Postmortem

I have created a VR fps that puts an emphasis on mechanical aiming. The player enters the game as agent Schrader, a bomb technician. Schrader will grant his access to the battle arena after choosing his weapons. In the battle arena, bombs will be planted at random positions, and Schrader will have very limited time to crush them before they explode.

Despite finishing a solo game with a given time frame of 3 weeks, I believe I was successful overall. Obviously, a lot of features are still missing. During the first stage of the project, I looked at various games involving mechanical aiming. https://loldodgegame.com is a good example in 2D, but it doesn't quite fit in the setting of virtual reality. When it comes to 3D/VR, Kovaak's aim trainer came across to me and it aligned with my initial ideas. I integrated my skills and techniques in modeling and built a believable fps experience with the creation of weapons; environments; and fighting deck. I put a strong emphasis on asset creation. 

There were several problems regarding the player movement from my initial playtest: playtesters were experiencing "VR sickness". In tackling this critical issue, I have designed my own movement in game. Rotations would only be done in the physical space. With that being said, the left thumb-stick is only responsible for movement in X and Z, and the right thumb-stick is for movement in the Y axis. 

Parsons the new School of design, Game Club, New York

During the second playtest at Wonderville in Brooklyn, I've received feedbacks in regard to the core gameplay: the average gamers have a long learning curve and are slow in reactions. I've then adjusted the difficulty ramp to accept a larger demographic. 

Wonderville Arcade Center, Brooklyn

The game is still missing a lot of its features as I only have 3 weeks to develop, a lot can be improved. The UI elements is the very first VR canvas that I have created, I am satisfied with the outcome but I wish I have kept the bullet count with the laser aim, it will be easier for the player to access the information. The guns are definitely the highlights, but I would work on improving the lighting of the gun: parts of the gun can be better lit in game. Lighting is what brings 3D models alive!! For the core gameplay, I would work on integrating a delay with the controllers. Triple A fps games such as Robo Recall has a slight delay on its controllers. Players with shaky hands wouldn't have to worry about having shaky aims in the headset, Epic games did a really good job in creating this delay. I remember writing such delay functions in Processing, and would look into integrating this in fps and C#.

One of the lessons I've learned from this game is that I should design the core gameplay before creating any assets. In this up coming semester, I am going to be using primitives to build the prototype and leave asset creation to the very end. My game is constantly evolving throughout the design process, so building the assets prior to the core gameplay will not benefit the design or the overall development!