Reflection as Combat

This week for me was primarily giving the player a way to attack with only defending.
Inspired by the combat in God of War Chains of Olympus, I felt that this reflection mechanic would be perfect for VR.

In my final mechanic for the Launch Pad Demo, I wanted to make a combat sequence that would utilize the satisficing effect of reflecting an attack, but only giving the player that reflection ability in combat.
 So what I did was add reflection cubes on the Go remote in the game.
 I attached three cubes to the remote, one each giving its own element to the reflection mechanic. The Closest cube away from the player reflects the slowest giving the enemy time to dodge the countered attack. The second cube is the middle ground the sort of sweet spot where reflecting would cause the attack to be reflected back to the enemy hurting the attacker with their own attack. The last cube, closest to the player reflects the attack the fastest, but the widens the player’s risk getting hurt waiting to the last minute to reflect.
Right now I am testing this mechanic in VR and hope to get playtesters soon.

we are also adding the finishing touches to the forest scene and it is looking good!

Play NYC 2018

This was the week of PlayNYC with Maria and Gordey.
I got playtest Bizarre Barber and got valuable feedback from tops of players at the convention!

The booths were a bit pricey, but I was able to join a collective of unique games called the friendship garden.
https://www.facebook.com/hessvacio/posts/10216987848198537

Not much development was done due to helping with the convention but still had valuable feedback.

Making an Epic Door For VR

I found this week of work a little silly. Silly because this entire week I spent working on a door for the forest level. However, this was not an ordinary door and now that we have started this previs model of the structure I can say this week was worth working primary on this structure. But why? Why was I so obsessed with making this structure look great?

(initial sketch)
I’ve been fascinated with this idea of aw inspiring moments in VR. I wanted to create these wow moments all over my experience from the grand fights to the simple interactions like going through a great entrance. So I created an initial sketch and passed that sketch off to a concept artist.

We received a pass from our concept artist that I really like but of course, I felt as though we could do better so I had improvements to make.

After we finalized the structure’s sketch, we started the modeling process. The door is not completely ready for the game but it is almost done and I am really excited to see people’s jaws drop in VR.

Meeting up with Fellow VR Creators

Oh my God, I can’t believe we are already on week 11 of development for the second chapter!
This week we worked on the pitch and project description. It’s quite hard to nail down the language for the description of VR game and all the examples that we got from the Game Center teachers are either for console / mobile games or for IRL games. However, I have some ideas and hopefully will be able to finish this week!
We also decided to meet with NYC Launchpad fellow for the playtesting session. We met on Saturday at the Game Center: me (Maria), Gordey, Ciera, Ryan, and Hessvacio. It was very useful and I hope this meeting will help to improve everyone’s game!

The Forest

This week my team and I have modeled out the Forest for our world!
Fresh off the heels of Play-NYC we want to keep the energy and momentum we’ve received from our demo.
We have merged most 3D models, so this entire world would only be about 12 draw calls or so. It is incredible to go from simple sketches to a 3D world that we can now walk through on the Gear VR and Oculus Go. We still need to work on some of the lighting issues and in the environment.

Started at the:

 
 

Now we here:

Our next plan is to finish the play mechanics of the world with white boxing prototypes while the rest of the forest is being modeled out.

See you all soon!

Drawing up a Forest

Hello to my 3 followers,
My weekly update today is my progress on the environment. I have been working hard with my environmental artist and we have started breaking ground on the forest we want to create in VR.

We started with drafting out the layout of the world through papers on our floor and once we finalized the layout we made sure the art style was set for our experience then we started modeling this in 3DSMax.

With the approach of creating this environment from the ground up, we are saving a ton on draw calls.

                                              

    
 

Traversing this previs version in VR is now only hitting 6 draw calls. Which is Amazing!!!!

I’ll have more updates soon!

A Shattered World in Shaders

For the past two weeks, I have been working on a shader that will be performant on mobile VR but still have all the cool effect of a dream within it.

The objective of the level would be You the player would be in an older person’s mind trying to help them remember how to make this key by clearing out their mental cobwebs. I wanted the world to be fragmented as you find the cobwebs to clear out with your Gear VR/ Oculus Go controller. As you clear out more of the webs more formed her head / the world will become formed.

I wanted to create a shader that can bend and fragment the world and slowly put it back together as the player clears the mental cobwebs.

My inspirations for this were:

Inception (Movie) –

Voxel Covering – https://twitter.com/i/status/1014938219228454913

Bound:

This is my working POC for the shader:

I currently have 2 issues though.

1. Once I check the box for “single pass” in VR the shader loses its depth perception.
2. Unity has trouble emulating the shader in the editor when the Android option is selected.

Those are my issues but other than that the project is really moving along. I can’t wait to have people playtest this demo 🙂

Dreaming up a New Level

I have been working with my friend on concept art for an idea that I’ve had for a bit. We are experimenting with how a dream or just the inside of someone’s head would look like in VR. How would that world look? Honestly, the world of a dream only seems old when we wake up, so we want to take some creative freedoms with the mind space. We are trying this concept of how a dream world feel if it was sketch drawn and here are some of the concepts we came up with.

  

Our next step is to see if changing the texture in the Unity will create this effect for us.

More to come soon…

Showing Your Game at Expos

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to give a couple quick tips on showcasing your games at Expos.
I recently showcased a project called Museum Multiverse at Game Developers of Color, and I wanted to talk about the lessons I learned in my journey showcasing.

1. Focus on the Frontend

What I mean by Focus on the Frontend is to make the first impressions of your game really strong. At a particular expo, there could be over a hundred games for players to get lost in. Focus on Frontend by having a unique touch to your booth and don’t stop there make sure your title screen in your game is the best it can be as well!

2. Keep Your Demo Short

There so many demos at an expo, you would not want a player feeling trapped in your 20-minute experience. Keep your demo short and sweet.

3. Keep Contact with Your Audience

Use business cards (about your game) to promote the game you are showcasing, have newsletters about your project but the most significant thing you’d want to focus on in connecting with your audience is having ways to connect and follow on social media readily available.

In my time at the expo from utilizing these tips, I had my VR headsets running non-stop with players wanting to jump into the VR experience, people like Paul from Kotaku asking the game for a video on the expo, and warm moments like a mother and daughter who played the experience three times over because they loved it so much.