Llama Labs Interactive
  • Introduction
  • Game Development
    • TankTop
    • MiniRacers
  • Asset Creation
    • The Crate Series
      • Blender Basics
        • The Base Model
        • Edit Elements
        • Blender Common Tools
        • Simple Materials
        • Useful Techniques
        • Exporting the Asset
        • Summary
      • Materials and UVs
      • Palette & Gradient Texturing
        • Palette Approach
        • Creating the Material
        • Unwrapping UVs
        • Finalizing the asset
      • Tileable Textures
        • Creating the Texture
        • Creating the Material
        • Unwrapping the UVs
        • Finalizing the Asset
      • Trim Sheets
        • Creating the Texture
        • Creating the Material
        • Unwrapping UVs
        • Finalising the Asset
      • Hand Painted Assets
      • High polygon Assets
    • VRM Avatars
      • Getting Started
      • VRM for Blender
        • Installation
        • Rigging the Avatar
        • Weight Painting
        • VRM Details
        • VRM Export
  • Unity
    • VR/XR
      • Setting Up Unity
      • Installing Packages
      • Project Setup for VR/XR
      • Project Setup for XR
      • Movement - Teleportation
      • Picking up Objects
      • Poking Objects
      • Interacting with UI
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • Origins
  • Engine
  • Prototype
  1. Game Development

TankTop

Origins

Tanktop was a reduced scale project once we had decided to move on from the Roblox eco system. If you want to read up on that process, check out MiniRacers.

One of the bigger ideas for Llama Labs Interactive is to create high quality VR/XR experiences of old school games such as from the Atari 2600, Commodore, Amiga, or DOS games. The scale of these games is very small, but the potential improvements and translation of these to a 3D tabletop is extremely interesting. One of the first games some of the team remembers was 'Tank'. As much as there have been countless versions created since then, it's still a classic.

As a big focus in our team is taking simple ideas and making them as polished as possible the first thing we did was make a tank mechanic that looked and felt good. Using tools like Hinge Joints, and blendshapes to add subtle elements of life to the vehicle as they moved around the table. The fact that aiming with this in place would be a little chaotic would hopefully add to the fun.

Engine

As noted in the MiniRacers doc, we had pivoted over to Unity 6 from Roblox.

Unity had just released their Unity 6 LTS and their keynote late 2024 gave the impression that they had learned from their mistakes over the previous few years (approach to engine updates, runtime fee, generally everything honestly) and was aligning back to a better track. We will have to wait to see if their shareholders and upper management will allow that to continue, but at this point Unity is still a significant upgrade to Roblox. Godot and Unreal are both good engines, but XR/VR seems more stable within the Unity eco system in comparison to Godot. Unreal may have better results overall, but the learning curve is quite steep in comparison to Unity, especially with the team having experience with previous versions of Unity.

Unity was easier to build in and had all the functionality that we wanted that Roblox did not (such as Shaders, custom colliders, physics, better optimization, ability to move/scale/rotate in more than one axis etc.).

The VR/XR features had also considerably improved over the recent 6 months before Unity 6 was released, so we figured it was a good time to delve into it.

Prototype

As passthrough wasn't able to be used without building to the Quest 3 directly, the prototype tank was made in a standard build using a Gamepad to start as they are similar enough to Headset controllers like the Oculus Touch and Vive Controllers. This reduced testing time considerably.

Next up is getting the tank into a VR and XR experience with a basic Arena.

PreviousGame DevelopmentNextMiniRacers

Last updated 4 months ago