State of Matterless #1
Welcome, friens, to our new weekly series by Jason, our product manager; the first post to keep you updated on all things Matterless. It shaped up to be an action-packed month! Here's Jason.
Hello everyone, Jason here, and it’s my job to ensure the vision of Matterless is made real. Let's get into it.
0.1 Demo
We’re excited and nervous to preview our first demo build to our Patreon supporters. The first closed beta build is using an early version of Auki that we intend to upgrade ASAP. However, building scalable networks is a lot of work, and it’s taking a bit longer than we'd hoped. We want to ensure that our supporters get value for backing us, so we decided to show you our 0.1 build even though it is not the most stable.
The demo will be up and running for one week only, then we will turn it off so we can upgrade to our new servers.
The link has been sent to 913 people. The project is early in development and these previews represent a behind-the-scenes view of how a project transforms from an idea into a full app.
What can you see in Matterless v0.1
— Calliope, our first Matterless pet. Calliope the Cougar gets hungry and needs to be fed regularly to be kept happy.
— You can join the shared AR experience with your friends. You may need to turn down the screen brightness to scan the QR code. Please note that this feature may not be stable on all devices.
— You can record a video of Calliope the cougar with the record button. For our next community event, you can upload short videos of Calliope in fun or interesting situations. Stay tuned for more details at the end of this week!
What the team is cooking up
3D Hand Reconstruction: Our computer vision wizard Dr Gao sent this exciting update on 3d hand reconstruction. The difference between this and normal hand recognition is we know the depth, not just where on the screen the hand is. Top left you see traditional hand recognition, just showing where on the screen the hand is. The larger frame is showing our machine learning attempt at interpreting depth:
Sound Design: What does metamass sound like? To define that, our sound lead Dusko constructed a core audio chain engine, based on visualizing and trying to merge nature, pet spirits, and organics into a few simple tonal phrases. With this, we are able to easily create permutations for UI, backgrounds, and metamass sounds. Soon we will be able to close the soundpool for the beta in this version, and add some auditive texture to our vision!
Concept Design: Antonio, our concept artist has created fantastic sketches for what we call metaflora. It's part of a larger ecosystem within Matterless, and something the art team is very excited about. There are loads of great ideas floating around, and were getting closer to creating a unified look for these. Stay tuned for a reveal soon!
Game Design Updates: Since arriving, I’ve been drilling down into designing the core systems to define pet needs, moods, and the personality traits that make each Matterless pet feel unique and alive. This is a fun and complex task that will require a lot of finessing until we get the systems to work smoothly.
Snow Leopard Trust: We made another donation to the Snow Leopard Trust! Thanks to you, our engaged and caring community, we were able to do a another donation to SLT. We hosted an AMA last Friday with Justine and Koustubh, wo are actively researching and creating programs for conservation and grass root changes in the vast endangered areas of Central Asia.
Well, that's it for week #1. Look forward to more design and progress insights in an update next week!
––Jason, Product Manager, Matterless
