Awarded "Most Innovative" for Sundown Arcadia

A few weeks ago I named my project Sundown Arcadia and began working on it a bit more seriously. Since then I've begun presenting it and talking about it publicly at every opportunity, starting with taking it to local game dev events and getting playtesters, then submitting it to the Launch Pad Diversity Scholarship, and finally pitching it at the Intel Game Dev Showcase at the Austin Game Conference where it was awarded "Most Innovative" by the judges.

I've also had a couple of opportunities to speak to other VR developers about the direction I am going with it. At PAX West I moderated a panel titled "The Reality of Virtual Reality" which drew a great crowd of VR enthusiasts and developers, and I had a chance to talk to some of them after the panel to get input.

What I'm really trying to do with Sundown Arcadia is make something that is a fairly unique experience and takes advantage of what the hardware has to offer. In that spirit, the game is entirely gaze-based - the player stares at what she wants to do as her primary (and only) form of interacting with the world. This does a couple of interesting things. 1. VR developers often squabble over the best approaches to using the player's hands in the game - what controllers to use (mouse, gamepad, motion-controller), how to represent the player's hands in the game, and how the player uses their hands to interact...my solution is to not use hands at all. 2. Using your eyes to alter the world is a form of fantasy-fulfillment - many people, especially kids, long for mind-control: stare at something to make it explode, focus on an object to move it through the air, alter or combine objects through the power of will.

Winning the award for "most Innovative" was a great honor, but it was also the validation I need to show that the direction I am taking this really is unique and interesting and something people would like to have in a full game experience (currently it exists in a brief 2-3 minute proof-of-concept prototype).

Currently I am working on bringing Sundown Arcadia to the next stage of development: I'm working to bring in a few team members (programmer, designer, sound designer, artist), and I'm taking that proof-of-concept and fleshing out the gameplay elements (adding enemies, obstacles, challenges, tools, and additional mechanics).

VR Pitch

As I mentioned in a post at the start of Summer, I attended an event in May called Oculus Launch Pad, which focused on trying to bring more diverse developers into the VR space. The Oculus Launch Pad is offering a scholarship for those of us who participated, and the scholarship winner is chosen based on a pitch and demo. For the Summer of 2016 my main focus is putting together a killer pitch and demo to submit to the program. To that end, I've been working on a little VR prototype that I would like to tell you about.

The idea is a VR hidden object game. Much like a traditional hidden object game, the player is given a list of items to find and then presented with a scene where those items fit in.

The big difference from a traditional hidden object game is that the player is completely immersed in the scene, and looks around in a 3D 360 degree environment, rather than staring at a 2D screen. The other big difference is the method by which items are "found". In a traditional hidden object game the player taps or clicks on the items, and there is often no penalty for mis-clicking on the wrong items.
In this game, every object can be interacted with, and the method of interacting is to stare at the object...until it explodes! This plays off the common fantasy of being able to control/alter your own environment using only your mind.

To score points the player must explode the correct items, but points are lost of the player explodes the wrong items.

I started working on this at the beginning of the Summer, but I fell behind in the month of July - but for a good cause! I spent July running a Game Dev camp for high school kids. The camp, plus my regular part-time teaching job, had me teaching over 60 hours a week! It was insanity, but it was amazing, and seeing the kids' projects when they were done was a very proud moment for me since most of them came to the camp with no development experience at all. 

But now I am back and ready to go on full-swing with my VR project. Last week I spent setting up my Unity project, finding and purchasing an Art Asset pack, and playing around with particle systems (this will be a big part of my demo). Screenshot time!

So far I've just being messing with the art and particles for visuals - my next step will be to see how much art the GearVR can handle (mobile devices usually have some pretty hard limits on lighting, shadows, particles, texture resolutions, etc). We'll see how it goes!

Side note: I'm so glad my previous post had the list of steps for getting a build from Unity onto the GearVR, because I have completely forgotten the process! Hooray for forward thinking ~

As always, thanks for reading!

