I recorded a video of the build I used at PAX … and here’s a link if you want to try it
gamedev
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
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
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
Well this sucks! Everything is booked and paid for…. but we won’t be able to attend the majority of the PAX event.
For too long I’ve been in denial about how close my wife’s due date is for our second baby. It’s due to arrive any moment now! This is too close for comfort. I can’t be in Melbourne overnight, especially three nights.
So anyway I’m taking a return day flight for one or perhaps two of the days. Less risk and guaranteed to be able to return.
This especially sucks because it means Przemek can’t justify coming for just one day :'(
All this could change if the baby comes before PAX starts! So… who knows
That’s life I guess! Meh!
-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