Blasters, Crates, Drones oh my! | State of Matterless #62

Buckle up! Today we’re sharing the progress of the creative team, QA testing feedback, and UX improvements!

Floorcraft: Blasters

Merlin and the art team have been busy developing new art assets, including exploring crate designs, a new placeable tower concept, and a new drone feature that will mimic other players’ phone locations with a 3D object in AR. This new obstacle will be much larger than the current in-app object and will include animated elements to provide a more dynamic and visually interesting gameplay experience.

Some current iterations include these:

Charlie and the team have been exploring ways and possible concept directions for reworking and improving the UX flow for Floorcraft: Blasters for landscape users. Also, they want to improve accessibility to join sessions by implementing a session scanner right on the launch page of the application.

Next, they are experimenting with diegetic UI elements by designing UI menus that are perceived from the lens of a cockpit fighter. This can be seen in the grey boxing previews below: a 3D environment of a Banshee Blaster cockpit in which all the navigation functionality is integrated into the elements found within.

Finally, the team is moving forward with implementing a non-intrusive leaderboard and nameplate system to improve gameplay. This system will provide insights on your opponents and let you know exactly whose day you’re about to ruin with a perfectly timed laser blast.

Although these concepts are in their early stages, the team is excited to see where they will end up in phase two of Blasters development. Many fruitful ideas have been proposed.

On Incos

On the Incos side, progress has mainly been focused on code tasks, with the main focus being the integration of the new Virtual Beings milestone 2 code.

QA

The QA team has been hard at work testing different aspects of Floorcraft and Incos. Every Friday the entire time assembles worldwide to try the newest build of our games. For Floorcraft, the team tested the demo build and prepared a questionnaire for our internal playtests. We also tried a mirrored AR session, where two different physical locations are used to play in the same domain!

In addition, we tested the handling of timeouts on requests to Freeze Metamass. These tests ensure that the game is functioning smoothly and any issues are identified and resolved before they impact the player experience.

The QA team also worked on Incos, testing various features such as the Inco preference to stay on screen milestone and the updated calibration UX to specify calibration on a plane. They connected these features to the MoveTo behavior in VB (Virtual Beings) and tested the fix for the multi-attach volume issue with EBS. These tests help ensure that the Incos feature works as intended and is user-friendly for players.

With these tests, the QA team is playing a vital role in ensuring that Floorcraft and Incos deliver an engaging and seamless gaming experience for players.

On the creative side

Jose from Auki Labs is developing an innovative Volumetric Feature that’s constantly evolving and updating in real time. This cutting-edge feature is closely integrated with the session and comes equipped with some exciting additions, such as physical colliders and shooting balls. Check it out below:

Andy is using hand tracking to do drag gesture detection and create a game of AR snooker!

Thats all for this week! We hope you enjoyed reading about the latest updates from the team and all the happenings at Matterless HQ! Don’t forget to download and play Floorcraft: Blasters, and tag us in your gameplay videos!

-Shwetha, Digital Marketing Manager