For weeks 12 and 13, our team cracked down on the faculty feedback we received and was able to clarify the lasting direction that we wanted to showcase the Simtopia project as:
Simtopia Project Benchmarks:
- Client interests: VR Interactions
- VR Interactions: Combination of God-scale and first-person interactions
- Design Doc: List of various detailed interactions with prioritized reasoning
- Emphasis: Building a technical discovery demo prototype of VR interactions
- Focus is placed on innovative discoveries and is not a gaming experience
With these benchmarks set, the team felt that their product was 80% an experience that was trying out different interactions and exploration for innovative discoveries for design and 20% on delivering a completed experience (as a secondary added effect). Emphasis for Simtopia’s product is exploration and discovery and is not considered to be a game. The team plans on documenting their discoveries in design documentation to share with their client and will be allowing them to explore their discoveries through their prototypes.
The above concept images give the trend of the new Simimon characters that will be incorporated into the customizable space station experience – anthropomorphic creatures in space suits that will be armored in jetpacks for exploration in the space station!
The team also incorporated interesting elements to add to the space station and developed upon their environment assets to enrich the feeling for the guests – stay tuned for this exciting surprise!
As shown above, the team also added in UI elements that gives the player context for the experience. The team plans on adding more UI and explaining to the guest what the functional modules are in the experience so they are aware of the options available to them.
Feel free to click here to explore and view the current prototype here!
Here are some additional milestones for the team this week:
- Design:
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- Iterated upon Design Documentation
- Worked on the General Interaction Graph
- Art:
- Environment:
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- Created UI instruction in Lab
- Created animated instruction in Lab
- Created UI for controller
- Fixed/Remodeled environment assets
- Created new texture and materials
- Created lighting in the lab
- Creatures:
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- Finished Robomon Pipeline and uploaded to Unity
- Finished Venti Simimon Pipeline
- Model, Retopology, UV, texture
- Created animations for the Venti Simimon
- Finished Normal Simimon Pipeline
- Model Retopology, UV, texture
- Working on animations for the normal simimon
- Working on pipeline for the mini simimon
- Working on hand models for the characters for VR embodiment
- Programming:
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- Finished control mode system and UI flow
- Integrated movement into program
- Re-implemented embody mechanics and fixed bugs
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- Optimize on 2 movement prototypes
- Integrate movement prototype to current prototype
- First person-perspective interaction implementation (green room)
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- Put new mixer in Lab
- Roll Mixer in lab
- Push Shelf in lab
- Sound:
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- Sound Effects:
- Generate module
- Change module
- Change mode
- Add module in board
- Release module
- Embodiment
- Disembodiment
- Sound Effects:
With weeks 12 and 13 being a crazy crunch week for softs, the team feels like they are headed in the right direction for the end stretch!
See you next week to share how Simtopia presented their softs to their faculty and Maxis Studios!