Happy New Year Everyone! A lot of you probably just got your new VR device over the holidays! To help guide you in your game selection for the new year I’ve compiled a list of the top paid games and apps available on Steam for under $10. For around the price of one game, you can fill your VR library with these affordable little gems! After you have tried out some of the free content on Steam (there are over 500 free VR titles in the Steam store now!), I recommend this list to everyone!

10. Deadlock: 5/10

Description: Deadlock is a wave shooter with a cool “neon alien” atmosphere. Unfortunately the game has been in early access for nearly 2 years now, and there is still not much to the game. Worth purchasing if you can find it on sale!
Smoothness: Somewhat smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: No
Price: $5.99 – Buy on sale

9. A Fear of Heights and Other Things: 5/10

Description: This is a fun little app to demo VR. It made the list for the rope swing mini game which was a blast!
Smoothness: Very smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: Yes
Price: $0.99 – Acceptable Price

8. Far Space: 6/10

Description:Far space is a space adventure story that lasts about 30 minutes.
Smoothness: Very smooth
Vive Controllers: No
Steam Trading Cards: Yes
Price: $1.99 – Acceptable Price

7. Mind Unleashed: 6/10

Description: Mind Unleashed is a wave based shooter.
Smoothness: Somewhat smooth
Vive Controllers: No
Steam Trading Cards: Yes
Price: $2.99 – Buy on sale

6. Drone Hunter VR: 6/10

Description: Drone Hunter VR is a wave based shooter similar to Deadlock, only the graphics and gameplay has a bit more going for it! On occasion you can find this for $0.99 in the Steam store!
Smoothness: Very smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: No
Price: $9.99 – Buy on sale

5. Deep Blue: 6/10

Description: Deep Blue is reminiscent of Marble Madness.
Smoothness: Somewhat smooth
Vive Controllers: No
Steam Trading Cards: Yes
Price: $2.99 – Great price

4. Neon Arena: 6/10

Description: Neon Arena is a top down shooter with two levels and many powerups!
Smoothness: Very smooth
Vive Controllers: No
Steam Trading Cards: Yes
Price: $4.99 – Buy on sale

3. CYCOM: Cybernet Combat: 6/10

Description: Fun first person shooter game played on a grid with multiple powerups. Currently in “early access”.
Smoothness: Very smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: No
Price: $4.99 – Great price

2. Emily Wants to Play: 7/10

Description: First person horror game.
Smoothness: Very smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: No
Price: $4.99 – Acceptable price

2. Sort ‘Em: 7/10

Description: Job simulator style game. In early access, so hopefully some improvements to come!
Smoothness: Very smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: No
Price: $2.99 – Acceptable price

1. Blastercell: 8/10

Description: Blastercell is a 2D style game in VR. Blastercell makes the top of the list because it is cheap, runs smoothly, utilizes Vive controllers, you can get hours of entertainment out of it, bonus Steam trading cards, and it occasionally goes on sale for as low as $0.49! You can literally sell the trading cards and recoup most of the purchase price! It’s a win/win/win situation!
Smoothness: Very smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: Yes
Price: $0.99 – Great Price

I’m currently 7th on the leaderboard for all time high scores!

Honorable Mentions

Going Up: 5/10

Description: Going up is another wave based game, but rather than shooting, you use a set of futuristic swords to fend off the waves. Great game if you have been aching to wield some light sabers!
Smoothness: Somewhat smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: No
Price: $4.99 – Buy on sale

Zero-G VR: 5/10

Description: A unique space game where the object is to jettison yourself into space in wearing a space suit from one space module to another.
Smoothness: Very smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: No
Price: $4.99 – Buy on sale

Endless Labyrinth: 5/10

Description: Endless Labyrinth is all that it claims to be. Walk around an endless stone labyrinth and collect gems. It had potential, it’s too bad the developer didn’t continue development. A great one for the kids or VR beginners though if you can catch it on sale!
Smoothness: Very smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: No
Price: $0.99 – Buy on sale

Coaster of Carnage VR

And I will shamelessly plug my own game in this article, although I’ll refrain from putting on the top 10 list XD

http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/737260/
Description: Horror themed rollercoaster ride, great for Halloween, great for scaring friends and family!
Smoothness: Somewhat smooth
Vive Controllers: Yes
Steam Trading Cards: Not yet!
Price: $0.99

Pro Tip: Wait for these titles to go on sale and you’ll likely pick any one of them up for less than $5! (some of them under a buck!)

