to say now that, thanks to a few kind donators of Unity Pro trial keys, that's no longer the case. I will be continuing, and the project will be given a new official name! And that name is...
Labels:
3D Modeling,
Game Design
Kokiri Forest Demo: Behind the Scenes...
Friday, February 14, 2014
Now that I'm back to using Unity Free and no longer under any deadlines to get things done before my trial expires, I'm free to work more casually again. I can focus a bit more on learning now, and less on results.
Since the release of v2.1 I have in fact worked on a couple things related to the Kokiri Forest project, and as I've done so I've come to realize that some people may like to read about some of the details that go into it, or why some things weren't seen in the demo. In this post I'll talk about the latter.
I can't guarantee that many people will find this post to be particularly valuable. If you're a game developer, this may just be the ramblings of a novice. If you're just a VR or Zelda fan, then perhaps it's bunch of techno-babble. Hopefully it's interesting for someone!
Kokiri Forest - Release v2
Friday, February 07, 2014
NOTICE!!!: This is an old post. The project has been updated to v2.5, and the new post can be found over here. (7/25/14)
It's felt like a long 2 weeks. I've had to battle through a Cold. I've had to move beyond the small foundation of Unity skill I had when I started. But here it is! Version 2!
To summarize the list of fixes, additions and changes, here I go.
Kokiri Forest - Update 2
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
It's now been 1 week since I released the demo. The reception has seemed good and positive, for the most part! But there's no "buzz" around it at all which is very disappointing.
My worries about the thunder of my project being stolen seem founded. Numerous times in the past week when I've seen a Kokiri Forest demo mentioned, linked to, or played without direct relation to my Oculus forum thread, it's been about the other project. I even had one redditer say mine was the same after reviewing the other one and giving it a 4/5. Maybe it was because he was drunk, lol. He was trying to compliment it. But saying it's the same after all the work put into it was hard to not see as insulting. (The following has been edited because some found my original statements to be too harsh, despite my best efforts to preface it.) I don't want to be insulting myself, but I have to be honest. The other version had very little effort put into it. I'm not sure how, but some textures were even made worse then they should be if left un-fixed. After playing the 2, anyone should be able to see a clear difference.
Moving on. So what have I been up to on the project? Well, I attempted to provoke some feedback on what to work on with it before my Unity Pro trial is up. But that didn't really produce any results. So I've been working on what I can, and what interests me. There's a ton I would want to do, but figuring out whats best with a looming deadline has been tricky. I've been dabbling in something to get an idea of how smoothly/quickly adding it would go, and moving on a lot.
I've fixed 2 things. The mustache of the Deku tree. I forgot to/didn't know to color it. And I forgot to set the climbable vines to a transparent shader.
Kokiri Forest - Release
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Here it is! My re-creation of the Kokiri Forest from "The Legend of Zelda, The Ocarina of Time", in Unity 4.2.2, and built specifically for the Oculus Rift!
This re-creation aimed for attention to detail, and should be quite a complete visual experience. It's not a game. There's no interaction at all. Nor are there NPCs or story. It's just a walk around demo.
I've created builds for Windows x86, Windows x64, Mac OSX x86, and Linux x86 + x64. But I can only account for the Windows versions as working and looking as intended.
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.
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
Monday, January 13, 2014
It seems the father of MMOs is at it again!
Just when I had thrown in the towel, and given up ever again seeing a MMO I could enjoy – thanks to SOE's huge disappointment with EverQuestNotNext. Along comes Brad McQuaid. Fresh off a layoff from SOE after a unexpected return to the EverQuest 1 team. Deciding that enough time had passed since his failure of the spiritual sequel to EQ1, Vanguard, he's now ready to renter the MMO scene once again in a leadership role in development of a brand new game. That game is:
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