We dropped off this journal after Greece in 2012, but kept travelling continuously until 2015. We started travelling with friends more often, and I guess I wasn’t as lonely and needing to share our experiences. But we still took pictures! And I’ll continue to post them to our Flickr stream now and then.
So a quick (but by no means complete) recap:
After Greece in 2012 we stayed with relatives in Scotland, then six months in Mexico (first the Sayulita, then Yucatan) where we released our game Incredipede. In 2013 we spent spring in Montreal and New York, lived on a remote island in Bocas del Toro, Panama, then spent several months in Buenos Aires. In 2014 we lived in Brazil, roadtripped around our native British Columbia for a few months, then wintered in Cape Town, South Africa. We ended our five year world tour with a stay in Bali, Indonesia.
After our customary spring trip to GDC in San Francisco (which we missed only one year and regretted deeply), in 2015 we bought an apartment in Vancouver, and have been there ever since. Shortly after that I released my game Rebuild 3, then we dove into VR and released Fantastic Contraption with the Vive in early 2016.
And now, except for the occasional month in Tokyo or elsewhere, we’re mostly sedentary. Our addition to bulky virtual reality systems is part of that, but also we’re just happy to stay in one place for awhile and to have a real home.
Thanks to a ton of hard work at Radial Games, Fantastic Contraption will be coming to PS VR next week! Here’s the announcement (reposted from the Official Playstation Blog).
Chris Floyd from Radial Games here, with an exciting message from our giant videogame zeppelin flying high overhead. We’ve been working day and night to create a most exquisite and whimsical virtual reality morsel: Fantastic Contraption for PlayStation VR!
Release Date
That’s right! We’ve been having a blast creating Fantastic Contraption for PlayStation VR, and we’re excited to announce that we’ll be sharing all of our hard work with you on Tuesday, July 11th, 2017. National Fantastic Contraption Day, mark it in your calendar! It will retail for $19.99 usd with an extra launch-week-special 10%-off if you have PlayStation Plus.
Seated Gameplay Specifically Designed for PS VR – The Most Relaxing Way to Play FC!
Sure, you could stand around, windmilling your arms in our magical virtual reality wonderland, but now you have the choice to sit back and play Fantastic Contraption right from your couch! Imagine! We redesigned the gameplay experience especially for PS VR, taking advantage of the likelihood that you have a favorite place to relax in front of your PlayStation 4. We’ve included special PS VR-only features that allow you to resize and position your gameworld at the press of a button, which we’re sure you’ll find slick and amazing.
It has fast become my favorite way to play, and makes contraption-building feel a whole lot like model-making, which we are Very Big Fans of here at Radial Games.
New, Unique Levels for PlayStation VR
We have a handful of brand-new, PlayStation-exclusive levels in the release. Try your hand bouncing around some moguls, attacking a big-bricked wall, and more! We’ve designed a few challenges specifically around seated play, and we know you’ll enjoy them.
Dynamically Resize the Entire World in the Brand-New Resize Island
Welcome to Resize Island, where you can dynamically resize the entire world around you! This opens a world of customization for your preferred way to play. You can make the world really huge to fit your standing-style gameplay preferences, or shrink it all the way down to fit on your lap, where you can marvel at tiny Neko. That’s right, THE CAT RESIZES TOO. You can do anything in videogames.
PS4 Pro Enhancements
For those of you with a lovely new PS4 Pro, we’ve spiced up the game a bit extra for ya:
8xAA – We averaged out all those sharp corners for smoother looking curves!
Higher-resolution textures – you can almost smell that wood-grain!
Improved backdrops and scenery
Additional special-effects and visual flairs
Extra island decorations
125% resolution oversampling – A fancy way of saying that things look real sharp in there.
Let us know below what you’re most looking forward to, and I hope to see you having a great time with Fantastic Contraption when it launches next Tuesday!
This is the last update we originally planned for the game, making 1.6.0 the final cherry on the Contraption sundae.
But why “Anti-Oppenheimer”? Because:
“Now I am become Editor, the creator of worlds”
Now you too can defy – nay, define – physics as the creator of your own Fantastic Contraption levels using the new built-in Level Editor. To get started, first put on the helmet to enter dark world, then look for a mask above a statue of a two-toed sloth. Don the mask to enter:
The Level Editor
As Andy Moore says in the video above, we think the level editor is a key piece to the Contraption experience. The original 2008 Flash game had 47 official levels, and half a million user-generated ones. Not only did player-made levels give the game more content, they let people come up with whole new ways of playing that we hadn’t even considered.
To be honest, the level editor’s practically a game in itself. Move aside TiltBrush, it’s time for art class with Mrs. Fox:
Next we’ll recreates a cartoonish prison stereotype using dynamic blocks (aka “moon cheese”):
The Sarahfox
Ring the bell to summon the Sarahfox, your tutorial guide to the Level Editor (voiced and acted by yours truly!). She’ll introduce the basic controls: grabbing, stretching, copying, and using the precision movement flowers.