Developers: Would you like me to try out your VR game? Contact me!

The post Top Vive Games for Under $10 on Steam – 2018 Guide appeared first on Kevin Gulling - Game Development, VR, and more.

In this 3 minute music video you can take a 360 degree look at the moon of Sol II: Lua from the title currently in development, 1000 AE for the Vive.

How to watch

This can be viewed from PC or mobile phone, or with the proper hardware/software it can also be viewed from a VR device.

PC – simply play the video as you would a normal YouTube video. To look around, using your mouse you can click and drag anywhere on the video to rotate the current view.

Mobile Device – Make sure you have an updated YouTube app. Using a mobile device, you can look around just by aligning your phone/tablet in the direction you want to look.

I’ll be making more of these in the future, make sure to like and subscribe to help support development!

Click here to watch more 360 videos on YouTube

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With the Steam release pending, I’ve decided to share the new trailer for Coaster of Carnage VR that will appear on the Steam store here as a Halloween surprise. Many of you may have been following the development since the announcement last year (2016), and may know that just recently the title was Greenlit on Steam by our fans! So first of all, a big thanks to all who visited the greenlight page and chose to upvote Coaster of Carnage VR! We have been working hard at ARVRCADE to bring you an “Early Access” version of the game for Halloween, unfortunately, it will likely premiere on Steam on or around the first week of Nov. But as a bonus for all those that purchase during early access, we are planning on giving it a Christmas twist that will be accessible in December! I’ll leave a link here to it when the store page is finally online! [http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/737260/?beta=0]

If you aren’t familiar in Coaster of Carnage VR, players ride an abandoned roller coaster in the middle of a spooky, horror-filled carnival. Here’s the newest trailer that highlights Vive use, where rather than a headlamp, the Vive controller is utilized as a flashlight!

The upcoming release will be an “Early Access” version which is a status available in the Steam store used to release an incomplete, but fully functional game version. So not only will it be great for some scares throughout the year, but coming October of 2018 when the game is scheduled for official release, there will be many new scares, features, and improvements! Those with early access will be able to offer ideas for the next scares, and those with ideas that we use will be given a spot in the credits, also the Christmas version that will be available in December, so make sure you check it out!

PS thanks to everyone who came out Friday night for the premiere party! Here’s some shots of your reactions:

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Voice Activated LED Mask

Be the life of the party this Halloween with a voice (and music if it’s loud!) activated LED biohazard mask. Everybody knows that a genius conceptual Halloween costume will make you the star of the party. Sure you could be one of the millions of people to wear a caricature Trump mask this year, or you can be original with this DIY project!

Materials required:

• 1 – Anti-Dust Paint Respirator Mask
• 1 – Arduino Nano
• 1 – KY-038 Microphone Sound Sensor Module
• 2 – 5v LED’s
• 1 – Perf Board
• 1 – 9v Battery
• 1 – 100Ω resistor
• 1 – 1″ Biohazard sticker (optional)

Steps:

1. Take apart the biohazard mask filters and empty out the contents
2. Wire LED 1 and 9v battery into one of the filters, pulling wires through the respirator air passage ways. If you make the wires the correct length, you can easily tuck them beneath the rubbery plastic liner
3. Solder your nano and other components to the perf board (see circuit diagram below). I left the KY-038 sound module free from the board so that I could easily position it and make adjustments to the sensitivity via the on-board potentiometer.
4. Connect the wiring from the 9v power supply and the LED.
5. (Optional) Slap a biohazard sticker on the front, and voila!

Check out the video above to get a look at how I did it!

Here is the circuit:

(simply put your desired amount of LED’s in parallel, I used one in each filter. Using 2 or more in each filter will drain your battery a bit faster, but might make it a bit brighter)

Here is the Sketch code:

int LED = 3;
int mic = A0;
int brightness = 0;
int fade = 5;
int level = 30;

}


Did you make one? Feel free to link to your costume pics in the comments.

Did you like it? Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog and be notified every time I create something new!

The post Arduino Nano Voice Activated (sound sensor) LED Halloween / DJ Mask appeared first on Kevin Gulling - Game Development, VR, and more.

