For the second installment in our Developer Spotlight series, meet John Wolff, one of the earliest developers for the Lightship platform. Get to know more about him and what he’s building in his own words.
To introduce yourself, can you tell us a bit more about your background and what you’re working on today?
I’m a long time indie-game developer who has explored the industry in and out. Recently, I wanted to get a different take on what the game industry has to offer so I moved to Japan and worked for a studio there. With that perspective, today I’m back in the US and creating an AR-Blockchain game called Tontachi that’s heavily influenced by “kawaii” culture.
That sounds really exciting! What inspired you to start building with AR and ultimately to create your latest project?
Quintessentially speaking, I’ve always been interested in how video games are an abstract-digital realm that can influence our lives tangibly. I was rather obsessed with the concept and in fact in a TED talk I breakdown video games being, “The Added Dimension.” AR was naturally the technology that would take this deep sentiment to the next level!
While in Japan, I worked on Japan’s 1st blockchain-game “Crypt-Oink” in 2019. This project stuck with me and I felt compelled that 3D NFTs/avatars could have so much more utility if brought into reality via AR. The gameplay could be nuts!
I started looking into AR technologies and the tools available, going from Vuforia to AR Foundation while simultaneously refining my tech stack of importing 3D NFTs into a native application. It all has come together in my project called, “Tontachi” (which means “Pig Friends” in Japanese)
How did you learn about and start building with Niantic Lightship?
I discovered Niantic Lightship quite randomly, even though it was my chief aim to work with Niantic eventually. Last year, Playcrafting - a wonderful game developer support group - sent a newsletter asking for AR developers to participate in a week-long game jam using a private beta of Niantic’s Lightship ARDK. I was all in, immediately signed-up, and as they say the rest is history.
Can you walk us through how you built your recent project?
With Tontachi, there’s a secret sauce that I can’t totally share. However, in essence, I look for certain NFTs within a (Public) Wallet Address, once I find what I’m looking for I bring it into my native app experience. Since our NFTs are natively 3D there’s added complexity, but once done they’re immediately AR-ready, as you can see below:
From there, I focus on being a game developer and decide on the best gameplay for our users. In Tontachi’s case, I wanted to create a multiplayer-party racing game, similar to Mario Kart.
What do you see as the future of AR and NFTs? What excites you about the NFT space?
I’ve talked to some older tech-heads who think the fanaticism of AR comes in waves. While I wasn’t around for the previous hype cycles, I do think that NFTs and Web3 act as catalysts for the proliferation of AR-tech. Both emerging technologies work well together, and as of 2022 I’ve seen a lot of 3D NFT projects extend their utility to AR.
I’m excited to see the innovation on how AR-NFTs create more fun experiences. Moreover, I think how the two can make people more interconnected in a quite literally borderless world where the physical and digital truly merge together.
What advice do you have for those just starting to build with Lightship or AR in general?
Lightship’s documentation and templates are extremely useful! Don’t skip a step, use them as training wheels and slowly diversify with your own code and ideas.
When it comes to AR, every time you see the object you’ve either designed or programmed appear in AR, you’ll get excited so just keep building :)
Is there a particular feature of Lightship you’re more excited about or hoping to use next?
As we’ve slowly explored all aspects of Lightship, we’ve factored them into Tontachi. I used to geek out on Meshing, so it was one of my favorite features for a while. However, Lightship VPS has garnered a lot of my interest lately, and combining it with Shared AR to enable multiplayer races at specific locations around the world makes Tontachi something really special.
Recently, we showcased our refactored racing feature with Shared AR at the North American International Auto Show, modeling the racetrack of the forthcoming 2023 Detroit Grand Prix. To learn more about Tonatchi, head to our website, follow us on Twitter, or sign up for our newsletter!
If you’d like to play the Official Tech Demo, download it here!
Interested in connecting with more developers like John Wolff? Join our discord to build and learn from others in the Lightship community.