Miner Ops

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  Branding Logo

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  First pass design notes

Inspiration

Miner Ops is a causal MR puzzle game that, is a promotional piece, for the up coming DecipherOne Productions open world title A Three Myths Work. Some block elements can be traced to the history of such titles as Breakout and Cosmic Smash. However, game play for the title is novel in how the player interacts with gameplay elements. The game play cycle is inspired by arcade shooters and other wave type gameplay systems. The game takes place a week before the events in A Three Myths Work. I have been wanting to try out the mixed reality features of the Meta SDK.

What it does

Using MRUK Scene, Passthrough, and Depth functionality, your room is transformed into a Crystal Mine dig site. Using the players key wall anchor and other elements, the system lays out a series of gameplay stations for the player to interact with. The game also is using Meta Avatars SDK to create the players character.

You are given the task of mining for crystal shards, loading them into a cart, and sending them to the shipping yard. But make sure to stay on task. The foreman is always watching. Keep the foreman's confidence meter up, or be sent home for the day. Make it through the work week to finish the playthrough and see where you rank on the Foreman's list.

How we built it

I started off with a few days of brainstorming, before finally deciding on a specific path to take. It was a toss up between a few ideas, but making a promotional piece seemed like a good idea to begin to grow an eco-system and fan base around the specific IP that I have been developing for the last few years. Something that could be a quick turn around, but could also introduce elements that players will see later on.

I then had to research the specific Meta libraries I was going to use. I built documentation of all the needed libraries using Doxygen and from there, downloaded the publicly available Meta examples from Github.

While looking over the documentation I also set about doing a full design pass. I wrote out design documents, drew sketches, and made a game plan on how to tackle the project over the next few weeks.

As programming work began on a gameplay prototype, I also utilized some public ,open source resources, to speed things up. I utilized sketchfab for some models and freesound.org for some sounds. I also utilized resources I created and had previously created for a3mw.

Experimentation with the passthrough camera APIs and MRUK continued until I landed on a decent plotting algorithm for setting up the play space.

Once the proto-type was finished with the main gameplay, I began incorporating platform integration, to ensure that I was able to meet requirements for submission. Once finished, work on general gameplay, custom music tracks, and user experience continued.

Challenges we ran into

I did end up having issues with not having enough time to profile passthrough use on device. As such, when time came to do my builds, I found that with passthrough enabled, the gpu was quickly being maxed out and would at least 50% of the time cause the application to crash. As such, I had to remove that functionality from my final submission, as it wasn't stable. It is included in the video though, and I plan on optimizing this at a later time.

The project flowed pretty much the entire time. I did hit one snag that cost me almost a full day however. I imported my existing platform integration library for my network, which includes meta end points, into the game. I unknowingly ended up wiping out permissions for the camera. This caused some confusion, but eventually was resolved.

Overall time constraints. I try and do game development full time, but as I've been building for the last 4 years, I've been working 30 hours a week at a part time job. I wasn't able to spend as much time on the project as I would have liked, but still felt like I had a great time and got a lot done in the time allowed.

I did find it hard at times to stay focused on the critical path, getting distracted with ideas that I liked. However, this was usually corrected pretty quickly, and some good ideas did come out of the exploration.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Made it from concept to design to prototype. The main gameplay loop was completed. The concept is fun, but needs polishing. This is by far the quickest game that I ever developed and I really enjoyed the challenge. I am proud that I can continue to work and develop this project and am excited to have been part of such and epic competition.

What we learned

I learned that spacial MR apps are really interesting! I can remember when I received the first Oculus Dev Kit, it's still in my closet. When I got it, I remember thinking of ideas like this, before I even heard anyone else talk about them. The design space is very natural, or supernatural even. I didn't know how much I would like to work in this space. I can see quick arcade like gameplay that is super enjoyable made easily within this space, with these tools. It's very cool to get to be apart of such an interesting time for creativity.

What's next for Miner Ops

After some down time, and revisiting a3mw, I'd like to continue to develop this concept into a full product. I am hoping to release a3mw in beta this Summer, and would like to release a version of Miner Ops in the Spring to start the promotion.

A lot of gameplay elements were cut from the submission simply do to a lack of time.

• Support for hand gestures
• The plasma drill is supposed to be powered by the generator and dk2 fuel is a resource to keep it going. This adds extra tension and takes up additional time.
• 3 different creatures spawn from blocks with different abilities that gum up the works.
• Glass blocks refract the plasma ray and shoot in all directions.
• Metal blocks grow red as you try and shoot them, but can be quickly destroyed with explosions.
• Other game modes, Race to the Basin. Drill down as fast as you can and win the race.
• Crystal refining is a big part of this game world and it was in the original design as well. Refined crystals are worth way more.
• Leader Boards, stats are already being sent to a data store, but aren't currently retrieved anywhere for display. Setting up the front end for a web page and integrating the data.

• Integrating with Meta leader boards.

• In game currency in the form of Crystal credits was in the design. These can be used to buy boost items as IAP.

I have a pretty great idea of using scene anchors to setup viewing into another multiplayers play space on an adjacent wall, so you can see your competitions room. As you battle it out head to head, you could interact through that wall to to sabotage the competition!

Built With

• affinity
• blender
• c#
• firebase
• json
• meta
• php
• reaper
• unity
• zbrush