AR Adventure Update

Brain dump time.

So I've been working on an old fashioned adventure game. The hook is that it's done with AR. That let's me do some stuff that you don't typically see with adventure games. It uses 3d characters and environments since I don't have to worry about fumbling camera controls. The downside is that it's harder to do cinematic events and story moments since you don't know for sure what the camera is going to be looking at.

Another challenge is doing dialog and conversations. It can be kind of hard to select a dialog choice if that choice is moving around as your camera shakes in your hand. I've got a few ideas to make it a little easier, but right now we're using the built in GUI and it's fiddly.

I'm about midway through blocking out the scenes, and should be done in another month or two. There's still a ton of polish left to do, but I want to get all the basic gameplay done soon. The art is all place holder stuff so I can see if the game is fun and the story makes sense. I hope to have a sort of Sin City style of black and white with color for interactive objects. We'll see if I still like that idea in a few months.

A post with words

So I've been working on two Augmented Reality projects using Qualcomm's AR library for Unity. I can't go into a ton of details, but I will say I like the possibilities. I'm probably going to have an option to use onscreen camera controls as well as the AR tracking. Both projects are targeting iOS and Android. PC/Mac/(Flash now) are also possible with the alternate control schemes.

The first project is codenamed SSL, and it's basically a way to show off models and textures in 3d. The app will be free, but most of the content will be available through micro-transactions and DLC. I'm relatively confident that it has commercial potential, even if it's not terribly innovative or creative. I'll be interested in seeing if this one makes it past Apple's review.

The second project is codenamed AR Adventure, and it's a point and click adventure done with AR. This is a really difficult project in that it's totally new. I have no idea how many of the traditional adventure game mechanics will still work on a mobile AR game. I'm trying to keep the talking to a minimum since the player will have to point the device at the marker during play. That could get tiresome if it's just talking heads. A lot of adventure games have a fixed camera even if the environment is 3d. This lets them create some really great staging for sequences that move the story along. It feels weird to take the camera controls away for a scripted or staged sequence in this game. Regardless, I really like the story for this one. It's part Blade Runner, Automata, Rambo, and Casablanca.

More later.