PhD in artificial intelligence at UC Berkeley, with a focus on small neural networks in perception, for autonomous vehicles. Big fan of cheesecake, corgis, and Disneyland.
In this tutorial, Alvin wan will show you how to write the game mechanics for a virtual reality game, which is closely coupled with the real-time multiplayer elements of the game. The goal is to “turn on” all orbs, where an orb is “on” if it’s elevated and bright. An orb is “off” if it’s lower and dim. However, certain “dominant” orbs affect their neighbors. This forces both players to collaborate to solve the puzzle.
Read more…
Virtual reality is a new immersive medium for exploring content, whether that content is a film (Life of Pi), a game (Beat Saber) or a social experience (as depicted in Ready Player One). Despite its novelty, VR doesn’t require a drastically different toolset to design for — the same tools we use for web game development, 3D modeling, and others are all still applicable. In this tutorial, Alvin Wan leverages your familiarity with web development to get started with VR development.
Read more…
In Part 1, Alvin explained the basics of how to design a virtual reality model. In Part 2, he showed how to implement the game’s core logic. In this final part of his tutorial, the finishing touches will be added such as the “Start” and “Game Over” menus as well as a synchronization of game states between mobile and desktop clients. This paves the way for concepts in building multiplayer games. To get started, you will need Internet access, a Glitch project completed from part 2 of this tutorial, and a virtual reality headset.
Read more…
If you’ve ever wondered how games with keyboard-less support for VR headsets are built, then this tutorial explains just what you’re looking for. Here’s how you too can bring a basic, functioning VR game to life. In this part, Alvin Wan will implement the game’s core logic and utilize more advanced A-Frame environment manipulations to build the “game” part of this application. By the end, you will have a functioning virtual reality game with a real challenge.
Read more…
Virtual reality (VR) is an experience based in a computer-generated environment, and following Alvin’s introduction to programming in VR, this article series aims to introduce more VR concepts in the context of building a game. In this article, Alvin Wan will show you how you can synchronize the game state between two devices which will move you one step closer to building a multiplayer game. He’ll specifically introduce more A-Frame VR concepts such as stylized low-poly entities, lights, and animation.
Read more…
In this tutorial, Alvin Wan will program three-dimensional objects and add simple interactions to these objects. Additionally, you can learn how to build a simple message passing system between clients and servers. He will specifically focus on point-and-click adventure games. Such games are a casual class of games; the goal is to point and click on objects in the scene, to finish a puzzle. You will build a simple version of such a game but in virtual reality.
Read more…
What are the fundamentals of machine learning, and what are the necessary tools to evaluate risk and other concerns in a machine learning application? The goal of machine learning is to find patterns in data and use those patterns to make predictions. In this article, Alvin Wan will cover everything you need to get started. By the end, you should have an understanding of how to advance your practice and study of machine learning. Let’s begin!
Read more…
how can we detect the moment you and your phone are in the kitchen, or bedroom, or living room? With today’s commodity hardware, there are a myriad of possibilities: In this tutorial, Alvin Wan will show you how to build a desktop app that predicts which room you’re in using a simple machine learning algorithm: least squares. The code applies to any platform, but we only provide dependency installation instructions for Mac OSX.
Read more…