360 image before processing

If you are wondering how you can capture these 360 degree images, there are different ways to accomplish this. You can capture real 360 pictures with the Android app Google Cardboard and Cardboard Camera available in the Play store. If you are interested in capturing a 360 shot of your project, 3d model(s) or game, there is a bit more to it. (Contact me for more info).

The post How to embed 360 pictures on your website – 1000 AE Sneak Peak appeared first on Kevin Gulling - Game Development, VR, and more.

Agar.io is another great online massively multiplayer browser game/app utilizing socket.io. You start out on a large square grid as a cell around 38-45 mass (It seems that sometimes you spawn on top of mass particles, so you can get a little bonus right from the start if you are lucky). There are little hexagonal particles of mass that spawn randomly on the map, and you gain mass by gobbling up these small bits of mass. It’s sort of like Pacman meets Odell lake. You can also gain mass by eating smaller cells, so when you start the game you are on the very bottom of the food chain!

Agar.io Beginners Guide

Objective – In FFA the object is to gain mass until you reach the leaderboard to show off your massiveness! There are also daily missions which give you coins and “DNA” if completed. In Rush mode the object is to be the largest cell when the timer expires.

Viruses – Viruses are the green spiked circles, and spawn at random around the map. A virus can be a safe haven for a cell of smaller mass. For cells larger than the virus, running into a virus will cause the cell to split up into 16 different pieces. This can be a good if you are able to keep all your cells because when you are in 16 parts you can eat viruses, but more commonly this can be your downfall. When nearby cells spot a cell being split by a virus, a frenzy of sorts begins. Cells from all over the map will risk there little cell lives just to try and get a piece of you, often times at their own peril.

Cell bursting on virus – Agar.io

Mass Ejection – Press ‘W’ on the keyboard to eject mass in the direction you are traveling. There are many reasons to eject mass, but most commonly it is used to transfer mass from one cell to another. If you see two opposing cells doing “feeding” each other in FFA, watch out, this is most likely a team! (Teams dominate FFA, go figure).

Split Mass – Press ‘Space’ on your keyboard to split your cell in half, ejecting one half in the direction you are traveling. The most common reason one would opt to split in half is to “eat” another cell. Make sure you are more than twice the mass of the cell you are trying to eat, or it will fail and you will either not be able to eat the cell you targeted, or if you overestimated your mass by too much, the cell you target can even eat you! Another common use for this function is to avoid being eaten entirely! When being hunted by larger cells a well timed split will insure that only half of you is eaten, and you will live to see another day! If your cell is smaller than 38 mass, you will not be able to split).

Strategies – There is one strategy that works fantastic for me most of the time. This method involves spending about 5 minutes or so farming mass particles and avoiding all larger cells, and maintaining a friendly relationship with cells in your size range (chasing a slightly smaller cell is usually fruitless, and will likely get you both killed!). Also it’s wise to keep in mind that when you are a small cell, you are a huge target! Trust no one! In the video below I’ll show you how to use this strategy to make it onto the leaderboard in about 10 minutes.

Of course one of the most popular strategies is the social game in Agar.io. Feed the right cell and you might have made a friend for life (of your cell)! But watch out, there are those who will eat you even if you do feed them. A good sign that a cell is willing to cooperate is if they eject some mass back at you in exchange. Also beware of traders though! About 50% of the cells that try to make friends, do so only to eat cannibalize their friends! This is a strategy that I don’t really recommend, as it may be a quick boost, but generally you will make an enemy for life by doing so, and getting revenge is one of the sweetest things to do in Agar.io!

With a good teammate it’s easy to dominate the map!

Hacks/Cheats – It’s likely that some bad hacks exist for this game, but I’m not going to be covering any hacks of that sort. There are “legal” hacks that I will focus on instead. The most common being using your name field to communicate to other cells with language or symbols. A popular use of this is for teams to use a “tag” on the beginning of their username, so that they can easily be identified as a teammate no matter what skin the cell is using. For example a couple popular groups are “MK” and “FBI”, and when they play they generally have a large team working together to easily dominate the entire map for hours on end! Another popular use is to mention teams in your name. Usually a cell with the name “team” is willing to cooperate, but still watch out for the predators, not every cell named team is actually friendly!

Another simple hack is to log on every hour and collect 20 free coins. When you want to play, if you have a couple hundred coins you can pick up a nice boost that lasts for an hour, which can be very helpful!

