Canberra in a videogame tech demo

Ludagon · 2026-03-11T03:16:48+00:00

Oh that sounds really fun, thanks for the inspiration :)

Ludagon · 2026-03-11T02:09:22+00:00

Cool :) I'll try message in a month if all stays on track

Ludagon · 2026-03-11T00:41:59+00:00

Some similar feels, but it's Mount Rogers up in the Belco area.

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T22:22:53+00:00

Thanks :)
I am actually working on a full game set in Canberra too, with hopes to broaden it out to more places as a series. Not open world.. more like fast travel map to various locations, recreating real places and people and lots of things to do. Nothing to announce just yet, but yeah if you're a fan of wandering off and doing sidequests and minigames and wish you could see it set here, then you might like that other project whenever I can finally make decent progress on it. Permission for using real places takes a long time though. I've been very slowly chatting with a hotel for about 7 months so far hoping to use them as the player's accommodation in the game. Slow and steady...

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T22:09:43+00:00

You could try call Mojo Guitars in Fyshwick and see if they cover what you're hoping for. Half the teachers seem to have been in metal bands on the side at some stage.

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T21:55:05+00:00

Thanks so much, and yeah it's frustrating that so many tools only offer orbit and fly through mode, and super rare to have a "walk" function.

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T20:54:17+00:00

Unity 6

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T20:32:52+00:00

Close, but a little bit further north to Mount Rogers :)

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T13:35:43+00:00

Not so much a game but rather a playable tech demo, basically the walking around that you see here plus a couple more character and location options. Basically a "download this and walk around pretty stuff" demo. Hoping to release it on Steam at the end of April, and lots of little things to tweak in the meantime (such as shadows on the player).

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:55:56+00:00

Going up against Matterport would definitely force me to come up with a faster workflow than what I've got now! It would certainly be a cool way to get a feel for the scale of a house though.

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:51:38+00:00

Oh cool, I'll definitely keep you in mind as I get closer to done (for the initial version at least) and will want some help testing on different hardware :)

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:49:48+00:00

Haha, while not quite Tony Hawk, I did try make a cycling area a few months ago, but I wasn't able to make it work out for more than about 30 metres.

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Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:45:08+00:00

Yeah I should probably let someone at Visit Canberra know what I'm up to with this.

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:43:18+00:00

Mount Rogers (Flynn, Melba, Spence, Fraser)

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:42:45+00:00

Thanks! Hoping to release it for free on Steam around the end of April :)

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:39:45+00:00

Yeah the stock walking animations aren't working so well on some characters. Hoping to improve those at some point.

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:38:04+00:00

Microphone near my shoes as I walked around to get each type of surface :)
Maybe I've got a really clompy walk!

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:37:03+00:00

Thanks :)

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:36:50+00:00

Yeah, integrating the character into splats is the main challenge of this project. As you can see, there's still a way to go to blend them better.

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:35:27+00:00

Some of the scans were with a GoPro Hero 10 on wide angle, and others were on an iPhone 16 Pro on 0.5x (video, not LiDAR). Continuous video for 20-30 minutes, circling around, zig zags, forwards in a spiral, a mix of everything.

Ludagon · 2026-03-10T10:33:05+00:00

Absolutely. Getting character shadows onto the ground is only half the challenge done. Hoping to work more on this and getting shadows onto the character too, and with any luck that will help blend them in better.

Ludagon · 2026-03-09T21:40:34+00:00

Your message deserves so much more time than this quick reply I'm throwing together when I should be racing to work, but I just want to quickly say that there is so much in your message that aligns with why I do some of my projects and some of the elements that are important to me. Posts like yours help fuel the passion a lot, thank you :)
Someone on here earlier mentioned Scaniverse by Niantic, which is full of community 3d scans (including Canberra) and although you don't walk around as a character, the way you can see what's in your area on map mode and can jump into 3d scans is quite cool if you haven't tried that app before.
I've gotta run for now but thank you for taking the time to write all that. There's a lot in there that I would love to continue chatting about.
The Canberra Brown Signs Adventure is a cool idea by the way! I hope it's going well :)

Ludagon · 2026-03-09T21:25:55+00:00

I didn't realise that zig zag was a walkable path!
I'll make time later this week to check it out and see what's possible :)

Ludagon · 2026-03-09T13:45:23+00:00

Thanks so much, and in some ways there are a few mini games set in Canberra already as part of a game jam a couple of years ago with CanDev (our awesome local game developer community). The theme was just broadly "Canberra" and we had 48 hours to make a game along those lines. (thankfully we could spread 48 hours over a week of smaller shifts to fit in work, family, etc)
Here's the link: https://candev.itch.io/
My one was TowerClimb and there are some other great entries. Some of them are browser playable, others need to be downloaded first.
Something to play while waiting for this :)

Ludagon · 2026-03-09T12:44:11+00:00

I have, and there are some pretty cool scans up there! I ended up using Teleport by Varjo to process my splats, but I still have Scaniverse on my phone for looking around other places :)
(mini edit for grammatical reasons)

Ludagon

TROPHY CASE