Upcoming Bot Colony on Unreal - another sneak peek

Grabbing objects in Unreal 5

Bot Colony was released on Early Access in June 2014. It was built on top of the Havok Vision engine. To get a character to grab an object, we had to start with an FK ( Forward Kinematics, like extend arm to reach the vase) animation and switch to IK (Inverse Kinematics, like grab the vase ) in the middle of the motion. Fast forward 7 years, and now Unreal 5 features FBIK (full-body Inverse Kinematics). FBIK means that when you reach for something, the whole body adjusts (like bending your knees and leaning forward to grab an object that's a bit far). Here's a developer-generated video of finger placement tests in Unreal 5 - there was not much of that in Vision. Placing the fingers on something you grab is a more difficult detail in IK implementations. In this video, Jimmy breaks his wrist when he grabs an object (we'll fix that!), but finger placement looks really good.

If you played Bot Colony on Vision (do it while there's still a chance!) you can see that movement is WAY smoother in Unreal.

The Sandbox

Here's a peek at our upcoming Sandbox which is next to the Intruder house (a big thank you to fans who took the time to provide feedback!).

Many players enjoy games where you can design something. We plan for the Sandbox to be an environment where you can get creative, and where you can make cool stuff to stream (so, kind of a content creation tool where you can animate 3D characters and have them converse, based on the environment and what they're doing). One of the challenges will be to teach your character how to traverse obstacles like these in style (the real stuff is made by FitCore, they make great equipment!). All scripting will be done in simple English, in the tradition of Bot Colony, where the main game mechanic is English conversation.

Extreme Angled Overhead:

This one is the A-Frame Cargo Net:

You can see where we're going with this. Eventually, we'd like to make it easy for you to bring in your own scene and characters and get them to do whatever you want (and talk!), and stream the result to the world. You'll be able to make a your own 3D games with intelligent 3D characters that are able to converse very quickly. Deploying Intelligent, conversation-capable characters will sure put some life into the metaverse!