Now to the good stuff! If you want a real edge over the competition, you might decide that using ‘W’ and ‘Space’ are not the easiest keys to use. Sometimes you really have to mash that ‘W’, and sometimes you have to be very precise! Using a programmable input emulator we can change those keys to whatever keys we like! I am using GlovePIE, an old but still working PIE utility. FreePie is another one. There are others out there, let us know in the comments if you know of any other good PIE’s! The script I like to use is making the left mouse button work as ‘W’ in addition to ‘W’. If you need to eject some mass quickly, you can mash both the ‘W’ key and the ‘LMB’ and eject an incredible amount of mass very quickly! Download the Agar.io GlovePIE script.

Pro Tips – Now that you know the basics, here are a few pro tips to remember:

• The longer you hold down Space to split your cell, the further you will eject half your mass. This is helpful for reaching cells that are far off.
• You probably shouldn’t trust anyone unless you know them personally. Agar.io players are treacherous!
• If a cell that is slightly larger than you has almost encapsulated you, don’t split, don’t eject mass, just stay on course and try to direct your cell into the particles in your path. Your opponent will be unable to collect any particles while following you, so after collecting enough particles, you will grow bigger than the cell chasing you. My my, how the tables have turned! This is also generally a sign that you are up against a newb, most vets know that the smaller cell is faster!
• When you are small, sometimes you can find a giant cell and use it as parasitic host of sorts. Most large cells won’t risk trying to come too near to a giant cell so it can be a safe haven at times.

If you like this guide please subscribe to my blog! See you on Agar.io!

The post Agar.io Strategy Guide, Hints, Tips, Legal Cheats, Hacks appeared first on Kevin Gulling - Game Development, VR, and more.

A tank top for your hard working slaves. Now if your slaves wander too far, your neighbor will know to blow their head off and send ’em on back home.

Support this skin by visiting Steam and voting “Yes” and adding it to your favorites it:

“Slaves”, also known as “Workers” in Rust are players that do utilitarian work, such as gathering wood and stone. Using slaves in Rust enables clans to build large bases fast. The concept is simple really, generally it involves finding some players with little experience who are interested in joining up with your team/clan, or just trying to get a decent start in the game without getting killed so easily. Depending on who you slave for you can generally rank up to a normal clan member eventually after hours of hard slaving!

If you play Rust and are interested in working as a slave to help build some of Rusts largest and most badass monuments and buildings, add me on Steam and I’ll give you the details, such as our current server and such. If you are a dedicated and hard worker we will even pay you in skins (which are worth actual money)!

It’s not always bad to be a slave in Rust, but watch this hilarious video by faceless as they wrangle some fresh slaves for trade on the market XD

Some tips for fellow slave masters:
-Don’t ever let your slaves into the treasury until after so many hours, about 10% of the volunteer slaves are actually trolls looking to reck your base! (true fact)
-Don’t give your slaves guns, it makes it too easy for them to kill you and take yours, slaves should be equipped with hatchets and pick axes and if you are a kind slave master, a “Slave Tank Top”.
-Don’t kill your slaves and laugh at them. While this may be entertaining to you, I find that usually your slaves will get bored of this behavior and eventually move on.

If you have any ideas for future skins/mods, hit me up on Steam, or by email, or leave a comment below!

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After I watched the music video for “Love Drug” (below nsfw!) I was inspired by Ninja and Yolandi’s handwriting to create a font in homage to Die Antwoord. I left a comment about the idea on YT, and from the likes and comments I received it’s apparent that the world needed this! If you haven’t heard, according to many sources the duo announced that they will be releasing one last album later this year and then calling it quits, but hopefully the Love Drug font shall live on in art and design for years to come!

What I ended up with is a pretty unique font, free for anyone for personal use so feel free to download it, use it to create graphics, fan art, or even set your browser to display text in “Love Drug” font and read it everywhere! If you are wondering if the Yolandi and Ninja smiley’s are part of the font, the answer is yes! Yolandi is the @ symbol and Ninja is the $ symbol. Any comments and/or suggestions are appreciated. Feel free to share in the comments what you created with the font! If I have time in the future I may make a “sequel” to this, which would be a smoother looking variant, and possibly more glyphs like the Yolandi and Ninja smiley’s.

Font styled after Yolandi Visser and Ninja’s handwriting:

Also available from fontspace.com: http://www.fontspace.com/kevingullingcom/love-drug

If you have any questions about what, where, when, why you can use this font, feel free to contact me.
Stay Zef out there!

