Category Archives: VR

Oct 07
0

EB Expo 2014 done

By | Journal, Super Mega Mega, VR | No Comments

I’ve been inspired to write something here after just finishing a long weekend of standing and chatting to a wide variety of people about lots of things but mainly VR and SuperMegaMega.

It never ceases to amaze me how much energy can be drawn from showing a game publicly. I think it’s pretty much the sole reason I’ve been showing at a couple of expos recently. It’s also great to get any kind of media coverage and meet some awesome people.

Finding the motivation to make a big push on long term, part-time project has been a fine balancing act. It’s really easy to lose weeks of time when real life stuff gets extra busy. Stability is pretty crucial. Unfortunately I’ve moved house twice this year and it’s had a big effect on my productivity.

Showing SuperMegaMega at AVCon and just now at EBExpo has really gotten the rocket pointed back at my arse. I’m ready to smash out some more work and head to PAX Australia with something cool! One potential spanner tho: I get a new puppy next week! Oh noes!

-Ryan

Sep 17
0

Hey where’d you go?

By | Journal, Super Mega Mega, VR | No Comments

Nowhere, I’m right here. ..

So updates have been slow recently. Mainly because I’ve been too busy moving house but also because I haven’t had much to say!

However I can now announce that I’ll be showing SuperMegaMega at PAX Australia and EBExpo this year!

Also tagging along will be the latest build of We Of The Woods.

It’s coming very close to time to release more details about Super Mega Mega. I’ve been working on it again recently and once im happy with the state of the DK2 integration I will release a new demo publicly.

With the consumer Rift model looming on the horizon,  the goal is to have the game ready for its release. So far it looks to be on track but showing it at PAX/eb will be a real test!

Soon.

May 13
0

VR DevLog 18: Gameplay Loop

By | Journal, Super Mega Mega, Videos, VR | No Comments

So once again it’s been far too long since I wrote a devlog… mainly because I haven’t had anything to say! But also because I’ve been very busy on other projects and going to GDC and moving house/office.

Now things have settled down, development can kick back into gear. Super Mega Mega is coming up to a cool point in development. The core of the coding is done and the majority of work now lies in content generation.

I’m currently working on getting a more complete, playable version of the game ready to demo and get feedback on. I might even release this one publicly.

The game has evolved to be an interesting blend of games like MegaMan, Zelda and The Binding of Isaac. I want a highly replay-able, short session experience that works both with and without VR.

Now comes the point where the real game design stuff needs to be sorted… I’m hoping to have a version working well for the upcoming Beer & Pixels event… but I’m not sure I’ll have the time. I really need to get some feedback on this soon! Game design is not my strong suit…..yet! I’m going to have to focus and knuckle down to pull something cool out here.  A challenge!

Cheers!

-Ryan

Jan 21
0

VR DevLog 17

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Revisiting randomness

My recent work on SuperMegaMega has revolved around figuring out a lot of the desired game play and story.

Part of that process has led me back to considering procedural generation again.

I want to have a game that won’t require massive play sessions but is still appealing each time it’s played. The sense of progression is also important.

For examples of this I have been playing a lot of the recent roguelike evolutions that have become popular.

Some of them use random content in a way that is still very controlled. For example “The Binding of Isaac” uses a large set of hand made rooms (over 1000) that are chosen from as building blocks for the larger level layouts. “Rogue Legacy” does a similar thing too whilst Spelunky uses a more fine-grained version but it’s essentially the same idea.

So now SMM is using this pattern with its own twist. Pre made rooms and structures give more control over the player experience.   The main restriction is all the rooms are based around a cylindrical structure. As long as there are a shit load of variants to select from it will seem very random. Just need to make sure the quality level is maintained over the entire  set of rooms.

The actual gaming loop is currently being experimented with. So far leaning towards using a permadeath system with unlockable weapons and events. Don’t really know what will work until I get some more play testing done!

Lots of enemies,weapons,items and levels to make!

Also, my new phone is awesome! Note3 ftw

-Ryan
 

Dec 30
0

VR DevLog 16

By | Journal, Super Mega Mega, VR | No Comments

One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is motion sickness and VR. My wife tried the ‘Titans Of Space’ demo and got really sick in record time.

This really surprised me! I figured this demo was one of the easiest for first timers. Perhaps my perceptions of what has the potential to make someone sick is a bit out of whack.

I think it’s important to try and minimise the barf inducing effects but I fear it’s (at least partially) unavoidable.

Super Mega Mega has a pretty small percentage of people who feel sick I think. The one part I’m worried about is the screen-shake effect.

There are lots of technical things I’ve read and acted upon and I don’t want to repeat them here but it’s certainly a potential wall between VR tech going mainstream. At least it seems the consumer version of the Rift will be targeting a much lower latency… which could fix most of the problems and make everyone happy. Games just need to keep up their end of the bargain.

Anyways I think I’ve decided to have an options menu to allow the potential chunder busters to be switched off. That should hopefully cater to most people.

image

news

Back to work! Hoping to have a new playable demo available in the next 2-3 weeks. It all depends on how much time I get to work on it.

