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[WIP] Kangaroo Dash - Last minute update APK inside!

nilstastic
Explorer
Last minute update!
https://vrjam-submissions.s3.amazonaws.com/signed/4bd5ffbcfc9b/YeBRSjBYTriVjcJWo71h_kangaroo_dash.ap...

Update May 11 - Final APK
It's been a fun couple of weeks but I'm glad that it's finally over. Been working after the kids get into bed and it's starting to wear me down. All in all, I'm very happy with the end result - and I hope you all enjoy playing it as much as i had doing it. 😃

https://vrjam-submissions.s3.amazonaws.com/signed/4bd5ffbcfc9b/SikHhPwiTpWUjr3jVjIM_kangaroo_dash.ap...

Challengepost: http://vrjam.challengepost.com/submissi ... garoo-dash

Video:



Update May 8 - test apk
Controls - just jump!
Lots of things left to do, but it would be nice to know if it's working or not. 😃
https://vrjam-submissions.s3.amazonaws.com/signed/4bd5ffbcfc9b/OnBizDUyTZqI4Uh4Hg9F_kangaroo_dash.ap...

Update May 3 - milestone 3 video



Update April 27th - milestone 2 screenshots

2 of 3 islands in view, everything is unlit (except the island) and a lot of placeholder meshes till there.


ingame screenshot

Premise
In the game Kangaroo Dash you find yourself stranded in a unknown world that consists of multiple floating islands. In order to find your way back home you will need to visit multiple islands, overcome obstacles and avoid deadly traps in order to collect the vital information needed to repair your ship and begin the voyage home.

The control scheme challenge
Since traversing and exploring large open worlds in a first person view is one of the most difficult things to undertake in virtual reality we first need to solve two problems.


  • Natural motion is hard to mimic with the currently available input solutions, nausea often sets in if the player makes sudden movements in unnatural directions which is damaging not only to the game but to the VR movement as a whole.

  • The loss of presence that using available control methods like gamepads or touchpads infer.


In Kangaroo Dash I have solved these issues in one single blow.

Jumping.

Using accelerometer input the player is able to traverse the world by jumping between points in a fixed grid. The inherent unpredictability of the human jump combined with the player doing the *actual* physical movement keeps the nausea at a minimum while still being able to freely roam the environment. Since the input solution is natural it is very easy to get into “the zone” when the game loop tightens later in the game.

Aesthetics
To keep the game running at a cool 60 frames per seconds the game uses low poly aesthetics combined with baked textures to keep the draw call and vertex count to a minimum.

Moving forward
If the game is somewhat successful in the community it would get a makeover before releasing it into the wild. I do think that this game has a *“you gotta try this!”* potential from a user and a spectator perspective, which would make it an excellent title for an emerging platform like the Gear VR.

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[original post]
Hi everyone!

Since I love a challenge more than the end result I'll try to accomplish the following.

- Learn Unity, but since my day job is working with C# I'm kind of hoping this will be easy..
- Sharpen my Blender skills. In the 2013 jam I made a snake and a arcade cabinet but I'll try to do better this time.
- Learn SunVox! Seems like a great way to make music.

The idea is to create some sort of physical obstacle course without making the player nauseous. I got most of the game-play elements done and since I'm hosting a real world game jam this weekend (ludum dare!) I'll probably spend the weekend iterating over various game-play issues and trying to make the feel of the game as smooth as possible.

On the graphical side of things the plan is to create some sort of low-poly world that wont tax the note too much, but we'll see how that goes. 😃

33 REPLIES 33

Dima
Explorer
I like that cute, low-poly thee.

The idea is to create some sort of physical obstacle course without making the player nauseous.

Good luck! Making a nausea-free game is also my priority.
Dmitry Kurilchenko [VR Jam 2015] Wendy

nilstastic
Explorer
I just managed to delete a whole chunk of work by accidentally saving over a scene (never to unity stuff while writing a post), but here are some frickin' lasers!

spinaljack
Protege
looks ace, if it's as popular as crossy road you'll be rolling is ad revenue 😉
wonder how you'd do ads in VR hmmm...

drash
Heroic Explorer
That tree is seriously the best!

"niltastic" wrote:
Learn Unity, but since my day job is working with C# I'm kind of hoping this will be easy..

That was exactly my situation when I picked up Unity. I think you're off to a great start. 🙂

Re: losing work, here's a script I made to avoid destroying my Unity scenes (via a crash or accidentally saving over it). Just place this script into any "Editor" subfolder somewhere under your Assets folder, and then after it gets compiled, you can hit Ctrl+G (or, more reliably, Backup -> Back Up Scene File in the menu) to back up your scene and save it. The last 3 copies of your scene are kept in a new Backups folder sitting next to the project's Assets folder.

Good luck on your entry!
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com

nilstastic
Explorer
"drash" wrote:
That tree is seriously the best!

"niltastic" wrote:
Learn Unity, but since my day job is working with C# I'm kind of hoping this will be easy..

That was exactly my situation when I picked up Unity. I think you're off to a great start. 🙂

Re: losing work, here's a script I made to avoid destroying my Unity scenes (via a crash or accidentally saving over it). Just place this script into any "Editor" subfolder somewhere under your Assets folder, and then after it gets compiled, you can hit Ctrl+G (or, more reliably, Backup -> Back Up Scene File in the menu) to back up your scene and save it. The last 3 copies of your scene are kept in a new Backups folder sitting next to the project's Assets folder.

Good luck on your entry!


You are right, the programming part of Unity is a breeze but i am struggling with enlighten and lightbaking. I'll probably end up baking everything in blender, it's slower but it seems more trustworthy. 😃

Thanks for the backup-script. Hopefully I'll never have to use it. 😃

These are the screenshots uploaded for milestone 2. I'm kind of in the middle of modeling everything so it's a bit of a mess right now but it'll hopefully be in better shape in a day or two. I feel i need to get the modeling and all graphics done in 2-3 days so that i can start on the audio part.


2 of 3 islands in view, everything is unlit (except the island) and a lot of placeholder meshes till there.


ingame screenshot

nilstastic
Explorer
I'm currently creating all the models for the game and hit a bit of a snag when the number of batches was rising up to 130-140. The problem was that when importing the model from blender all the submeshes generated a material which in turn created extra drawcalls. The solution i found was to remove all but one material in blender and use the baked texture in that material, when this was done i had gone from a huge number of batches to 26, which seems nice - but could probably be optimized a bit further.

And oh, if anyone has a more comfortable solution that can merge submeshes etc i would be very happy. 😃



the optimized scene

nilstastic
Explorer
I took the game and the Gear VR to work yesterday and it was quite fun to see my coworkers jumping around. I found it to be a more social experience than a lot of other demos since the people watching was laughing and teasing the player for looking a bit ridiculous. I'm going to record more videos in a week for the final version, hopefully it'll turn out all right. 😃




In other news, I had to revert to unity 4, which is causing me a bit of pain this late in the jam. The good thing is that the game runs perfectly smooth on the Gear without any hickups. 😃

drash
Heroic Explorer
Shaping up nicely! And wow, VR should make for some very intense gameplay. 🙂
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com

nilstastic
Explorer
"drash" wrote:
Shaping up nicely! And wow, VR should make for some very intense gameplay. 🙂


I hope so, A speedrun of the game takes about 10 minutes now. The first level is kind of an introduction, so things go downhill (actually uphill) from there. 😃

First draft of the logo, the plan is to have it in the game as well.