Cat Cave Reviews Are In!

Over the past couple of weeks we've been in contact with some game review sites, and three of them have decided to publish reviews on Cat Cave! It has been a very exciting and gratifying experience, and we are thrilled with the overall positivity of the reviews.

The first Cat Cave review came from a wonderful community called Woodbangers Entertainment. At the time when they reached out to me, I had been thinking of giving up - the download numbers weren't there and continuously releasing updates for 0 downloads seemed hopeless. This review (and the downloads that followed it) gave me the motivation to push onward and make another release.

Not long after that, a very nice second Cat Cave review came in from Appliv (they were technically the first to contact me, but the second to publish the review). I was also very excited to see that, while they were at it, Appliv also published a review of our first game Slapdash Bones.

Just this morning a third Cat Cave review came in from Orange Bison. Unfortunately there is an error in this review saying Cat Cave is only available on Android, however it is available for both Android and iOS (as you all know!). Very happy to have the review none-the-less, and this review came with some helpful suggestions for improvement!

As a developer this has been my first experience with having my games formally and publicly reviewed. I know that getting reviewers to write about your games is one of the big hurdles as an indie developer, and from what I've heard is one of the most important ways to boost downloads. We'll see how that goes!

As always thanks for reading, and please download Cat Cave on Android or iOS!

Cat Cave Update is Live!

Cat Cave update is live for Android, and will be soon for iOS (currently in review by Apple). Check it out, and feel free to respond with feedback!

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Astire.CatCave
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cat-cave/id1104696928?ls=1&mt=8

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Cat Cave Update

I'm excited to say that we will be making an update to Cat Cave to address some bugs that have been reported and add some more polish items. We are also working on getting some reviewers to take a look at it. I want to extend a "thank you" in advance to Appliv who have reached out to me to offer to do a review of Cat Cave on their website. I will be posting a direct link to the review when it's live :)

Thanks again to everyone who has helped us out by testing and reporting bugs! Check back soon, our update should be available early next week!

Oculus Launch Pad

Last month I had the opportunity to attend an event at Facebook Headquarters called Oculus Launch Pad. This event was intended to promote diversity in the field of VR, and it met those intentions quite well. The program hosted 100 people for a day-long boot camp as a deep dive into developing games, apps, and film for virtual reality. I, along with 99 others who all came from diverse backgrounds and varying ages, genders, races, ethnicities, orientations, etc, spent a fantastic day learning about the technical side of putting a game on the GearVR, tips and tricks for designing "comfortable" VR content, how to keep a project on track and finish on time, and the importance of story and immersion in the VR world. The day concluded with a Q&A with Palmer Lucky and a networking mixer for all of the participants to get to know each other and learn about everyone's interests and projects.

On the technical side, it was great to have an opportunity to go through the process of getting an application from Unity onto the GearVR. I'm outlining the process here for anyone else who may be interested in making something for GearVR:

1. Get the latest version of Unity, and during the initial download be sure to check the box for "Android" from the list of development platforms (if you already downloaded Unity and don't have the Android package you will need to go back to the Unity downloader to get it).

2. Visit the Oculus developer website and download the Oculus SDK and Oculus Unity Utilities, and import the Oculus Unity Utilities package to your Unity project

3. Download and install the Android SDK. It will launch a download manager where you can select different versions. you can download as many versions as you like, but you will at least need API level 19. When you select download, you will need to agree to the terms and whatnot, but it is not super clear from the prompt you need to select "agree" for each of the download items in your selected list, so if you have two items selected you will need to scroll to the bottom to "agree" for the second one.

