Not much time at the moment but here are a couple of videos..
Using head tracking for shooting is going to be especially fun… just need a few more interesting enemy types.
-Ryan
Category Archives: VR
I took a little development break this past couple of weeks, mainly to prepare for the birth of my new kid (it’s a boy yay)… but I’ve had some time to start getting back into some work…
– One of the problems I noticed when using ray casts for the “Is the player looking at something?” test seems to be it’s high accuracy. Most of the time the player is not actually looking directly at their desired target and it’s not obvious why the it isn’t being highlighted or it can be frustrating moving the head around to try get the exact positioning.
I’m trying to ditch the ray casting and use the Unity trigger system to filter out the objects that enter/exit/stay in players view. First tests say it will work well. The technical parts work fine this way (so did ray casting) … but now there’s more room for a fudge factor to play with. Previously I would have had to cast a bunch more rays to try and get a better indication of what the player could possibly be looking at. I won’t know for sure until I get some more play testing done.
– A quick improvement for the demo is to make the player character visible when behind blocks….. adding this will greatly improve the playability in a few of the parts of the game. It will also mean I don’t have to worry about hiding the player as much. Could also maybe use it for enemies and things.. dont know yet.
– The game still needs more VR specific game mechanics. I’m experimenting with a few different things still. I’ll have to add them in for the next play test for sure.
out!
-Ryan
I recorded a video of the build I used at PAX … and here’s a link if you want to try it
Prototype complete.
Now that’s done it’s time to start to flesh out more of the mechanics and level structures.
I’ll be avoiding anything theme/art related for a little while longer and just stick to adding a bunch of the platformer ‘tools’ (moving platforms, variable physics, enemy types, bosses etc) this should provide a good base to build the rest of the game upon.
I’ve created a few hacks during the prototype phase and I’ll need to throw a bunch of it away and re-make it in a nicer more user friendly way. For example, each unity scene stands on it’s own with no shared data or configuration files. That makes it nice and easy to load/reset a level but it also means all the levels need to be updated if any of the global configs change. This is first on the list!
The level editor will need to flow a lot better than it currently does. I’ve had to manually place a few pieces of the levels because I didn’t have time to create the editor support. Most of it is non-trivial it’s just a matter of getting in there. Manually placing tiles instead of painting them is some kind of hell.
During my short time at PAX AUS I managed to snag some time on the newer HD Oculus Rift. First thing noticeable is the massive improvement in clarity. Especially in the key portion directly at the effective viewing area in front of the eye. You have to look for the screen door effects and they are quickly forgotten about. Text is actually visible now, making it a bit easier to get some useful menu interfaces working.
I’ll be ordering the next dev kit whenever it’s ready. I don’t know what specs the consumer Rift will have but I don’t think it would be far off. I’d be happy just to include positional tracking with the HD screen. More improvements can come later!
So far I’d say any version of the Rift will have a limited session time for most people. The biggest factor here is related to the brains exhaustion levels with having everything in the scene in sharp focus all the time. We need some eye tracking support to allow dynamic depth of field calculations. Hopefully that’s not too far off.
Back to it!
-Ryan
Managed to get in a quick play test at the Sydney IGDA Beer & Pixels event last night. It was an excellent chance to see some people playing the game and chatting about the experience. It’s helped make me feel a bit more confident about the whole idea. 🙂
So sometime over the next week I’ll make the current build available publicly and record some quick videos. I’m far to busy preparing for PAX AUS to be able to do it right away.
Other things I’ve been looking at:
– Changed the orientation of the world blocks to rotate towards the viewer. I like the look of the non-rotated blocks but it can make the platform edges harder to estimate. I’ll keep at least one level with the old orientations and see how it goes in a play test. Perhaps I’ll try adding in some more highlights to the edges and see of that helps, if it’s a problem to begin with.
– Started to work on a prototype boss encounter. Main limitation here is the artwork but it’s certainly playable. Inspiration comes from the multitude of mega man bosses as well as a few other games I’ve enjoyed in the past. World of Warcraft raid bosses have a lot of interesting mechanics that are burnt into my brain. After leading a raid group through most bosses from vanilla wow until the Cataclysm expansion. I can still remember most of the strats 🙂
An action platformer with big multi-phase boss fights is a game I’d like to play. Adding VR makes it interesting too 🙂
< damn I should have taken a photo of people playing the game and put it here >
wait on.. saved by someone more organised! … linky
-Ryan
After the decisions mentioned in the last post, I took a bit of a break from dev work to replenish my batteries. Also managed to offload my 2 year old daughter to my parents for a couple of days! Man that was an awesome sleep in.
Now back to it!
My last push for this VR demo is to create a bit more polish and fix any major bugs. It’s not meant to be a long demo and with the nature of first-timers using the Oculus Rift, shorter is better.
It’s not at a level I’d really want it to be but the game now flows from a simple start to a final boss encounter. I’ll be culling most of the content for the final demo. It’s just good to have lots to choose from.
The ideas and direction for the gameplay have started to solidify. The game will be a cross between megaman style action platforming and roguelike randomised content / level structure. I really love games like The Binding Of Isaac, Spelunky and Rogue Legacy. It would be cool to have that sort of twist on the gameplay.
Key points include:
– Randomly generated levels and content.
– Lots and lots of crazy weapons and power ups.
– Short, hard levels with boss encounters.
– Multiple level ‘themes’ used to generate the random level. Each having a randomly chosen boss encounter. Mini bosses and secret levels should exist too.
This way the game will be content heavy and very scalable. A working version should be up and running quite early.
For this current demo I’ve chosen a random theme with no story but this is something that’s going to need to be decided to move forward anymore with this game. Some of the story/theme ideas need to mulled over a bit more to see if anything sprouts legs and walks off with the show.
Back to it. I think I’ll make some more videos tonight because why not?
-Ryan
Another bunch of time spent doing things…
– Focused on making this little tech demo into a working game demo. Progress made but lots left to do.
– Biggest push has been on the gameplay and game flow. Each weapon in the game will be designed to have an alternate mode that uses the head tracking in some way.
– Played with an interesting way to bring more depth into the game … Basically letting the player switch planes of movement to be further or closer to the view point. It also unlocks lots of gameplay options too.
– On a side note its been hard writing these logs more often. It seems I just need to start typing without any real plans and things just fall onto the page.
– Menus suck with VR! Just putting everything into 3D now and attaching it to the right eye transform.
– Music and sfx are looming large on the list that really need to be in there! I’m setting aside the next few nights for doing this. I’m pretty amateur at the music stuff!
Head tracked reticle
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