Dark Flight (Working Title)
This is a simple Google Cardboard / VR game I whipped up together in 2 days while at The Academy Of Interactive Entertainment (AIE). To be fair, the idea developed over the course of a week, with 1 previous iteration.
IdeasWhile trying to come up with a game for Google Cardboard, I took note that there's only 1 button input. Then realising you can use the tilt/accelerometer as a controller, which is where the game's design started.
Getting the player to move around only via head movements made me think of a pigeon simulator to get the player moving but this would look so stupid having someone jerking their head around to make virtual progress. What if the player was continuously moving? - And slight head tilting rotates the player... Immediately I thought of a space game and created very small prototype of an asteroid game with gravity simulation. This prototype showed me many flaws of gravity simulation in a 3D environment with a fixed camera - without reference, the player can never tell how far away they are from the planet pulling them. SOUND IS IMPORTANTWhile sound design is always important for the player's experience, the importance it played in this game really kicked it forwards.
When I first heard the feedback from picking up an orb over the top of the ambient hum, I was amazed at how much it added to the experience and immersion. All I wanted to do was sit there in this void I created and explore its generated world. Sound sources:
POST NETWORKING NIGHTI really want to continue this project and release it as soon as possible, but currently UE4 doesn't support Google Cardboard for iOS and I don't have access to an android device or any form of a head mounted display!
I can't sit there in class playing with an Oculus while missing half of the lesson and distracting my classmates. So for now, I'll continue this project later under different circumstances. |
FINAL PROTOTYPEI remade the game from scratch, with a new art style in mind.
Pitch black, with obstacles and collectibles that fade in as you approach them. This meant I had to go without the stars in the background, giving it a very empty feeling. The reverberating sound effects helped convey this emptiness, so I never let any tester play without sound. Without a background, there was no reference point for the player to make themselves nauseous trying to stay upright at a rotation. The aim of the game is simple, collect orbs to activate the portal and continue on discovering new levels with more intricate obstacles, each teleport speeding up the player. Each level has its own colour and collection of obstacles that spawn (mostly) in front of the player. The world is procedurally generated in this way. EA WORTHY DEADLINEMy deadline was 2 days away (Networking Night) when I started this version of the project, so I didn't have enough time to make many different types of obstacle clusters. (only made 4)
I couldn't build the game for iOS and I'd never done anything with android. So with very little time, I decided to use AIE's Oculus Rift DK2. Plugging in the controls in UE4 was incredible simple, and took less than a minute, but I wasted a few hours trying to get it working on my teacher's laptop. (Nvidia drivers out of date) When it all finally started working, the experience of the game in VR was incredible and mastering the head tilting controls was really fun. However, I didn't have much time to play the game for myself because I didn't have any sound effects! NETWORKING NIGHTHosted by AIE, I had a chance to present my projects to anyone that came, most people were students and I got to know a lot of people.
The feedback from testers was very positive, and I did my best to poke for 'critical' feedback, which there wasn't much of. Any issues were mostly to do with input lag and low resolution on the Oculus. I did find the players often ask what the objective was, which I tried to make obvious by placing 3 orbs in front of a teleporter to teach the player how to progress. However every time I start the game, theOculus had to be recalibrated every time and by that point the player would be facing another direction. My thoughts on this issue is that given the simplistic concept, it wouldn't be too much of an issue in the final product. This is because the player's first go at the game is still fun because they are discovering each mechanic at their own pace; Only increasing the excitement of first seeing an open portal. |