The Font “Love Drug”
(https://kevingulling.com/2017/05/die-antwoord-font-love-drug-free-zef-font) by “KevinGulling.com”
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).

KevinGulling.com has no affiliation, sponsorship, nor any partnerships with Die Antwoord or Zef Records, LLC

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Save money by getting the maximum cash back from your credit card purchases!

Does your credit card(s) have cash back rewards? If you have more than one cash back reward perhaps you find it difficult at times to recall which credit card corresponds with which cash back rewards? With Cash Back Reminder you can simply open the app and find your credit card that gives cash back in the category you require enabling you to utilize the maximum amount of cash back for every purchase!

For example, let’s say that Credit Card A has 1% cash back on every purchase, and Credit Card B has 3% cash back at the grocery store and Credit Card C has 2% cash back at the gas station. It might be easy to mix up or forget where to use what card. Before you use your card, open the Cash Back Reminder app to make sure you are using the card with the most cash back rewards potentially saving you hundreds!

Let’s do some simple calculations on how we can come up with an estimated savings. The average family in the USA spends around $302 per month on groceries. Let’s say that you have a credit card that you regularly use, Credit Card A, because it is commonly accepted and has great rates. Now let’s say your “backup” card, Credit Card B, has a cash back reward for 5% at the grocery store, and another “backup” card, Credit Card C, gives you 5% back at the drug store. Usually you do not use Credit Card B at the grocery store because you can’t remember if it is Credit Card B or C with the 5% cash back reward at the grocery store, so it’s easier just to use Credit Card A, or you might even take a guess and mistakenly use Credit Card C, and you receive no cash back rewards. With Cash Back Reminder, you can simply open the app, check whether it was card B or C that rewards you for purchases at the grocery store, and voila, you save 5%. $302 x .05 = $15.10; $15.10 x 12 = $181.20. You would now be able to save $181.20 a year! That’s not counting your drug store purchases for the year which would likely add another $100 your yearly savings! That’s nearly $300 a year an average family can save by using this app!

Alpha testing group now open for registration

If you are interested in alpha/beta testing the unreleased version of the Cash Back Reminder app for Android you can apply to join the closed alpha testing group now by following this link https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.arvrcade.cashbackreminder

To send or report any bugs, errors, questions, comments, and/or suggestions follow the instructions in the link above.

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I found another cheap, interesting module on ICSTATION. This one utilizes the MAX471 chip to sense the voltage and current running through the circuit. The datasheet for this module is non-existent as far as I can tell, but there is a datasheet for the MAX471, so with some guess work I hooked it up to my UNO.

This is all the info about the module itself that I could find:

1.Size:19.5*20.3mm
2.Test Voltage range:DC 3-25V (Arduino work on 5V) or DC3-16.5V (work on 3.3V)
3.Test Current range:DC 0-3A
4.Chip: MAX471

There are similar modules that also utilize the MAX471 with a little bit more documentation available (this video for example), but this one has a couple major differences from other similar modules. The header pins are arranged in different order, and there are a couple more terminals.

I was getting a constant reading of 0 from the OUT pin, which I am assuming is the current reading. This was likely due to the fact that I was not drawing enough amperage with the LED to trigger a result. It could also be that something is not working correctly, I would have to test it out with something that draws more a few hundred mA or more to be sure. If I ever get around to that I’ll be sure to update this article and post the results.

In the video below you can see the GY-MAX471 in action:

GY-MAX471 Voltage/Current test sketch

The sketch for voltage test only:

#define vtpin A0
#define Arduino_Voltage 5.0

delay(3000);
}


The sketch for voltage and current test:


#define vtpin A0
#define atpin A5
#define Arduino_Voltage 5.0

delay(3000);
}


The sketch for voltage current and watts:


#define vtpin A0
#define atpin A5
#define Arduino_Voltage 5.0

delay(3000);
}


In summary, this is a pretty handy module. But do beware, in the MAX471 datasheet from the company maxis, they warn that they have discontinued production of the max471 chip, so don’t base any new designs off of it. So if you are using this in single project that doesn’t have to be reproduced many times, this is great option for testing the voltage and current, but if you are looking to prototype something that will eventually go into production, it’s probably best to look elsewhere for a way to handle this. I personally think it’s going to work great for my robotics project where I will run a shutdown sequence if the circuit is under-powered due to a low battery charge.

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