4. Create an OSIG for your device. This one is a little complicated, here are the details

• Put your Android Galaxy device into debug mode (go to settings > device and tap the build number a bunch of times)
• On your Android device go to Developer Settings and check the box for "USB Debugging" then plug it in to your computer
• Open Command Prompt (or Terminal on a Mac)
• d. Navigate to the Android SDK Tools folder (use 'cd' to change directories, 'cd ..' takes you up a directory, 'cd Directory_Name' takes you down into specified directory)
• Use the command 'adb devices' and it will give you a list of IDs for connected devices (you will probably only have one) - if you have trouble with this step you may need to update the drivers on your computer
• Copy your device ID, then go to developer.oculus.com/osig and enter the ID
• Download the osig file generated by the Oculus website and copy it into the following directory inside your Unity project - Assets/pluggins/Android/assets
•  Note that you will need a separate OSIG file for each device you want to test on; you can have as many OSIG files in the assets directory as needed

5. In Unity go to File > Build Settings. Be sure to add the scene you want to build to the list of scenes.

6. Select 'Android' from the list of platforms, then click "Player Settings" at the bottom. You can also hit "Build" right now to check if your SDK is setup properly, it will let you know if it cannot find the Android SDK (it may also prompt you to download the latest JDK which are also needed to run the Android SDK).

7. In the player settings panel which should have opened on the right side of the screen, scroll down to other settings and check the box "Enable VR", then scroll down to "Other Settings" and fill in the bundle identifier (you can use whatever company and product name you want but you need the company and product name at the top to match).

8. Sign your application - under "Publish Settings" check the box for "create new keystore" then click browse and name your keystore file, then give it a password (be sure to remember this password). Then set an alias and password for this keystore (it can be the same password or a different one).

9. Be sure your Android device is still plugged in and the screen is on, then hit "Build and Run" and the game will automatically deploy to the phone.

10. Unplug the phone from the computer. It should prompt you to put it in the GearVR, but if it does not then find your newly made build (it probably has the Unity logo right now) and run it, then when it prompts you put it in the GearVR.

I hope this is helpful to anyone trying to get started in GearVR development.  Feel free to respond with questions if you have any trouble with these steps :)

The Making of Cat Cave

Cat Cave was my second self-published title, but it was actually a lot of first for me. It was my first endless runner. It was my first 2D game. It was the first time I formed a team to work on one of my ideas (I found an artist, a sound designer, and a second programmer). It was the first time I attempted a port to iOS. And the second release of Cat Cave was the first time I took promotion really seriously.

I've learned a lot from the games I have released so far, but I think the most valuable thing I have learned is you can never do too much work when it's something you care about. As a single cat mamma, I have no human children, and no husband (or wife) to take care of, so my games are really like my children - I look forward to leaving work in the evenings so I can go home and spend time with them. And I feel guilty any time I have a spare moment that I choose not to spend with them.

To some this may seem like an unhealthy obsession, but for me the things I make are the strongest justification for my existence.

In total, I estimate that I invested around 120 hours into the development of Cat Cave. I wish I had kept more thorough track, but I believe the breakdown went something like this:

• First Release
• Development - 30 hours
• Project Management - 10 hours
• Promotion - 10 hours

• Second Release (Major Update)
• iOS Port - 15 hours
• Development - 15 hours
• Project Management (including running beta test) - 10 hours
• Promotion - 30 hours

Another valuable lesson I learned is the importance of building hype. Don't release your game the day it is finished. And don't wait until it is finished to start talking about it. Talk about it all the time while you are making it. Pick a tentative release date far in the future. When you finish your game, get everything confirmed, and get it approved by all of the powers that be, THEN confirm your release date at least several days in advance. Then you must WAIT. Don't do anything to break the game. Don't do anything to put it in jeopardy on whatever platform you publish to. Don't let your anxious fans convince you to release it early. Just wait. And keep talking about it.

Speaking of which, here are the download links for Cat Cave, which is now available on Google Play and iTunes!

iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cat-cave/id1104696928?ls=1&mt=8
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Astire.CatCave
PC: https://moarkitties.itch.io/cat-cave

Thanks for playing!