Virtual Reality
TASK 1
Spider-Man VR Analysis
From playing VR games, I have found that the main limiting factor is room and space. Without enough space, VR is extremely hard to use, so the player must have adequate space to play. VR is then not only an investment in the device, but also an investment in the space needed to play on that device if the player doesn’t have it currently.
1. Mechanics:
The web slinging feels slow due to the amount of time it takes for the webs to reach an object, and the amount of power you must put into the swing to move. A fix for this can just be to increase the speed the player moves at when swinging to make it feel more responsive, and make the webs move through the air faster so there isn’t a wait between each swing.
The web wall mechanic is quite good, as you can see the web in your hands before firing it, and have visual feedback to actually making it. However the web fires after a specific amount of time, and so doesn’t actually let the player realise it’s been made before it fires, so it can get confusing at times. An improvement for this would be to fire the web only when the player releases the buttons used to make it, which would provide more feedback to them as they’re the ones in control, not the game.
Reloading your web shooters is another mechanic, but it isn’t exactly needed. It’s used to artificially increase the difficulty but is poorly implemented. You need to press the trigger buttons (the same buttons to shoot with) when the controllers are out of the headset’s view to reload, something that should instead be done with one of the four face buttons, all of which are used solely for jumping, a mechanic which I found myself barely using.
2. Art:
Spider-Man tries to go for a semi-realistic style, but this isn’t what it actually looks like. The game’s models look like they’re from a PS2 game due to the low resolution textures and low poly counts. This is due to VR games still being in their infancy, and so optimisation techniques haven’t been finalised, so a realistic, high poly VR game is a while off still.
3. Movement:
Movement is controlled with the left joystick, which works, except for rotation. For some reason you rotate with a fade to black when moving it left and right, which is jarring and not intuitive. Instead it should act like a normal movement joystick should, going forward, back, left and right, and just have the player look in the direction they want to go, as it does already (but only for forward). The movement should also be slowed, perhaps with a run/walk button where the player can go slower if they want to have more precise movements (like hiding behind a corner for example).
4. Player Direction:
The objective of the game is to defeat a huge robot that uses the road for its armour. You do this by shooting each part of the armour, then pulling it off with your webs. The web walls slow down the robot, but small drones repair the broken road armour, so you have to watch out and shoot those also. It’s an interesting idea, but is too fast for a beginner to grasp properly, and so they can easily fall behind by focusing on mastering the web slinging first.
Ned’s voice is meant to guide the player in their objective, but it actually only serves to confuse. The same lines play over and over again without change, so “I think it’s working!” plays whilst the drones are repairing the road armour, so the player doesn’t know what is working, or he says it when the player doesn’t realise that you have to pull off the armour instead of just shooting it. This mechanic is explained at the start of the game, but it’s extremely brief and is easily missed.
Freeplay yields no objectives whatsoever, so it’s quite boring to just run and swing around, especially when the people are static with no expressions, and the cars drive around with no direction. Something that should be in freeplay is something similar to GTA V’s random events, where a pedestrian needs help with something that only Spider-Man can do (like saving a cat or getting back a car from a thief, etc.).
Party Game Analysis
Guitar Hero:
Guitar Hero as a concept is intuitive and fun. Up to four players play in a band together on the same song, playing guitar, bass, drums and vocals. This approach gets people playing together and working together, because if they don't work as a team then they'll miss notes and get shouted off stage (losing). The ability to play any instrument on your own makes Guitar Hero not only a good party game, but also a good individual game, and the high skill ceiling with multiple difficulty settings for each song makes the player want to improve continuously with their friends to one up each other and show off their skills.
The various developers of Guitar Hero license and include a number of popular rock songs from various years in each game to keep the track list fresh and the reason to play the same: playing along to songs you like. This clearly summarises Guitar Hero's vision and formula for every game. However by doing this for every game and not improving on the formula, it can get very stale, especially having to buy the new games just for that one song you like, or not being able to play a song you like because it isn't in any of the games. The ability to make tracks was there but it wasn't fun nor intriguing enough to invest time into it.
Guitar Hero Live decided to try and change the formula by utilising two sets of three buttons instead of a row of five. This made it more "realistic" to a real guitar, but also made it slightly easier, as you no longer had to stretch your fingers to reach the orange and back to green again, your fingers just rested on those buttons and you pressed the correct row when you need to.