-Ryan

Dec 18
0

VR DevLog 15: Static Dynamic Vertices

By | Journal, Screenshots, Super Mega Mega, VR | No Comments

Now something a bit more technical and rambling… But not too bad 😉 … again this will help me more than anyone else 😛

With the initial prototype for Super Mega Mega, the world is completely dynamically rotating around the centre point of the world.

This was chosen to ensure the VR head tracking camera wouldn’t have any major issues with things like motion sickness.

Also, the player movement code becomes a lot simpler when the player isn’t actually moving and the level just rotates on a single axis.

The problem comes now with performance. I’ve been starting to push the detail levels of all the levels up a lot and that’s increased the draw call and vertex count significantly.

Deferred rendering is being used to get some nice lighting and post effects but it really hammers the draw call count.

To reduce this I have a few options:

– Reduce the vertex count of the individual blocks significantly (Unity dynamic batching doesn’t allow more than 900 vertex attributes which means about 200-300 vertices for me) which would make this look shitty.. potentially only an option if the detail is replaced with normal maps.  This would add a lot more work into my pipeline…. not cool but has potential.

– Leave it where it is and just decrease the level sizes. Not cool either! Seeing the tall tower stuff is one of the coolest bits.

– Switch all the mesh blocks to static objects and change the movement code to adapt. This is the first option I’m currently testing out. Draw calls are reduced significantly but now the camera has to be rotated to follow the player. This might screw with your head when wearing the VR headset…. must really test this ASAP. If it doesn’t cause any problems I’ll switch all the levels into this static mode. Re-writing the movement will be a pain but it’s a once off thing.

If anyone has any pearls of wisdom here.. feel free to drop them on me @bluntgames

Anyway it’s good to be back in the middle of it all. Hoping to be able to share some awesome new stuff early in the new year!
-Ryan

p.s.

After writing this I think I’ve decided to embrace the ‘all normal-mapped future’. This will make the vertex count of the blocks restricted but it should be nicely compensated with the normal detail I hope. My only concern is the lack of quality in the silhouettes. I’ve also solved the non-manifold mesh generation that was plaguing the tool used for current models. Perhaps the best solution is a happy mix of dynamically batches models and auto-combined models.

The attraction of having everything in the world dynamic (destructible and movable) is far too appealing to ignore.

test test test

 

Oct 08
0

VR DevLog 14: Audio

By | Audio, Journal, Super Mega Mega, VR | No Comments

One of the things I’ve wanted to focus on has always been music and sfx. After chatting with a mate during the EBExpo I think I’ve decided how to proceed with the audio for SMM.

Most of the time I use third party audio or create my own simple loops. This time it would be nice to have more of a dynamic audio system built early on in the project.

I’d like the style to be very retro but not necessarily exclusively so. After discovering unity’s support for MOD files I’m very tempted to try and use this system. My only problem here is generating the music. I don’t have much experience with the tools. (In general my music making skills are pretty low) This would be a good chance to learn.

I don’t even know where it will end up… which is sort of the best thing about it. Create as many cool things as I can and try and make them loop and play at the right time…. what can go wrong with that? Dynamic song generation. Perhaps I can group up all commonly themed loops and randomly arrange them?

-Ryan

Oct 07
0

VR DevLog 13: EBExpo and beyond

By | Journal, Super Mega Mega, VR | No Comments

Firstly, if you’d like to grab the build of Super Mega Mega that was playable at EBExpo .. go here

 

Once again it’s been a little while since the last post. I spoke about deciding to focus on the random level generation … which I have now switched to completely disregard and push forward with a more hand crafted approach.

The main problem here is ‘multi-plane’ nature of the levels. It just makes it too hard to get any sort of interesting gameplay when the level is random. Even when using the Spelunky style with hand made segments arranged randomly.

So anyway, I had a exhibition booth for Super Mega Mega at the EBExpo for 3 days. Man it was a long time. I spent most of the time by myself with a little help from the Rizzle (Cheers dude!)  and RyanB which helped me stay sane with a couple of breaks to eat and walk around the halls.

What did I learn/achieve from the event? Well at first I was a bit dubious at whether it was worth attending. This opinion didn’t change during the first few hours… there were a lot of very young kids. Totally not the audience for either the Rift or SuperMegaMega. But they still seemed to love it and soon there were more varied ages arriving. I can only remember about 2 time during the whole 3 days (about 35 hours of actual show time) that there wasn’t someone playing the game…… that’s a lot of people.

The hardest thing was extracting a meaningful play test from someone who is trying the Oculus Rift for the first time. Most people are overwhelmed and struggle to learn even the most basic platforming mechanics. There were a few people that really ‘got’ the game almost instantly and destroyed all the levels with ease. That was really encouraging. It also helped me cemented the games focus going forward.

So overall… Awesome event and met some great people. Now to use the feedback to finish off the game design and then get to work on development. If we’re going to release near the Rift’s consumer version then we’ll have to get a move on!

Here’s a couple of photos taken… should have taken more but forgot…

Cheers!

-Ryan

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