is an Augmented Reality application built for iOS & Android based on Pet Raising. The application's main objective is to give a surreal experience of raising a customisable pet if physical circumstances do not allow of it.
TamaGO! took many elements from existing games as reference such as Pokemon GO, Pokemon Amie Mini Game, Digimon Digivices and finally, Tamagotchi. The idea was simple. A customisable Pet for children to learn about raising a pet before they were able to get one or because they are unable to, and to teach personal responsibility for another being. This stemmed from the director's sad past of wanting a dog.
i. Promotional Video & Application Video Demonstration
TamaGO! Promotional Video
TamaGO! Application and Instructional Video
ii. Development & Process
Early Prototype of Scruffy(main pet)
Because this was the first time we were dealing with Maya, we made many mistakes and were not ready to develop the pet proper. We had to redo the entire process to ensure that the creative process of Scruffy would not be compromised.
Jake would later develop multiple sketches and renderings to derive the new look of Scruffy.
(2D Sketch, 2D Line Art, 2D Render, 3D Prep Files, 3D Render on Maya)
Jake learnt Maya from scratch and was able to convert the 2D renderings into 3D. Doing up not only the mesh, but also the skeletal rig, weight painting and textured UV.
Ling Ern was also developing other assets such as the coins(currency for the game) and food(energy for the game)
At the same time, we were working with our game engine Unity. This was also difficult as we had no prior experience with Unity. Jake & Ryan built the core of the game and would integrate Vuforia AR SDK into our program to bring the Augmented Reality aspect out of it. However this proved to be difficult as Vuforia utilizes a physical tracking function to augment graphical content onto the screen which was not what we were looking for.
After careful consideration of other SDKs, we would eventually settle with Kudan AR SDK. Kudan provided what we needed, seamless spawning of graphical content and would alter the augmented product based on our gyro.
We were able to successfully integrate the SDK, with the help of Shadow, into our application and the app would be running.
(First footage of the Augmented Reality system after Kudan integration)
We could finally focus on UX for the game. It wasn't very hard as we were already following the basic functions we needed from the start. Jake developed 2D buttons and laid it out properly onto Unity.
Jake studied multiple applications before deriving at the proper way to design the application's UX.
iii. Technical Aspects
Unity 2017.2
Maya 2018
Adobe illustrator CC
Adobe Photoshop CC
Kudan AR SDK
XCode 9.1 & Android Studios 3.0
We used Unity as our main game engine and Maya as our main 3D modeling and animation software. Illustrator and Photoshop was also used to render out the application UX and 2D renditions of characters and food, respectively.
Kudan was also implemented within our game engine as an SDK to render out the ability of Augmented Reality within our application. Kudan was able to utilize the gyroscope in the phone and depth sensing technology within the camera to allow for a trackerless augmented reality experience.
XCode and Android Studios were used to export the application from Unity to both iOS and Android phones.
