Fixes and Donations | State of Matterless #7
A lot of activities this week, including fixes, TWO donations, a new hire, and a big leap from the game design team. Sounds and concept art are included. Let's get started.
0.2 Fixes
Thanks to our closed beta users, we received plenty of feedback on minor fixes that need to be done. We've had been troubleshooting the 0.2 build since two weeks ago. We will regularly push minor fixes over the coming week. Some of the bug fixes include:
— Fixing a couple of potential crashes from the entity tracking system in AR
— Fixing a bug where recalibration causes the animal to “moonwalk”
— Adding character limits to pet name, and let the name be editable if it is too long
— Fixing a potential crash upon the first time opening the app
— Showing the app version number in the loading screen so you can see which version you are on easily for reporting issues
— Fixing an error in the initialization order of the AR space
Donations
This week we were able to do two donations. The first is for the relief efforts during wartime, and the second is for tigers, through the Wildlife Protection Society of India.
We support Ukraine. We also support Russians that stand against the actions of any authoritarian government body. Last week, we posted a list of organizations on our Discord we vetted first, and then made a donation. Thanks to our Patreons we have donated $USD 1,190 to Voices of Children, a charity that helps children who are affected by the war in Ukraine. Visit https://voices.org.ua/en/ for more info. We’d like to thank our community for making this happen!
You can help too, even if it is just with your voice. World leaders are listening and every voice counts.
Even though tiger preservation has had some success in the past, the number of tigers still stands at a total of 2967. This is why in February, we were able to donate money to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, home of 70% of all tigers in the world, and we are going to have the founder join us soon for an AMA.
Keep an eye out on our Discord, and Twitter.
Game Design
A really exciting piece of news is about our current game dev efforts! We started building an inventory system for a number of items. The recording feature will become a Camera item within the inventory, and your Plant will be there too. The Plant will grow food on a timer, and once it's ready you can harvest the food into your inventory. From there, you can feed your pet by dropping the food from the inventory into the space. In further future builds, we will add more ways to feed your animal, such as feeding them out of your hand, a special feeding bowl, and a few more options we'd like to keep secret for now.
Concept Art
Here are some early concept renders for possible items in the app, including a camera, and a sleeping mat, courtesy of our new artist Merlin! Merlin is based in the UK and has worked in both 2D and 3D art. We loved the video he made to celebrate the Year of the Tiger:
This just might be the reason we hired him. Maybe. If you'd like to become part of the Matterless team, let us know in the comments or write to us on Discord!
Sound
The moment we started work on the Inventory system, Dusko jumper right in. These are some of the initial inventory sound models that he created. The main goal in putting them together was to keep the organic and futuristic feel that is being chiseled out of the raw marble of our idea-boulder. A sound that is both slightly harsh, and soft at the same time. The sound profile is extremely important as a UX element, and we are currently designing a way to iterate more quickly.
P.S. Happy International Women's Day!
That's it for week #7. Next week we have some fun news for all our Thai supporters. Find out more by subscribing to these updates on Medium and our Discord! Until then!
— Jason, Product Manager, Matterless
