Date: September 23, 2014

The Good

Code Mushroom seems to be a sensation within our class. I noticed during our presentation that people were very attentive during the first few portions of our presentation on it, yet they were more distracted by phones and each other during our horror game idea.

I put this under 'The Good' because it only fuels my passion for this project. What people saw genuinely interested them. I know that, last week, I mentioned that pursuing that might be a tad backwards, and it might be; but my gut is telling me that it might work out. IF we manage to pull it off, we will have a gorgeous and compelling piece to present come the end of the semester.

As for LCAD, which we have since renamed Still Life, Leif has continued to show excellence in his ability to rapidly prototype within the Unreal Engine 4. Not long after our initial meeting on the subject, he created a working prototype with Oculus Rift and Razer Hydra support! With the addition of enemy AI, sounds and light work, this could very quickly turn into a truly oppressive environment.

This screenshot demonstrates the camera feed and flashlight (with a cameo appearance by a ghost AI prototype). The camera is filtered and updates in real time. It, and the camera, can be moved in any orientation the player is able to achieve in real life using the Razer Hydra. Wave the flashlight around, pull the camera feed to your face, sneaking quick glances behind it. We want this to feel like the player is there, and it seems possible.

The Bad

No one seemed to like Still Life. They found the environment boring, the idea cliche and the genre riddled with a lot of risks. While we did feel good about it in our discussions, as a group, the words of our peers and professors put us through a nearly Socratic line of questioning that ultimately ended up with us admitting that we were more excited about the appliance of technology for the visual effects rather than gameplay.

I disagreed, however, since that seems to be what is driving Code Mushroom. Regardless, it seems that my teammates are also as primed for the original idea as well, I can no longer see Still Life working out for us.

The Beautiful

We may have put Code Mushroom on the back-burner, but Lief was burning through work fast, it seemed. To attempt to alleviate some of our issues with the build: he changed the cubes to spheres! This helped immensely on physics processing, overall frame rate and has further expanded our imaginations for what sort of context these objects will be a part of. It looks pretty damn incredible, if you ask me. Check it out yourself!