​
Summary:
-
High skill ceiling;
-
Can be played individually or up to 3 friends;
-
Large and different track list for each game.
Positive Word Cloud
Negative Word Cloud
Positive Word Cloud
Negative Word Cloud
Acron: Attack of the Squirrels:
Acron puts an interesting twist on the VR Party Game genre, and pits a group of friends on their phones against another friend who is in virtual reality. The friend in VR plays as a tree and must ward off attacks from the squirrels (the friends on their phones). The tree holds the acorns, which is what the squirrels are trying to get. The idea behind this is clever, as it means that the friends on phones must work as a team to beat the friend in VR, whilst the friend in VR needs to act swiftly to beat the challenge of having many opponents. An upside to having friends take the role of opponents is the person in VR would know roughly what their plans might be, seeing as they're friends and know each other, and so can plan accordingly, and vice versa for the friends on phones. Since the game actually needs lots of players to be able to be fun to play, no one is left out. However this means the game is not very fun without lots of friends to play with, so it isn't for everyone.
​
Summary:
-
Involved for all friends (no one is left out);
-
A different take on the genre;
-
Exercise different strategies to throw other players off-guard.
Positive Word Cloud
Negative Word Cloud
Ideas to use in my project:
Taking the good and bad parts from the games I've looked at, I decided that a good VR party game is one that incorporates all the participants so that no one is left bored or waiting for a turn, and everyone is able to help in some way. A way to include this is to have a puzzle or maze game where the VR player sees a first person view of the level, and everyone else sees a top down map of the level and have to guide the VR player through, similar to KTNE and Guitar Hero in how the friends have to work as a team to accomplish the goal. If there isn't teamwork, things will go badly, but that is also OK, because it's funny to see a friend fail to achieve something in a game, especially if no one is trying.
​
S.A.M. Method:
Setting: What is the world & story in a few sentences.
Avatar: Who do we play as?
Mechanics: How do we play?
​
Skyhouse:
Setting - Liverpudlian house with skyboxes in it.
Avatar - Harry.
Mechanics - Navigate and escape the house, assisted by onlookers (friends if possible).
Settings for if you have enough space to move around or not.
​
Groundbuilding:
Setting - Papatowai, Otago, New Zealand.
Avatar - Yrrah.
Mechanics - Get inside the groundbuilding with onlookers (haters if possible) trying to stop you. Asymmetrical gameplay where friends use their phones to stop you.
​
The 3rd Floor:
Setting - Khab, Yemen.
Avatar - Har Ry.
Mechanics - Stay on the 3rd Floor while people (friends hopefully) spectate silently.
​
41 Days:
Setting - Southend-On-Sea.
Avatar - Morgan Parable.
Mechanics - Friends control a crane that builds floors. The player inside the building must reach the top before the building gets too unstable and falls due to the weight of all the new floors.
Audience and Cultural Research
My target audience are casual gamers who may not have used virtual reality before, and so don't know much about it or what they're doing. To cater towards this audience, the game will start with a simple tutorial on the controls and mechanics, with the start of the first level acting as a short tutorial. This introduces the players to the game, and two different sets of tutorials will be shown, one for the VR player, and one for the team helping them through.
Academic Research
Academic research is making new discoveries for a community: finding out new information that can change the perspective of what is being researched. It uses the scientific method and is logical in nature. Sorting out reliable information, from authorities within your area of study, in order to help you overcome theoretical or practical problems.
​
​
The authors of this book are Willian R. Sherman (member of the Indiana University Advanced Visualisation Lab and teacher of undergraduate and graduate courses on VR and visualisation) and Alan B. Craig Ph.D. (expert in VR and AR talking at countless worldwide events and teaches classes related to VR and AR online as well on-site at universities, companies, and high school campuses, university of Illinois).
The book goes over virtual reality in depth and explains how it can be applied to different fields of research. It also serves as an underlying resource that stays relevant even when other technologies evolve.
I can use this book to create a base UI system that works the same even when the game and other software used updates. Without this, I may need to update and improve the UI after every major change, which would be time consuming and unnecessary.
The author is Byung-Chull Bae, a professor at Hongik University, Sejong, South Korea.
