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
game
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
Oh man, going to PAX AUS for one day was simultaneously awesome and extremely depressing.
I made the decision to only display for 1 of the 3 days. That one day was really cool! Met a bunch of great people and demo’d the prototype for a solid 8 hours. (side note…. showing off an oculus rift title is quite exhausting compared to more fire and forget game demos) I got to check out the HD version of the Rift and got a mention from the Oculus dudes!
Then heading home sucked….I had to tune out from all twitter and gamedev news feeds. I felt so bad for not being there but I’d feel a lot worse if I missed the birth of my next kid >_>
Next year will be different! There’s no fucking way I’ll be having another kid that soon so it’s clear skies!
The other slightly less depressing thing is the lack of progress on the other game we’ve been working on. It hit a bit of a brick wall recently. We had the intention of showing it at PAX too…. fucked that up for sure!
No matter… time to get this protoype build posted online and get working on the next version. Need to touch base with a few of my other projects too, spread the love a bit.
Here are a few more photos from the event, it went so fast I barely managed to breathe let alone take in my surroundings!
-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 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