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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

Aug 03
0

VR DevLog 10

By | Journal, Screenshots, VR | No Comments

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.

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out!

-Ryan

 

Jul 13
0

VR DevLog 7

By | Journal, VR | No Comments

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

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