26/12/2020
27/12/2020
- Created this document plus a new Unity Project
- The goal of this exercise is to prototype and ship (on Itch.io) a VR game within a few days, and then see what is learned
- Some initial thoughts right now: Space strategy game which involves scale (zoom in and out with controllers). Customisable ships (maybe voxel like). Other mechanics like workers, building space stations, taking asteroids etc… No ground mechanic. Might be challenging to do greyboxing. I enjoyed Lazerbait. Whatever I ship will be free. Read interesting comment about mixed reality driving Beat Saber sales
- List of game scripts to create:
- info card (planet, ship)
- - production
- player (zoom, camera, input)
- - move ships to planet, everything else automated for now
- Drag ship to target (planet, another ship, solar system, middle of nowhere)
- starship (target pos, enemy to attack, team, ai script)
- orbit (draw line, goes around planet, rock, etc...)
- (+) some game assets, polish, music, rumble
- Later additions could include
- Basic resource gathering
- Planet control
- Space stations
- Ship building
- Ship commanders and admirals
- "Bridge view"
28/12/2020
- Decision: Don’t have any kind of asymmetric component.
- List of things to work on:
- Ship combat, weapons, shields, FX, AI, etc…
- Player input: scaling the world, tracking, UI panels, ordering ships
- World design: planets
- Ship movement, orbit, attack patterns
- Ship voxels, designing, expanding, etc…
- Metadata on planets and ships
- I’m interested in having two “pseudo-games”: the minimap which the user controls and the flagship itself
- The user should be able to stand on the bridge of their ships
- Voxels are great, or at least, the “block style”
- Don’t get distracted - build an MVP
- Working on VR zoom now -- looking good so far. Probably want to consider the one-handed use case, plus Zoom UI which shows the scale like Google Maps does (1 lightyear, 1 parsec, etc..)
- Consider a galactic grid which has tiles to show the distance between systems
- Consider adding a button to flip the world from being in front to being on the floor
- Think about lateral movement, would be nice to have similar movement to Townsmen VR, with the ability to move forward and backwards
29/12/2020
- Test scene with zooming -- scaling either player and the world is challenging
- Also, consider the 3d space aspect, as players might be uncomfortable at ground level
- Janky af, works for now
- Next prototype world is going to be just spaceships
30/12/2020
- Do we want to be combat focused (e.g. slowing time, directing missile paths, targeting hardpoints) or galactic scale focused?
- Taking advantage of 3D space is a must, so multiple ships
31/12/2020
- Feeling uninspired about the game mechanics in this idea
- First person game much more interesting
- Want to play with tactile interfaces: buttons, switches, picking stuff, throwing stuff around, weapons, swords, surveillance cameras/monitors etc…
- Example: Change something in some part of the level before time loop, it persists in a different part
- Groundhog day mechanic - one huge level, timers in every room, white fade and reset ; BUT ; some effects are persistent
- There is time pressure (e.g. science experiment gone wrong) which leads to what pushes you back in time after all
- Shut the machine off before things reset
- Interaction System
- Input
- The Lab Renderer
- OpenVR
- Steam Audio
- Probuilder
- Progrids
- Standard Assets
- Unity Snaps
- Time loop every X minutes, wall clock
- Hunt down key cards
- Fix circuits (wires, machines, etc…)
- Explore the complex (doors, lifts)
- Drones/turrets
- One way doors (reset pulls your back)
- Persistence between loops (e.g. weapons, inventory, world state)
- Non linear level design (tree)
- Death = time loop
- Multiple endings?
- Mechanical switches
- Lift to go through multiple levels
- Start level
- One requires keycard
- Deep underground
- One up at the top
- Tram/monorail system on one level
- Office theme
- Science lab theme
- Industrial/warehouse theme
- Weapons, ammo, weapon attachments, which persist through the multiple levels
- How do we teach the player about the core loop mechanic?
- Maybe set it to five minutes, put clocks everywhere, put a clock in the very intro
- Build up to the 5 minute mark, have the sound of ticking, then lots of alarms, then explosions, before the reset
- The player should be able to increase the time, to 10 minutes, after solving part of the game?
- How do we guide the player around the whole game?
- Wires carrying coloured energy?
- Make the first reactor relatively close, then once that’s solved the player should guide themselves
- Security monitors showing different parts of the facility
01/01/2021
- Happy new year!
- Built out a prototyping environment in VR
- Snaps is an absolute game changer for me -- I can easily prototype and playtest
- The scaling is a tiny bit off (or feels that way)
- Probably easier to correct the player size ngl
- The provided building blocks in Snaps are great and sticking to them means being able to slot in new assets in a production phase
- Learn more about ProGrids to avoid minor errors
- Using prefabs heavily to build rooms, corridors, etc… which can be updated at scale - probably important for a huge non-linear world
- Audio is more important than graphics at this stage
- Notebook notes:
- Next things to implement
- Wall clocks/screens
- Alarms, energy sounds, explosions
- Reactor effects
- Keycards and opening doors
- Disabling the reactor
- First purchase: £150 at Soundsnap.com
- Steam Audio a bit tricky - have to use their Audio Source and Audio Listener components, and remember to generate reverb & stuff
