So many things are being thrown at other things in attempt to make something that resembles fun and works well with VR.
Thought I needed to make a video of one of those things… shooty shoot and teleport platforming… this has good potential I think. Just need to properly design the levels and enemies and it could be cool! Also need art! >_>
Now to make sure it’s in the form of a playable demo with a few of the other mechanics available.
-Ryan
Brick wall!
Very much hitting one with regards to motivation and inspiration related for this game. It’s probably related to RL issues more than anything else.
Despite this I’ve managed some decent progress.
– Managed to get a nice workflow going for the level building and art creation. Probably write more later.
– Still trying to fix the issues of aliasing that get exaggerated when using the low-res Oculus. At the moment I’m throwing a bunch of post process filters on there. Seems to reduce it enough. I don’t think it will be fully fixable on these dev kits though. Looking forward to the HD ones!
– The gameplay took a bit of a back seat in the past few weeks but it’s back up front now. I’m trying to create a focused, unique experience with the VR unit but am finding it difficult to bring together all the ideas into a coherent game.
– Will need to cull a bunch of mechanics/ ideas and focus on a couple of them.
– Game theme is still rolling around collections thoughts. Could influence chosen mechanics.
– Finding it hard to choose between platforming styles…. I.e. combat heavy vs jumping heavy. Can decide on this when there’s a richer array of combat tools using he head tracking.
– If this is going to be shown at PAX Aus then it will need a better demo ‘framework’ … Some kind of mini story and final goal. Need to get on that ASAP.
-Ryan
So today…
– I pondered and experimented on a way to implement pixel art style graphics in 3d. I think Fez did it really well but I don’t want to copy it. I need to go back play it again and see how they handled camera angles and rotation.
– The idea is to have pixel art in a VR environment with freedom of head look. It may actually be impossible to get it to look good but it’s worth a try.
– Cube maps projected on 3d mesh for tiles? 2D camera facing sprites for everything else?
– Must experiment more. The low resolution in the current VR dev kit isn’t very nice to already pixelated images. There’s bound to be a sweet spot for the character to screen size ratio. It may end up being a non-problem considering the consumer release will have the higher resolution displays.
– Next job is to create a mock up of the current scene and replace all the visuals with the pixel art versions and see if it works at all. Otherwise a completely different style is required.
Simple voxel test
– After creating some simple voxels to test the visuals, there’s no visual win using them for any type of character sprites. Next I’ll need to test the 3d world tiles, there should be much more of an effect there considering they actually change camera angle more.
Dumping some test models into the scene to test a more enclosed feeling
– Without any kind of visual coherency, I tried adding a bit of clutter to the scene to see if it improves the feel. It does… and it’s certainly something that would work regardless of the final art style…. will revisit later.
– Now to build a more complete and simple level to test everything working together….tomorrow
-Ryan
Today’s discoveries:
– making 2d pixel art look good in a 3d world with perspective is hard.
– small characters don’t work with VR 3rd person cameras. Bigger is better!
– most post processing effects work in stereoscopic 3d.
– colour correction for the headset is hard to tweak.
– need a “reset orientation” button for testing any VR stuff.
– need to emphasise the scale of the world and force the player to look around more. Could potentially lead to the player feeling motion sick sooner…. But it’s cooler so fuck it!
-Ryan
So I’m making a VR game but what does this mean?
Primarily it means I will support the Oculus Rift Peripheral as the primary display for the game. But it also means I will be including gameplay that’s designed specifically with the VR unit in mind.
This approach is different from just ‘supporting’ a VR unit, there’s a lot more risk but the reward is also potentially higher.
The way I see it, taking an existing game and adding VR is relatively easy (ignoring UI and control issues) and low risk.
Designing and creating a game that requires VR has the potential to create a much more unique gaming experience. This seems like the most desirable path to follow, however..
Can I sell it? To make it worth investing my time and money, I would need(like) some way of recouping that cost (at the very least).
How big will the market be? This in entirely unknown. Being able to sell a game requires a market (duh) … pricing a game requires knowledge of that market size. Estimates can be made but it’s all guess work.
Should I just ditch the VR requirement? Including redundancies to allow playing without the headset and re-implementing VR specific gameplay elements for non-vr. Actually I think this is potentially the way to go. If a game can hold up on it’s own with the VR ‘gimmicks’ then it’s bound to be a better experience when actually using it’s VR.
When is the Oculus Rift releasing the consumer version? This is important for any financial estimations and release windows. I don’t see the point in releasing any VR only games until after the first Rift is released. Perhaps Oculus will even have their own market place solution for these games and it can become a platform unto itself? Or perhaps one of the major consoles will support it? PS4?
Do I really care about making any money? Well not really but it would be nice to be able to support myself from games without working other jobs!
How long should a play session be? The nature of an immersive 3D experience will limit the length of time someone can play a game. I think somewhere about 20-30 minutes is the ideal time. Maybe even smaller sessions would be desirable. This point would require a lot of testing I think.
If you build it they will come? Maybe it’s a chicken and egg situation, the size of the audience will grow as soon as there is something worth experiencing. One of the biggest advantages could also come from having limited games available in an emerging market. Get in early?
Building a VR game is super exciting, it can change games as we know them. Maybe it’s best to just embrace it and have a bit of a snuggle.
-Ryan
In my efforts to write things more regularly… it’s time to write some things!
Firstly, about one of our new projects. What is this project?
Well we’re not sure yet! We know the experience we desire but it’s not clear how we’ll get there. It’s current ridiculous description is : “A space mercenary economy simulation RPG”. Confused? I know I am.
For now we’re focusing on the backbones and core game systems. It’s the tough part of the project where nothing comes together at the same time and everything feels broken and worthless.
Prez is working on the art style and some of the design elements. We haven’t settled on any of that yet so it’s stand-in art everywhere. I’m making the quickest possible versions of everything to get up to a playable build. Final art is a long way off.
The game almost has a playable flow to it. Just a few more additions and a play testing build will be ready. With PAX AUS just a month away it’s certainly cutting it fine if we want to show it. It’s not our only game for that show but it would be nice to have it there.
Mini goal is to have the playable build ready by June 30 and play test / balance / bug fix from there.
It’s really hard to show any screen shots for this project at the moment. All the systems are pretty much purely menu-driven and won’t have any cool looking characters or effects for a while. Here’s an attempt to find something….. more soon!
A portion of the starting screen.
Ok, back to it then.
-Ryan
Been a while.. Time for another mini brain dump..
I’m feeling quite stressed at the moment! Life is throwing curve balls.
My wife is pregnant, on bed rest and due 2 weeks after the PAX Australia event. This is a whole bag of stress!
Do I cancel PAX and stay home in case it’s early? My usual dev time has been cut to pieces so do I stop trying to put together the PAX demos that were planned? Do I refocus and target something much smaller? Will It be worth going at all if that’s the case? I don’t know. Uggh.
At the moment I’m still planning being there, I just need a little focus time to get ahead of the 8 ball. I’m way behind on the non-dev side of things too, ill have to try organise some flyers and business cards sometime today.
On the plus side, i’m improving my ability to get things done with limited time!
I’m starting to reconsider my wizard beard effort too… It’s getting a bit ridiculous!
Oh and Game of Thrones.. Wtf! I haven’t read the books yet but I’m going to have to now.
<3 -Ryan
