Update 26
Dreaming of AR[edit]
Mar 2 2015
In high-school I played a fair bit of Dungeons & Dragons, probably more than was good for my grades. During one session while dungeon mastering for friends, it struck me that it might be great fun if the dungeon they were exploring could be made visible in front of their eyes.
A few weeks later I constructed a contraption similar to a photographer’s light box. It had a frosted pane of glass on the top surface, a flashlight under shinning up, and between these a cardboard sheet. The cardboard had cutouts for the rooms and corridors the players were walking through. As the beam of the flashlight tracked the path the party took, it illuminated a circle of light around their position.
It was a tiny step forward in offering tangible visualization, but still quite abstract. What I really wanted was some sort of holograph that would display the animated scene in 3D right on the table, so that players could sit around and watch the action as it unfolded. Keep in mind this was several years before the first Star Wars movie was released, with the ‘Let the Wookiee Win’ scene. But even after Star Wars came out, this seemed a far future pipedream of a concept.
Last year dropped the first hints that the technology to pull this off might be around the corner. Augmented Reality, AR for short, is a new approach for melding a digitally synthesized 3D image into the actual world around us. Several companies have been making announcements about their consumer AR endeavors. Couple of videos to check out:
AR headsets project into your eyes a digital image, which gets seamlessly merged with your view of the physical world around you. Potentially these images can look more solid and real than any hologram. A key part of AR is not just in the visuals, but also how the devices can read your hand motions precisely, so as to enable you to manipulate the virtual images in a natural and tactile way. It is the combination of the visual projection into the real world and tactile interaction which makes AR so promising.
Keep in mind that these consumer AR devices are still in development. It may be some time before they are consumer ready.
AR is not the same as VR, and does not provide VR’s deep immersion. It offers a different way to interact, especially suited to having virtual space in the real world around you to examine and touch. VR and AR will co-exist, offering different advantages.
For OtherSide, both technologies are an opportunity for us to explore innovative ways to extend the play experience of our games.
There are many ways one might use AR in a game such as Underworld Ascendant. One example would be to use the same sort of mechanic we already have working in the prototype for when you lock pick a treasure chest. Currently the player uses the mouse to turn a lock tumbler displayed on the laptop screen. In the AR version the tumbler would be floating a foot in front of the player, and they would use their hand to rotate the tumbler until they heard the satisfying click of the lock springing open. It’s a parallel game mechanic, but made much more tactile.
As with VR, we will be experimenting with AR to see if it might be a strong fit for Underworld Ascendant. It will be further down the road before we’d have anything to demo, but when we do, we’ll share what we have.
The original 1992 Ultima Underworld pioneered the category of immersive games, featuring the first 3D texture-mapped world to run around, several years before Doom. 3D texture-mapping on a monitor is decades past being cutting-edge. But our spirit of innovation continues, and these emerging technologies of VR and AR may enable us to yet again reinvent how players engage with games. Stay tuned!
Announcements[edit]
I introduced Shaddy Safadi the other week, one of the talented concept artists working with us. Here Shaddy offers some insights into how he goes about his craft.
Over 1,500 new backers joined our community the past 4 days, double the pace of the prior days. We are looking forward to the pace picking up even more over the 4 final days of the campaign. Having the new backers is wonderful. At the same time, we will also need to have at least some of our existing backers step up further on their pledges if we are to reach not just the Tracy Hickman novel, but up through the Lizardmen stretch goal. We have a soft spot for the Lizardmen, I think it’s fair to say that many in the community do as well.
The average pledge per backer now stands at $57. By way of comparison, two other Kickstarted games, Star Citizen and Shroud of the Avatar (both ‘cousins’ to our game, being new versions of the same 1990’s class of Origin System’s franchises), between them reached $74 average by the end of their campaigns. This is not a competition, but we hope we can get close to what these games achieved.
We fully understand that many of you have already pledged what you can afford. We are deeply appreciative. For those of you who are able to step up… If half of our now 11,500+ backers were to raise their pledge by an average of $10 each, the additional $57,500 alone would push us through an entire stretch goal.
As community reward, for every dollar over our current $57 average pledge per backer reaches by the end of the campaign, we will add a Silver Piece into a purse for all of our Kickstarter backers at the PIONEER tier or higher. For instance, if we reach a $67 average, you will receive a purse with 10 Silver Pieces. C'mon folks, let's break the (digital) bank! Please note that this reward won’t unbalance the game in for starting players, as a handful of Silver Pieces is a modest amount of currency in the Stygian Abyss, although more than pocket change.
We won’t be making any more appeals for the remainder of the campaign asking to up your pledge. These final days are all about enjoying the culmination of this wild ride we are on!
This Monday, March 2nd starting at 6pm EST Tracy Hickman and I will be conducting an AMA on Reddit. Tracy will answer questions about his background, and the book he is ready to write for us. If game story is your thing, make sure to join this AMA!