South East Asia and NZ Game Development Collaboration

Remote Creative Business Collaboration Project betweenMiramar Creative and SEACAPE

This collaboration was specifically commissioned to demonstrate these remote businesspractices and how they can apply to a range of businesses - not just those within thedigital creative sector. The project was conducted entirely online by Beyond Studio. Stage 1 - Levelling up Oddball Collaboration across borders in the gaming industryBeyond have spent the last year working on gaming software and technology to makefree roaming VR more accessible to the masses. Using the latest in wireless free-roaming virtual reality headsets, our game Oddballallows you to compete with up to six mates to secure the most points within a uniquevirtual world where power-ups come in the form of fart bombs and firing sticky ballsfrom your custom launcher will deplete your opponent's health helping you get closer toOddball domination! You choose a character then venture into a sky universe with yourteam by your side. Portals allow you to strategically move through floating islands usingstrategy and silliness to take out the winning title. The goal of Oddball is to make all ourplayers laugh out loud!

Our VR gaming studio in Wellington is a small team of Unreal Developers. In the pastwe’ve been fortunate to team up with incredible freelance designers. Here’s an earlydesign of one of the levels.

When we were approached by SEACAPE/Miramar Creative to collaborate with a team of designers in

South East Asia we jumped at the chance to show the power of collaboration using digital tools.Remote collaboration is not the future but the now.

1

Launching with Two Bit Circus in LA in February with 5 star

reviews it’s been very rewarding to get our first location based

experience to market. But with Covid hitting and Two Bit Circus

temporarily closing down we thought now would be a great time to

design and build out some new levels so when our partners and

customers open back up we have a choice of levels for them.

The current look of Oddball - June 2020

Outcomes of the Project1. Establish a relationship with an offshore companies for future gaming projects2. Use remote business practices to improve communication and collaboration3. Design a new level and integrate this into our free roaming VR game Oddball

2

ProcessThe first step is to find a talented partner who is keen to work on something unique andset up the tools we need. Good communication eliminates unnecessary and long business processes so we’replanning to use a bunch of tools to help us. These include:

Communication: Slack & ZoomProject management: TrelloGame software: Unreal Engine

Slack is perfect for remote working and cross country collaboration. We’ll be using slackfor quick questions and updates and Zoom for weekly project meeting updates. Forproject management Trello is our go-to tool.

Our Current Level DesignOddball currently has 4 rooms on floating islands that are connected by portals. Therooms have lots of walls to slow players down and give them places to hide.

For our next level we’re keen to bring down a few walls, play with the heights. Put insome new colours, textures and create a new theme.

Tane and Anna having a game of Oddball at our Wellington HQ

3

VIEW THE UPDATED GAME FOOTAGE

Stage 2 – New Level OverviewWe wanted to continue in a similar theme to what we have but now you’re in a slightlyspooky magical forest where you can shoot your friends from a treehouse and forestbattlefield.

We decided to stick with three zones. Two of these will be tree houses connected by abridge ( the bridge will be a portal so appearing further away in virtual reality ) On oneside of the map we need a forest that is thick to stop players walking through and theother a low wall. One side of the map will be a rocky hillside with a waterfall that flowsthrough the playspace acting as a barrier to stop players from being able to collide theircontrollers from playspace 1 to playspace 2 and 3.

Knowing this we were able to give a full design brief to our partner studio. Having a goodbrief required a lot of planning especially knowing there could be a language barrier wemade sure we had both a visual and written brief.

About our partner in Vietnam Glenda Studio specializes in creating 3D game assets. This includes low and holy polymesh builds, texturing, mapping and level design. Because our game is designed for amobile headset we need low poly assets and even though they have never worked on aQuest based LBE level they were up for the challenge.

Communication Suong is our main contact at Glenda. We communicate daily on slack and record ourzoom meetings so she can play it back to her team. Thanks to online tools we’ve had noissues understanding each other so far.

4

Concept Design Using dropbox we have been able to share designs. We started with the concept

designs such as this below showing one of the walls in the space.

From concept design we were able to sign off the positioning of the map and move intoassets. We wanted some mushrooms to use for shelter in the forest. Here are some of

the first looks we received.

Dropbox also has a great feature where we can select the separate images andcomment. Next step was to look at textures and start getting a more complete picture ofthe map.

5

We are now working on the design of the tree houses which have a very fun Dr Suessvibe to them. Working with Suong and her team at Glenda has been as easy asworking with someone down the road in Wellington. We have all the online tools tocommunicate and the time difference can work in our favour as we have the morningto review work and they have the afternoon/evening to work through next iterations.

Stage 3 - The Final Phase

After a few design interactions it was time to start putting the assets into Unreal Engine.This is always where things get a bit tricker and you really get a sense of how things lookin VR, if the level design works and where assets need to be placed.

Like every process there were changes we needed to make. Some of the doorwaysdidn’t line up and we needed to remove a number of trees and foliage from the mainplayspace to open it up for the players. The inside of the tree houses felt a bit flat onceyou were in them and everything was a bit close and needed to be stretched out in thedigital world. Currently the walls had no texture which is fine in a mobile game but in VRcauses disorientation as there is no perception of depth.

With a few more slack messages, some diagrams, illustrations and instructions the teamat Glenda Studios in Vietnam were able to make modelling changes and our NZ teamspent time implementing these. The result is a vibrant, lowpoly world of wonder.

This is a draft of our forest play area.

6

View from above our magical treehouse level

Players can move through these spaces and using our unique stretchspace technologythey will appear much further away in the game than they are in the physical space. Thelevel is 8 metres by 10 metres and six players can compete to take out the title in thismagical forest world.

* A team of VR players test out the new Magical Forest Level

7

VIEW THE NEW LEVEL

Working with a remote team in Asia has proved to us that withthe right communication tools and processes in place, it’s not

a complicated process.

Our key tips for success include:

1. Ensure you do lots of planning at the start so when you are ready to bring in a partneryou have all the technical details needed.2. Use written, recorded and visual tools for communication to ensure elements aren’tlost in translation.3. Tools like Dropbox and Slack make it simple to comment and ask quick questions.4. Make the most of the time difference by setting up delivery times that sync together.You can wake up with work delivered making the most of 24 hours!

Working with the team in Vietnam has been a pleasure and now that we have built thisrelationship and trust we would love to do more with them in the future.

Report by Jessica Manins Co-Founder and CEO Beyond

8

We have been working with Beyond Studio on designing andmodelling new level of Magical Tree House Land. It was reallya simple process using online tools to communicate such as

Zoom, Dropbox and Slack. We have no barriers workingthrough borders . Anton and Jessica are really nice, giving usquick support during our project and get it successfully done.

Chúng tôi đã làm việc với Beyond Studio trong 1 dự án thiết kếvà dựng mô hình Magical Tree House Land. Quy trình làm việccũng rất đơn giản, chúng tôi đã sử dụng các công cụ online để

giao tiếp trong quá trình làm việc như Zoom, Dropbox vàSlack. Chúng tôi không gặp trở ngại gì hết khi làm việc xuyênbiên giới với nhau. Anton và Jessica thật sự rất tử tế và nhiệt

tình hỗ trợ chúng tôi trong suốt quá trình dự án diễn ra.”

Suong Phan, Glenda Studios