We are two middle aged ladies/ scifi writers who fell in love with VR two years ago. We taught ourselves to program Unity over the last year or so, for VR using VRTK and SteamVR (we developed it using the VIVE, but it works with OpenVR). As we learned to do things, we incorporated them into a game, which we called Fantabula, so the game is a bit random but we made it all by ourselves (and all for free ... zero budget!). This is our first ever game! 

I've named our company Accidental Wizardry Studios. "What happens when we try this ...?"

We've had a lot of fun and adventures along the way (which we would like to share). We've learned a lot which we will use when we start developing a new game. But it's time to reach out to other players to get feedback. We have a blog at www.accidentalwizardry.com where we will be putting posts of nefarious wisdom regarding our journey. Please come visit.

Please come take a look at our game, give us suggestions and reviews so we can improve. Still learning to use itch.io. And we hope to put the game on Steam eventually.

Thanks,

Lareena Goertz

____________________

Our game: FANTABULA

You find yourself standing on a platform in space. Before you is a table and you can choose to visit 3 worlds. The first is a climbing challenge: climb walls, buildings, boats, even clouds! Teleport to the second world: a monster shooter game. Get them before they get you, and climb the mountain to teleport to the third world: a stairway through the sky: can you make it across? From there, go to the endscene, in space.

Our first game. Let us know what you think! Thanks.

For PC. Requires: VR and a VIVE.

https://accidentalwizardry.itch.io/fantabula

SCREENSHOTS OF OUR GAME!

When you first arrive, you are in the lobby, where you can chose a scene.

In the first scene, you must CLIMB ... everything is climbable. You see a few monsters, but nothing will chase you here.

Why are those whales floating?

Our biggest level is the abandoned desert city of Kezaria. Now, the monsters will chase you! 

The buildings are climbable (used VRTK for this) however, in this scene we've had some trouble with climbing, sometimes after you get halfway up a building, it resets and puts you back on the ground. Very frustrating and I'm not sure why it's happening.

When you get to the top of the mountain in Kezaria, you can teleport to the last scene: the Skyway. 

Can you find your path across the sky to get to the exit?

Also, there's a bow, on your left shoulder. Reach up and click.  Try shooting targets or the balls!

For this scene, we used only SteamVR, not VRTK, because we couldn't get this bow to work with VRTK. And the VRTK bow (which we call the "sausage bow" (from their example scene) just didn't seems as good. But just using SteamVR limits where you can teleport and requires either a teleport point or teleport plane to be laid down before the user can teleport. Limiting, though I can think of times this might be helpful.

Finally: The Credits scene:

I wasn't sure how to get the credits to scroll ... so I just put examples of the objects on pedestals with a card above them.

Some of the items can be picked up!

MORE SCREENSHOTS, see the article on our website!

http://www.accidentalwizardry.com/index.php/2018/07/05/fantabula-screenshots/

Keyframe Animation

by Carolyn

The rhino model that Lareena added to the Climbing Tutor scene had a running-rhino animation. However, the rhino only ran in place, as if it were a character in a Scooby-Doo episode.

From what I could tell, animation components placed inside the model’s folder, the animation components seem to be read-only. Don’t tell me–I’ll figure out how to do animation layers and masks the right way when I study animation more in depth to prepare for the next app. Simple now, elegant later.

For right now, I puzzled out a solution, in a similar way to the puzzles in the “Breath of the Wild” game that is feeding my game addiction this week.

How we Fixed it: See article below.

(includes screenshots of Unity)

http://www.accidentalwizardry.com/index.php/2018/07/14/keyframe-animation/

Looks really interesting. Keep it up.

PROGRESS!

ONE SCENE NOW WORKS WITH OCULUS! 

Try it out! Let us know what you think.

Since we use VRTK, it can theoretically work across a number of platforms (but you have to install each one). So far, we've just used the VIVE, not being brave enough to risk de-stabilizing our program by adding a new SDK to it. So, I exported one scene (Kezaria) to try it. This is now up on Itch.io. 

If you have an Oculus and want to try the scene, let us know how it went! This also works with VIVE.

#Oculus #Fantabula #Kezaria #game #VIVE #VR

https://accidentalwizardry.itch.io/kezaria-for-oculus

Adding Oculus to our HTCVIVE project!

The story of how we made one of our scenes work with the Oculus as well as HTCVIVE.

USE VRTK

We picked VRTK to get us around in VR, firstly, because there were a lot of ready scripts for awesome UI interaction, but secondly, because it could switch between VIVE/OpenVR and Oculus headset use. Or … that was the hype.

Now, we see how it plays out.

Keep in mind that VRTK development stopped being developed for over a year, but then just in April 2018 Oculus funded it to continue. This is good news, but I don’t think it’s been updated yet for the latest Unity. But that’s partly why I’m still running Unity v. 2017.1.1f1.

So, what do you have to do, once you’ve installed VRTK in order to activate the Oculus so it will work?

CONVERTING THE GAME TO WORK WITH OCULUS

First, I just exported one scene of our game, Fantabula, to try the Oculus SDK in. Right now, Fantabula is running in OpenVR / SteamVR and compatible with the VIVE, using VRTK SDK. There are 5 scenes (including our own credit scene–that’s right–a separate scene for our credits, but I didn’t want to complicate this (more than it is).

We had tried it previously and had some trouble, mostly doing the build. This took an incredibly long time and at first we thought this had been caused by the Oculus SDK so we took it out. But it took the same amount of time to build without it, so I concluded that it wasn’t the fault of the Oculus SDK.

Hence, the decision to try again.

The other hesitation is that I’m a VIVE user, as is Carolyn. I don’t have the Oculus, and Carolyn had an old version without working controllers. So, debugging would be extra difficult. But we decided to call for some help trying it out, using Reddit.

OUR REDDIT PLEA:

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/8zoy91/request_for_a_tester/

Those who helped us try it out said that it was working for them.

Here is the process I used to get it working on both platforms.

THE ARTICLE IS RATHER LONG, SO CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO READ IT IN ITS ENTIRETY:

http://www.accidentalwizardry.com/index.php/2018/07/27/adding-oculus-to-our-htcvive-project/

... Still play-testing the changes. You can download it at:

https://accidentalwizardry.itch.io/kezaria-for-oculus

Thanks, let us know what you think!