ABOUT MY LITTLE DRAGON:
My Little Dragon is a dragon pet simulator game built for Microsoft HoloLens. The user must take care of his or her pet dragon, and can interact with it using hand gestures and voice commands. The user can pick up virtual objects, play fetch with the dragon, and feed the dragon. The more the user plays with the dragon, the more features he or she will discover in the game.
Q&A WITH VERONICA
How did you come up with the idea for the project?
I’ve actually had the idea for this game for a very long time – even before the HoloLens existed. I’ve always been fascinated with dragons. Even though they only exist within our imaginations, they have become iconic mythological creatures that continually appear in all sorts of fiction novels and films. I thought there was something really cool about using mixed reality to finally bring them to life as pets.
Describe the production process.
I always start my prototyping in Unity and Maya. I use Maya to block out in meshes and build 3D models. I use Photoshop for creating texture files and sprites. Then, in Unity I bring all of these elements together to create and test the full game. I’ll create scripts with Visual Studio.
What was your biggest hurdle in creating the project and how did you overcome it?
The biggest hurdle in creating the project was figuring out how to best integrate the HoloLens’s spatial mapping system with the dragon’s real-time movements. I wanted to make sure path-finding around real world surfaces looked realistic and that the dragon didn’t “walk through” walls. Scanning and spatial-mapping is a memory-consuming activity by itself, so it was really tricky to make sure the app didn’t crash while a player was within the game. I ultimately had to simplify the process in order to overcome this issue. I used a basic script that could determine walls in the real world, rather than determining variations of shapes and sizes to overlay on top of.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to start building for mixed reality?
Get started by downloading Unity and going through some example projects. Video tutorials work really well – I liked Unity’s as well as Digital Tutors’. There are also classes and meetups you can go to to learn some basic development skills. The first time I used Unity was when I attended a free full day “Introduction to Unity” class that Microsoft and Unity put together a few years ago.
What excites you most about the future of mixed reality?
I am excited about all of the amazing apps and games that people have been developing around the world, especially with respect to shared experiences. I think that people will become more engaged with this technology as it becomes more social and connected.
