Visual Vicissitude | State of Matterless #38
MOAR visual upgrades to the Matterless realm, engineering developments and…musical explorations? Read on;
Visual Vicissitude
Creative Director Charlie has been firing on all cylinders with designing visual improvements to Incos, Floorcraft, and the Matterless website.
First up is an overhaul of Floorcraft’s user interface, which is aimed at bringing it up to standard for a full-fledged iOS release. This includes a new cohesive brand package and theming across the entire app. The changes are coming along, the team is polishing away to give our augmented reality race car app a sparkling shine for its CLOSE release! Stay tuned to our socials for updates on that.
With two AR apps in the pipeline, we’ve gotten started with UX explorations for our Matterless web portal! You’ll be able to manage all your Matterless toys like Incos and hovercars, along with your Metamass, all in one convenient spot.
Finally, on the Incos front, Charlie’s been working with Jason and Batu on exploring cosmetic variation systems. He explains:
This involves ensuring your pets can have equipable item variation whilst maintaining all the usual functionality that your Incos already have. The basis of this test, a blob-like creature as a foundation we’re experimenting with, shows some promising and fun results.
We’ll have more to share on the bubbly blob buddies soon. In the meantime, jump over to our Discord to tell us what you'd like them to look like!
Engineering Reality
Alongside the development of major new features for Incos and Floorcraft, such as the AR transitioning and mood animations, our wizards are polishing the edges with smaller additions and performance optimizations that will culminate in a more polished product.
One such feature that JD implemented is AR session notifications. These are real-time updates that notify the user when they or other players join or leave a shared session.
JD’s also working with Darko on improving audio and visual feedback for when a player’s hand interacts with an Inco. The current plan is to add new layers of effects as your hand gets closer to an Inco, breaking the barrier between the physical and digital. Check out our previous update for more insights into this approach.
Boring Stuff in Croatia
In the life of startup founders, there is also a dark side of work that is filled with incomprehensible legal, tax, and accounting terms. This is why CRO Startup organized the Boring Stuff (or BS) meet-ups in Croatia and invited one of our co-founders, Damir, to join a panel alongside Tin Težak, Nika Pintar and Darko Jovisic to speak about what is, for most start-ups with little experience, often a giant headache — the term sheet.
The term sheet is a concise, usually non-binding agreement that outlines all major terms of a funding round or exit and is a very important part of the journey to making any startup successful. Due to the non-binding nature of most term sheets, they come in all shapes and forms, and Damir was a part of the panel where other fun things such as drag along, liquidation preference, and preemption rights were discussed.
He reports: “This is not boring stuff at all.” Shoutout to Marijana Sarolic Robic for moderating the discussion!
Musically Matterless
One of the great joys of tinkering with matterless magic is discovering the unexpected ways it can interact with your physical life. In this case, I set up my phone with our hand trails app and rocked out on the bass.
I used to be called “Fire Fingers” when I played in my college’s jazz band — I think I’ve finally earned that nickname now!
The result of this experiment inspired me to head down to the local blues jam in Singapore and see how our hand trails looked on other instruments. Personally, I like the way the laser hand trails accentuate the drummer’s big arm movements, while on guitar, the fire trails have a more dramatic effect.
We have so many directions we can go with our AR hand trails and how they react to matterless objects; I’m excited to see which path we choose.
That’s our update for this week! Check out our LinkTree to get updates on all our socials, and check in with us next week, when we are going to AWE, the Augmented World Expo in Lisbon.