We recorded the Sarahfox’s movement using a system we wrote into the game, so she can interact with pre-scripted objects and give a demonstration right front of you. It’s remarkable how much life a character can have in VR using only 3 points of motion capture data.
Switch the Dog
You’ll meet Button the Dog’s cousin Switch when you first arrive in the Level Editor. Use him to toggle between Build Scale (where it’s easier to reach the whole level) and Test Scale (where it’s easier to playtest). There are no functional differences between the two modes, so you can edit level pieces and build contraptions in both and it’s a cinch to test on the fly:
Contraption pieces will be saved along with the level terrain, so make sure to delete them when you’re done testing, unless you want to include them as a challenge or example to people who play your level. It’s also possible to save levels that don’t have a goal or are missing a goal ball. We recommend testing before you save!
If you save a level you made to any shelf on the save table, it will be published online. To delete your saved level or contraption, throw it into the Trashcan Frog’s mouth.
Lippy the Mouthmoth Keyboard
Grab Lippy or double-tap the trigger to call him down to you in the dark world. Move him over to the maquette minimap to name your contraption or level (if no name is set, a random one will be chosen when you publish online).
You can also move Lippy to the save table to filter it by contraption or level name. For example searching for “mi” will find things named Steep Mitten or Miserly Devil.
Infinite Levels
We’ve seeded the user-made levels with some we designed that didn’t make the official cut, or that we’ve been inspired to create since trying out the new editor (which is much easier to use than our old system!). To check them out, enter the dark world and set the save table’s mode lever (the one on the right) to Levels, then use the left lever to select Levels by Rating or Levels by Date.
Don’t forget you can favorite user-made levels (or contraptions) by giving them a kiss. This feeds into the online ranking for the Levels by Rating shelf.
Zumi the Moon Mouse
Zumi Mouse didn’t live in a house, he wanted to live on the moon!
As the world cat passed by, he rode up to the sky,
And round his head put a balloon.
He munched and he chewed, ’till the cheese moon was hewed,
And Zumi had plenty of holes he’d accrued.
But what a mistake – such a bad bellyache,
Zumi’s home is his favorite food!
Full Changelog
We don’t have any more major updates planned for Fantastic Contraption, though we’ll continue to maintain the game and support new hardware (the PS VR version is coming soon!). Radial Games and Northway Games will be moving on to new (and so far unannounced) things next.
New Level editor! To use it, first put on the helmet, then put on the creepy mask in the corner and ring the bell for a tutorial. User-made levels can be shared online and loaded via the save table just like contraptions.
New Mouthmoth keyboard lets you name contraptions and levels, and search by contraption / level name
Added interactive art elements to side of maquette and Kaiju scale
Autohide the companion desktop menu and limit desktop display framerate
Show purple building bounds if cheating detected during tutorial
Hide black sphere during startup
Improve look of pins on Neko’s head
Adjust some sky characters
Sky color variation
Sounds for items including non-spinning green wheels and eyeballs
Disable musical sounds if you’re holding an item
Tweaked throw force for Kaiju scales
Improved haptics
Improved tutorial text font
Optimized first person companion view smoothing
Optimized avatar shadows
Optimized Twitch panel memory usage
Fixed some menus not updating when language changes
Fixed models disappearing after you drop them on a save table shelf
Fixed Button the Dog ghosting
Fixed disappearing Neko eyes and ghosting
Fixed obscure crash bug with some webcams
Fixed cat skin modding
Fixed sticky tutorial messages
Fixed laserpointer positioning for Twitch/camera menu
Fixed feedback form submission issues
Cheers and happy 2017 from the Fantastic Contraption team!
Our friend (and Rebuild 3 writer) Stephen Gray has joined Radial Games to work (among other things) on the PS VR version of Fantastic Contraption, due out in Spring 2017.
Kert Gartner used some wacky techniques to film this and our Oculus Rift trailer, and today he shared some of the cinema techniques he used to get shots you usually only see in movies or tailored cutscenes. He also filmed gameplay footage in 4k split screen so he could get 1st person and 3rd person shots with both the Oculus Touch and Playstation Move controllers all at the same time.
Yes Oculus players, the wait is finally over! Touch controllers are available starting December 6th, and with them Fantastic Contraption is coming to Oculus!
We’ve sometimes been caught comparing the Oculus and Vive hand controllers, but one thing we definitely agree on is that grabbing stuff with your hands in VR feels amazing, and we wouldn’t want Fantastic Contraption played any other way. So we’re glad we waited!
You may also notice some teasers in the above video for the Fantastic Contraption level editor. We’re putting the finishing touches on it right now so you can expect to see it in an update soon.
