Paint by Digits

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  Completed Pictures on the Wall

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  Painting with Digits

Inspiration

The core game loop for Paint by Digits is simple enough, I want to finger paint without the mess. To watch pixel art come to life as I wave my hands around. To make a low-key activity that's simple enough for children or adults to play with, and delight them with the latest immersive tech.

What it does

Paint by Digits presents a minimalist UX, showing a list of paintings to fill in. Each painting appears on a virtual canvas as a grid of numbers, and your canvas is surrounded by corresponding numbered inkwells. Simply dip your finger (or whole hand) into an inkwell to soak up paint, then touch the canvas to fill it in. Once you fill in enough of the image, you can complete the painting. When finished, you can pinch-grab your completed work and hang it on your real-world walls (using the Scene API).

How we built it

Originally conceived as a showcase for the hand tracking API, the painting / canvas system was prototyped and found to be satisfying. Development stalled for years, as the ambitious design called for a VR world of secret passages and secret levels. Moving to the Passthrough API and Scene API, I pivoted to something smaller, a cozy game existing within your home. A game that would let you collect colorful pixel art and fill your walls with it.

Challenges we ran into

Layout within the real-world, accommodating seated or standing play, and tuning hand interactions to feel good were the main challenges.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It was a unique challenge to efficiently get the paint system working for larger images - you can smoothly paint grids with over 10,000 individually-numbered pixels, without performance hiccups or visual clutter. It was also very enjoyable to build on the Scene API to create a regular grid where paintings could be attached to the walls and restored on subsequent game launches.

I'm also proud of a clever solution to show your fingers covered in paint which depletes as you fill in squares, serving as a grounded "meter" of paint remaining.

What we learned

Taking an old abandoned idea and revamping it for the latest innovations showed me that sometimes and idea can be right, but needs to wait for the right tech to come along and help it shine.

What's next for Paint by Digits

First, some rough edges need to be smoothed out, especially adding tutorials and feedback for setting up a room scene. Taking inspiration from other relaxing or "zen" games, I want to enable different ways to paint with different brush shapes and add powerups. I would also like to allow users to make their own painting designs that could be played by others.

Built With

• c#
• unity