stickee is happy to announce the creation of its first virtual reality software.
One of the most engaging entertainment platforms of the past 12 months, virtual reality is an area which stickee has been eager to get involved in over recent years.
Based on the hugely popular book and subsequent film, The BFG, the game involves users catching good dreams and avoiding bad dreams as you float through the sky after drinking a bottle of Frobscottle, or Whizzpopper as it’s known to the giant.
Powered by the HTC Vive, you start in a woodland glade, you can look around the fictional world which is filled with fireflies and fog and begin the game by drinking from the bottle found placed on a nearby rock.
Once the game starts, you use the right HTC Vive controller to control your dream catching net, trying to catch as many good dreams as possible, whilst avoiding bad dreams. Good dreams give you 10 points, whilst bad dreams minus 5 points from your total score.
Once your timer comes to an end, your final score is on show on the starting area, letting you compare your result to friends and other players.
David Nestoruk was tasked with creating the gameplay for the VR app, and was thrilled to finally get to work on it.
“This is so different to the type of games we’ve had over the past 30 years or so. It’s completely different to any games consoles we’ve seen before. Other consoles have all been very sedentary, whereas this give you more emersion, running around actually exploring within the game rather than just sitting looking at a screen. I haven’t had much game development experience before, but it’s been fun and it’s opened my eyes to a group of new things.
“It’s definitely a whole new world in terms of where we’ve come from, obviously games haven’t been around for that long in the grand scheme of things so this is a big leap forward and I’m quite excited about what’s going to come out and what could be on the horizon.”
Karl Binder, stickee’s CTO, was equally pleased to see the game finally come to life.
“Building a world in 3D and then creating the atmosphere with fog, starlight and fireflies was a challenge, but it was increasingly satisfying to build a world and then step into it, it was really, really fun.
“For me the biggest challenge was around getting the lighting correct, getting the quality there. Obviously you’re rendering in light from candles in a glade at night time, so getting that done correctly and to be a high enough resolution, but not to be laggy or pixelated was a challenge. But once we’d got the lighting correct and got all of the shadows sorted the actual effect was worth the extra effort.”
What’s more, he also sees VR being introduced as more than just another gaming platform, with numerous other applications of the technology possible in the future.
“Usually our business focus is more B2B rather than consumer, but in the immediate term obviously gaming and things like that are clear targets.
“But I also see promotional experiences, like with this game – I can imagine it being set up at a launch party for a product, film or book. Imagine going to a book launch that you’ve also built in VR so you can actually go in there after the reading, or even hearing the reading whilst standing in the environment that’s being described to you – that would really bring the author’s vision to life.
“That said, sometimes you might want to leave that to imagination, but there are certain scenes or certain things that I think if you could step into the book it would really add a wow factor, particularly at a launch.”
You can get more information about us and our work with VR here.
