Sartorium Studio Development Blog

 As I was beginning to think about how cut scenes might be seamlessly integrated into the VR experience I thought about all of the really great adventure games I have played over the years. Although I will continue this research to hone my game, I began by storyboarding Monkey Island By watching a walkthrough on YouTube and then continued by watching walkthroughs Of Grim Fandango, The Day of the Tentacle and The Dig.  I had researched puzzle adventure App such as Lumocity which tells the story of how the player is trying to track their grandads whereabouts but looking at these classic examples of really engaging storytelling was pretty inspirational and sets the bar really high for the project.  Each game walkthrough demonstrated how cutscenes work to effectively progress the game narrative within the game play. Monkey Island Walkthrough  The Making of Monkey Island  Monkey Island Grim Fandango  The Day of the Tentacle  The Dig 

 A big part of this project as that the original models are created physically from paper and then translated into cgi (or vice versa) . It’s a kind of experimental ping pong which has been going on in my work process since 2007. I am interested in applying material thinking to cgi and conversely cgi modelling to physical materials.  I love making physical models out of paper and I really enjoy the challenge of using this mindset in digital world building. Drawn sketch of the Alien Death Character  Unity Probuilder Alien Death Character  Paper model Alien Death Character (in progress) I figure that one thing that Covid has taken from us (apart from our smiles) is our sense of close proximity to others and our sense of touch. So aside from the technical challenges that Unity presents to me on a daily basis, I am currently exploring tactile and tangible touch in my game design. 

Virtual Camera, Dolly, Cart & Track  I am producing a short cut scene for the Top Tent scene finale. I have a rough set of storyboards and have a basic concept for the short film.  So far, I have added the Cinematic Brain, two virtual cameras and a dolly, cart and track to the scene.  The Virtual Camera tracks maintains focus on the Alien Death character while tracking around the tent in a looped motion.     

It has been tricky to get the kind of hand interaction I was looking for. Using the Oculus Integration plug in on Unity 2019.4 LTS I was able to initially indicate hand interaction by representing the hands as oculus quest controllers.  I didn't really want this as I would like the player to have their own hands represented as they begin to pick up and interact with objects in the environment.  OVR Hand Prefabs I added the OVR left and right hand prefabs into the scene. I'd like to use a custom designed hand material for Lunarium and this will go on the development backlog.  Next Steps:  Current Object Interaction ispoor and I would like to really experiement with various options which I hope will include animated objects, fixed object holds, sound effects, visual effects, and gravity.  Create 3 Balls for the Knock Em out Teeth Game Stall  Create Teeth to interact with the balls  Create a counter that will count the teeth as they fall  If suc...

Lunarium 2  Quest Link (Rift) Development Environment Lunarium 2 has been set up for rift due to the changes expected in December to have a 2 tier publishing program (per advice from occulus). In January I should be able to reformat for quest and begin the process of publishing on the oculus store (This could take yonks.. yes, yonks is in the dictionary)    The navigation is now controlled by the left hand thumbstick and snapturns on the right thumbstick. The speed has been slowed. The player can also direct where they would like to go via their headset direction but this can be easily overriden by the thumbsticks.  I might add a subtle head bob and footsteps sound but this will be fine for now.     

 I was getting errors regarding the spawning point for the bats and realised I needed to remove the collider meshes on the tent objects. This fixed the problem.  Next Steps:  Edit Bat Model  Increase Timer Length  Improve controller navigation  Investigate how this could work in VR   

  This is how my hummingbird works In training Mode 👍 I have run into a few glitches  On starting,  the main camera does not change to player camera.  The ml-agent flies into the air and hits the environment boundary and stays there. It looks like it’s trying to train again.  The player counter is not working  Possible fixes  Check on start Code to see what camera are set up and what happens.  Check neural network file is correct.  Check counter code.  This has been fixed and now plays.. the controllers are clmbsy but at least its working!  I should have a working prototype I can modify to work within Lunarium now. 

 Machine Learning Hummingbird agent   Scene set up and script walkthrough to understand essential  Components that make up the machine learning set up and functionality.   Ray set up, down and front observes objects in the scene Similar to Lidar  Rays are set away from beak to avoid false detection  Environment boxed in to facilitate bird training  Nectar Full Flower  On Empty, Flower changes colour  Download and install Anaconda  https://www.anaconda.com/products/individual Creating a new environment  Python 3.7 was incorrect : use Python 3.8 (64 bit)  Download latest update from pip - use: pip install six==1.10.0 $ pip install cherrypy==11.0.0 Fix Courtesy of  Pradyuns https://github.com/pradyunsg ;conta activatr ml-agents -3.0 activates this environment  Pypi is deprecated  Set up 8 Training Environments identical to each other. Ensure Hummingbird is spelt correctly in behaviour  Use this yml file instea...

Top Tent Scene The alienated death character has three pipes with eyes that flip up and down as air is forced through them (Think Pipe Organ). The concept was inspired by carnivorous plants that omit a sonar signal to attract bats.  I want to create a bat Agent that will find the location of various carnivorous plants in the environment, and once all have been found, this will trigger the alienated death character to play the death march music.    I have found a tutorial that explains how to create ML Agents. It effectively trains a hummingbird to locate nectar inside flowers in the environment. I think I can use this in my own project to train a bat to find and infect carnivorous plants. Once all are found and infected this will trigger the alienated death character to play the music and open the exit to the level. The ML Agent mechanic will act as a kind of timer. I have set up the flower script, the flower area script and the hummingbird script so far.    The...

Tower Cut Scene Tower Room Tower Look Out Cut Scene Tower LookOut Labyrinth Cut Scene Labyrinth Corridor Labyrinth 1 Cut Scene Labyrinth Room 1 Labyrinth 2 Cut Scene Labyrinth Room 2 Labyrinth 3 Cut Scene Labyrinth Room 3 Labyrinth 4 Cut Scene Labyrinth Room 4 Labyrinth 5 Cut Scene Labyrinth Room 5 Labyrinth 6 Cut Scene Labyrinth Room 6 Labyrinth 7 Cut Scene Labyrinth Room 7 Fairground Entrance Cut Scene Fairground Entrance Fairground Caravan Site Top Tent Cut Scene Top Tent Bottom Hole Cut Scene Hole Exit 1 Hole Exit 2 Heaven Cut Scene Heaven 1 Hell Cut Scene Hell 2 End Cut Scene   

For the last year,  I have been developing Lunarium, a story-driven puzzle adventure application which was tested on Gear VR and Oculus Go (Alpha Channel). Having reviewed the project against the Oculus Development guidelines and in view of pending changes in the Oculus Development process, it is the intention to publish Lunarium 2 on Oculus Rift in December 2020, with Quest publication targeted for April 2022. The Trello project management boards are public view and early development can be viewed here : https://trello.com/b/kCeQ0V6U/lunarium