Benji's Bachelor

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Kraken Development Log 06 - YouTube

The sixth development log for Float Studios' current project, "Kraken!".

A new update from us here at Float Studios.

[benjisbachelor]

We're float studios - a team of artists, innovators and problem solvers who are passionate about what we do, and how we do it. With a background in game development and creative technologies, we specialise in crafting engaging immersive Virtual Reality experiences.

Website is live! This is a major step in making our business commercially viable, a milestone that wasn’t meant to be reached until much later in our timeline.

We’re really proud of how it turned out.

[benjisbachelor]

DevLog 5

An update on what we've been up to recently, and why there hasn't been a post in a couple of weeks. www.floatstudios.co.nz https://www.facebook.com/floatstud...

Checkout this weeks video log for some important updates and good deiscussions.

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https://www.facebook.com/floatstudiosnz/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdYYO-33ehthX3Joe7Qvvhw

Social Media Presence

One of my jobs for this project was to build a social media presence for Float Studios. Creating a facebook page and a youtube channel was my first stage towards achieving this goal.

The facebook page has been the most efficient way at reaching a large number of people, we have had it up for little over a week and already gained 366 followers. We plan to use this to keep our followers posted on any events, new videos or interesting content we have.

Our Youtube channel is used for our weekly Vlogs (which have been an incredibly beneficial tool for us) and also for mechanic logs and refined project show-reels. Although we have not yet gained many subscribers yet, we have already seen so many benefits to having a professional looking space for all of our companies content. Each week I put out at least one video with consistent thumbnails and tags, to have a cohesive and aesthetically appealing channel.

The next stage is to get our website live, which is currently in the works. I expect this is still a few weeks away, but is well worth the wait.

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Kraken Development Log 04

Checkout this week’s development Log

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We have just been told that our project from last semester “Chasm” is a finalist for this years Best Awards. We are beyond excited and incredibly grateful to AUT for putting us forward for this competition.

Whether we win a prize or not, we look forward to the possibilities that this will lead us to in the future!

http://bestawards.co.nz/entries/interactive/chasm-a-virtually-reality-experience/

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As of today, Float Studios is an official registered/certified company. My role in this project (among other things) was to focus on making us and “Kraken” commercially viable. Registering our business was a big step for this to happen. This week I have also: set up a business bank account, arranged contracts for everyone in the team, applied for an IRD number, registered for GST, etc. This is a massive milestone for us and something we didn’t expect to get done so soon.

We are so excited to see what is ahead for us.

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Our second Development log for VR project “Kraken”

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Our first dev log.

I plan to upload a video like this weekly. It will be a really efficient way to communicate our process and will also be really beneficial for us to have this project properly documented.

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First week in and I have taken on my role as project manager. The main problem we have faced over the past couple projects we have done as a team was losing focus and not maximising our workflow. Everyone would be keen to work on something but “had nothing to do”. Which in reality couldn’t have been further from the truth, but because we didn’t have a clear plan, it was easy to lose track of progress and expectations. This semester I wanted to make sure this didn’t happen. I went around and drew up a rough timeline with each team member, then collated them and developed what you see above. Each timeline lines up and works with each other team member, it shows when they rely on someone else and also any important upcoming events.  We are already seeing the benefits of this timeline. They have also been printed out and put in our work-space so each team member can write and add to it as they see fit.

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Late nights-Early mornings

For the last three weeks of this project, a few of us boys went from averaging 40 hours a week to 60. We would arrive at usually 9am and stay till, basically we were kicked out at 11pm. 

We tried to apply for a 24 hour pass so that we could work through the night, however this was declined. Which was probably a good thing for health reasons.

Although we didn’t have a 24 hour pass, I would leave uni at 11pm and walk to Tyler’s apartment, where we would continue to work through the night and then head to uni again the next day. This became a regularity. We found that we worked better as a team at these late nights as there was no one else in the studio, meaning zero distractions.

I was so grateful for the boys commitment to this project and their diligence in being at uni every day.

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Revised project timeline that shows when each team member will be in the studio as well as what times they are most efficient at. This helps us to see when these peak efficiency times overlap and maximize team workflow.

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Chasm gameplay

Chasm is a virtual reality puzzle game developed by Float Studios. This video shows a snippet of gameplay from the game with the HTC Vive.

Here is a brief video of game-play from our project, Chasm. Levi is showing off our magical virtual environment and using his wits to navigate the mystical chasm.

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Chasm project showreel

Chasm is a virtual reality puzzle game developed by Float Studios. This video shows the development of this project over about 12 weeks

Here’s a showreel that shows our teams workflow over this semester to create Chasm. In it you’ll see how each individual inputs their unique skills and experience to pull of a collaborated project.

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Here’s a link to my page about Chasm from my portoflio

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My Conceptual and Contextual Statements for third year studio, semester one. Have a read.

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An ode to the Whiteboard

This post is dedicated to show my appreciation for what i found to be the most helpful tool in our studio. The Whiteboard.

Every online, new age that we bought/downloaded/subscribed to is all good an dandy, but nothing tops the effectiveness of our whiteboard. Due to the nature of our group, we are all working in close proximity every weekday, 9am-10pm. Communicating between each other is easy, so having online task managements is almost unnecessary because at every meeting we write up our weekly goals or brainstorm on the whiteboard. Its fast, malleable and efficient at communicating ideas and being able to tactically cross something off gives a great sense of achievement. Thank you Heit (makers of the first whiteboard)

Love your work.