Diary of a Little VR Project

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Dev log of the Teamwork 2 Project for Udacity VR Nanodegree

Testing Cardboard VR

Udacity Teamwork is a super cool opportunity to “learn by doing” what you are studying. So when I received the mail about the starting of the VR Teamwork 2 I immediately answer YES! “Colors” was the Theme!

I’ve some experience in organizing teams so I decide to be the project leader for the Team Sorrento :) (I choosed the Italian name to honor my origin).

My team of 4 was composed all by beginners so I have the big responsibility to guide them into learning having fun.

First thing we create a Trello board to handle the brainstorming phase and later the development

We proposed 3 ideas each one and then vote them. The Winner Idea (from Ethan) was the one with the Big Red Heart on it:

A Color ball solitaire

We were insipired by the funny old game Puzzle Bobble

Our mission: Port it in VR

We continued the design phase in Trello; Fei, our designer was looking for great ideas for the UX and appearance, working on creative ideas

Fei images insipiration

Me and Ethan were focused on the code design and algorithm part, Paul was at the beginning active in looking for music and sound fx assets.

Later Fei and Paul were busy so they couldn’t continue the project and we missed some critical artistic force, but with Ethan we continued to develop and created a great result:

ColorBallz

ColorBallz gameplay on Cardboard recorded by Mobizen

ColorBallz is a game where the player is closed in a crystal sphere environment (a Made with Blocks model created by Alberto Garcia). The user has a cannon (another Made with Blocks model available here) used to shoot colored balls. To win he/she has to aim for same color balls and form a tris. When three balls of the same color are linked together they will blow giving him/her 10 points. The player can preview what color ball it will shoot watching the color of the cannon, changing randomly with the “next ball” color.

Work in progress in Unity

The game was Made with Unity using Google VR SDK and it’s compatible with Cardboard and Daydream too! With Daydream you can use the Bluetooth controller aiming with your hand! Super cool and super easy to develop thanks to the Google VR SDK available here.

We added some “Gaming sound” here and there downloaded from Freesound.org, a great source of free cool audio file.

In the future we can refine the game handling levels and bonus/malus features. Also we can refine the UI and UX studying deeply the VR interactions and assets.

Oh…we all respected the Main Trello Task:

Main Trello Task of the project

Feel free to ask questions about the project and if “Clap your hands” for the source code!

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