UFO project overview

In this project, you'll put your AR experience design skills to the test. You'll take an existing desktop game about aliens abducting sheep and adapt it for mobile AR. The process of taking an application that was designed for one platform and reworking it for another platform is called porting.

When you port a project from one platform to another, there's a lot you need to consider.

If the original platform and the new target platform are very similar (like porting from macOS to Windows), the port can be relatively simple. When the platforms are very different, for example porting a game from Windows to Nintendo Switch, the port process can be very complicated.

For example, the popular 2D Made With Unity game, Among Us was ported to VR and released as Among Us VR in 2022. Every asset and interaction needed to be completely redesigned for this port to be successful.

Left image from Among Us press kit. RIght image from Among Us VR press kit.

Porting is just one of many ways to create new content for the AR market. In the video below, established creators discuss what kinds of opportunities there are in the AR industry, and why being able to create many different types of projects is so important.

In this first tutorial, you will open the desktop version of the UFO game project, play the game, and note any obvious features that will need to be heavily adapted for mobile AR.

We highly recommend that you complete Create with AR: Face Filters and Create with AR: Markers and Planes before continuing with this tutorial. If you’ve already completed those courses, you can skip to the next step.

Before you open the game in Unity and experience it yourself, go through the sections below to learn the basic gameplay, understand the backstory, and appreciate some of the concept artwork.

Gameplay

The game you’ll port to AR is called Close Encounters of the Wool Kind. It’s a relatively simple game: the player controls a UFO and attempts to abduct sheep from a field without the farmer noticing. If the farmer wakes up and catches you abducting sheep, you lose. If you successfully abduct all the sheep without the farmer noticing, you win! Watch the video below to see some of the gameplay.

Backstory and concept art

Nothing beats a snuggly, hand-knit sweater, and that’s doubly true in the cold of space! After years of studying humanity, aliens have learned how to knit, and they want to bring this calming pastime back to their homeworld.

The only trouble is that there are no sheep on their alien planet, so the aliens can’t make yarn! In order to achieve their goals, an alien crew has been sent to Earth to find a flock of sheep to bring home. They located a farm with a very nice flock and have monitored the old farmer’s habits: he rises with the sun and goes to bed with the sun. What luck! The aliens just have to make a quick visit to the barn after sunset and the flock will be theirs!

On the night that the aliens arrive to get their prize, they discover that the farmer has broken his habit! Apparently his sheep were extra hungry today, because he’s brought them out after nightfall to have a midnight snack. Are the aliens’ plans ruined? Fortunately not!

It’s clear that the poor old farmer has never been out this late past his bedtime: he keeps falling asleep in the field! Instead of taking the sheep from the barn, the aliens can use their tractor beam to snatch the sheep straight from the field.

The number one rule for alienkind is to not allow humans to see them. So, to protect themselves, the aliens have turned on their cloaking technology, making the UFO mostly invisible. There’s a small problem though: the cloaking technology has to be switched off in order to use the tractor beam!

Now, abducting the sheep has become a game of tactical patience. The aliens must use the late hour to their advantage and wait for the old farmer to doze off and then abduct a sheep. If it looks like the farmer is going to wake up, the aliens can release the tractor beam to become cloaked once again.

Once all the sheep are collected, the aliens can be on their way! They just can’t let the farmer catch sight of them!

It’s time to open the desktop version of the game in Unity. Follow these instructions to download the project and open it in Unity:

1. Download the UFO_Game_Desktop_Zip file, then unzip or extract it.

2. Locate the UFO_Game_Desktop_Project folder inside the zip folder and move it to a suitable location on your computer.

3. Add the Unity project to the Unity Hub and open it.

If you see a warning icon next to the Editor version of your project, that means you do not have the correct version of Unity installed (2022.3.1f1). You need to install the specific required version of Unity. Select the warning icon for more information.

The project should now be open in Unity.

The game is made up of four scenes: StartScene, MainScene, WinScene, and LoseScene. StartScene is the first scene the player encounters, so it’s where you should start if you want to have the full game experience.

Follow these instructions to experience the game from start to finish:

1. In the Project window, navigate to the Assets > Scenes folder.

2. Open StartScene.

3. Select Play to begin the game.

4. During the game, use the WASD keys to move the UFO and hold the Spacebar to beam up a sheep.

5. To experience all game screens, make sure that you both win and lose the game at least once.

There are a lot of creative, engaging ways to interact with AR content. Before you begin designing port of Close Encounters of the Wool Kind, you should seek inspiration from apps — and specifically games — that are leading the way in AR experience design.

Do some online research right now, including downloading and experiencing some AR apps on your device. Take note of interesting interactions that could be relevant to your AR port.

Here is a list of apps you may want to explore:

• Angry Birds: AR - iOS | Android
• Cosmic Frontline AR - iOS | Android
• Jurassic World Alive - iOS | Android
• Pokemon Go - iOS | Android

As you go through the following tutorials, you’ll need to record your ideas, list concerns, and sketch concepts.

Follow these instructions to create a dedicated document and write down some of your initial thoughts:

1. Create a new text document and give it a title like “UFO game port - Design document”.

2. Add a new section called “Initial impressions”.

3. Under the Initial impressions section, list the interactions from the UFO game that would be problematic in AR and need to be redesigned for your game port.

To generate ideas, think through what each screen and interaction would be like if it were on a mobile device. Then, try to imagine which aspects of the application would be appropriate as AR experiences.

You'll have a lot of time later to think through the specifics of porting each gameplay element, but it's helpful to have these questions in mind now so you can begin brainstorming.

You've opened and experienced the desktop version of the UFO game, and you’ve done some initial brainstorming for how you might port this experience to mobile AR.

In the next tutorial, you'll examine the contents of the Unity project itself. You'll need a deep understanding of how the assets, scenes, and scripts work together in order to successfully port the project.