update: the ranting of Pelham 123

Ahoy, just posting a quick update to shame myself into putting more thought into posting (more often, and with more thematic focus! someday soon! the shaaaame. it mussst worrrk).

Recent news:
* Joy: We signed up for the Oculus Start program earlier this year, and it’s been entirely DELIGHTFUL, rewarding, and inspiring. If you’re developing VR, I’d strongly encourage you to get into it. Although our current game started out as a Vive focused project, it’s now planned as an Oculus Exclusive first (then Vive and PSVR if time permits)(with maybe a “one armed boxer” variant for Oculus Go and GearVR if sanity permits). When I think about all they’ve done for our VR efforts, I float several inches off the floor. Consistently.

* Events: Thanks to Oculus, we’ll be going to the Oculus Connect 5 event in San Jose at the end of next month. I’m hoping to meet other defiant self motivated VR developers and trade needlessly overwrought and disturbingly dark cynical opinions. In the form of jokes. (i’ll be the guy in Nine Inch Nail t-shirts, struggling to smile like somehting outta La Femme Nikita). Hopefully have a demo ready (on a flash drive? in case someone wants to try it? does this even make sense?)

+ We’re also planning to take part in Ludum Dare 42 at the Corvallis Foundry this friday, thanks to the Corvallis Game Developers club/SIG/group/thing/tentaclebeast

* Branding: After demoing Fight a Bear, VidHero! at The Co. event several months ago, I’ve been rethinking the core controls and … the entire game. to a great degree. yikes. it spooks even me.
Put a lot more thought into the target audience, and game goals. And am basically planning to drop the bear aspect entirely, because everything else is coming together so well that the whole “it’s funny that this $*&#@^ing bear runs out and immediatly tears you apart. ha ha ha.” feels childish and shallow. not in the good way. I have a new title in mind to fit the stronger movie-focused bear-free theme. … but i’ll wait and announce it with the new logo. Hopefully next month.
+ also trying to drop the core “wave shooter” gameplay approach. i’m sick of wave based VR shooters. (not great when your elevator pitch for your project makes you tired and bored. had to kill it) (totally psyched for my new elevator pitch. just you wait! in an elevator! somewhere! don’t leave!)

* Development: Wrote out, recorded, and edited all the audio into dozens of clips for a lengthy intro cinematic. Then got a little lost in Unity3D’s Timeline tool. Also modeled an extremely low poly theater-seating chair, and placed tons of them around to flesh out the theater mock up. Have been noodling with paper and cardboard to work up a real life costume design (so i can finally nail down where each projector is located on VidHero’s shoulders. something I’ve somehow never figured out after 18 years of working on this concept). … but mostly i need to place my kids into some kind of alternate dimension so I can devote more time and focus to development. Only getting a couple hours in each week at the moment. eek.

* Daydream: Part of the game involves playing out a scripted scene. I’ve been thinking of putting dialog up and encouraging players to speak it. It’d be neat if voice recognition was used to parse your speed of speech (like: per syllable) and this could be used to affect how the actual line (from voice actor) was delivered back into your ears. … but I don’t believe AWS delivers this sort of data. hrm. And I’m trying to avoid looking into it, because this is almost certainly a feature too far. but. KEEP DAYDREAMING ABOUT IT.

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