This book explains how developers can enhance the immersion of VR by using diegetic UIs. By using this, I can analyse how different forms of user interfaces change the immersion amount, and how styling can influence a player's enjoyment from the game.
Race'n'Chase GDD
The background of this GDD is like crumpled paper. Whether this was intentional or it was scanned like this I don't know, but it adds to the old style.
Ignoring this however reveals plain blocks of text with little excitement. This was made in 1995 for the original Grand Theft Auto, so it makes sense, as game design documents back then were simple and to the point, being very formal and not "fun".
It starts with the title of the game, the version number, the date, and the creator. It's very formal and clear in its presentation.
The revision list displays all the previous versions of the GDD with the version numbers, the date, comments and the author. This lets other people reading it know how many changes there have been, when and for what reasons.
The page numbers are in the top right with the date, and the document name and version are in the top left. This continues throughout the document.
The contents is at the start and is labelled clearly and simply to avoid confusion in navigation. The page numbers are on the right with fullstops on the same lines so it's easy for the readers to see which numbers correspond with each chapter.
Clear, numbered titles show which paragraph is talking about which part, which again contributes to the clean and formal theme. Everything is laid out in a clear, concise, and logical manner which leaves no room for creative flavour, something games should be about.
Race'n'Chase's original concept in this GDD is a "fun, addictive and fast multi-player car racing and crashing game". While elements of this concept remain in the final game, the final game itself's concept is very different, being an open world game which gives the player the ability to do more or less what they want without restraint. Comparing GTA to a "multi-player car racing and crashing game" doesn't really work, as the appeal of the GTA games has always been doing things you want to do but not in a real life setting, where you can retry and die again and again without consequence.
​
The GDD does state that the player can steal other cars by "controlling a vulnerable pedestrian for a short time", which is the opposite of what ended up happing. In GTA, unless you want to go somewhere quickly, you're almost always on foot, and are not vulnerable at all. You have a plethora of weapons and resources at your disposal. It also states that "there will be 3 cities with a different graphic style for each", something that sounds cool in concept, but would be jarring to play in. This is probably why they were ditched for one map with one art style, as it kept the continuity throughout the game.
​
Things that did stay in the final game with little to no changing were the top down view "with perspective" (which I'm assuming means 3D houses), the overlaid dashboard when in a car, and the ground types and object types.
​
In summary, GTA turned out to be a very different game compared to its original Race'n'Chase GDD, with mostly only the world and setting mechanics staying the same. The gameplay was changed a lot.
Skyhouse GDD
Level 1 Layout
This level is set in a house, and so as inspiration, we based it off Harrison's house, and decided to randomise it for each playthrough. Certain values like the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and minimum sizes of rooms, etc. won't be randomised to avoid inaccessible rooms or one room floors. This will make the level be a new experience every time the player restarts to keep the fun.
​
The tennis ball mechanic will be used to open doors and turn on and off lights, as well as smash light bulbs, causing them to be useless. Since the game is set in a fever dream, the scale of the house will be larger than normal, to:
-
Make the player feel small
-
Give the player more space in the house to feel lost and use the tennis ball
​​
By combining these elements as well as the skyboxes, the puzzle will be just to leave the house by throwing the tennis ball at the button that opens it. The friends guiding the player will not see the player's position, so the VR player must describe their surroundings to let the friends know their location, enhancing communication between them.
.png)
Bibliography
Spider-Man: Far From Home Virtual Reality - CreateVR. (2019). Spider-Man: Far From Home Virtual Reality. Available: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1067800/SpiderMan_Far_From_Home_Virtual_Reality/#app_reviews_hash. Last accessed 2nd December 2021.
​
Sherman, W & Craig, A. (2018). Understanding Virtual Reality. Available: https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128009659/understanding-virtual-reality. Last accessed 15th December 2021.
​
Seo G., Bae BC. (2018) Towards the Utilization of Diegetic UI in Virtual Reality Educational Content. In: Stephanidis C. (eds) HCI International 2018 – Posters' Extended Abstracts. HCI 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 852. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92285-0_16
​
Race'n'Chase GDD - K.R. Hamilton. (1995). Race'n'Chase Game Design. Available: https://www.gamedevs.org/uploads/grand-theft-auto.pdf. Last accessed 15th December 2021.