Cal Thorndyke VR

Updated to visuals including Puddles

Originally the puddles in the alleyway floor were just squares due to the assets that i was using at the time and i wanted these to look more like puddles easily and so to achieve this i cut out some puddles in photoshop and added them into the scene as PNGs

The puddles were then places in the same location, resized and were then material changed to try and match the colourings of the floor to create the puddle effect.

Adding Text Guidance from feedback

Based on some of the feedback of the user testing where users wanted some more guidance and help on what to do next i chose to add some text prompts and instructions into the game itself as shown from the imagery below.

Adding additional interaction to Elevator

To make the elevator section somewhat more interesting i wanted to add the ghosting effect from the boxes in the alleyway to try and show what the players are doing on their side without needing to constantly look over your shoulder.

Adding additional interaction to Hotel Lobby

To continue this trend i also wanted to continue this ghosting or mirroring effect as well in the hotel lobby by adding some wine glasses that can be seen or interacted by the player on the opppising side as shown through images below.

Recording two player gameplay

After making all of these changes i wanted to record both player perspectives so two of my friends screen capture the game through their headsets and this was all then edited together into a interchangable video showing both perspectives for my presentation or final crit.

Editing Together the footage

All footage captured from both of my friends was edited together using premiere pro to intercut both perspectives into one another which is also now available to view on youtube for submission and the presentation.

Final Crit Presentation

The final presentation was created to display all aspects of the project including, story, screenshots, sketches, gameplay and user testing feedback ready.

Changing to Open XR for testing

Due to the technical issues caused by the university computers i have now had to change my project to work with Open XR which is achieved by updating and changing the plugin management in the unity editor as seen below.

Futher updates are also needed to feature OculusXR to make it multiplatform with multiple headsets which is also beneficial for sharing the experience on multiple machines for multiple users.

Fixing the Hands for Open XR

Changing to Open XR did have some effects on the controllers and the tracking which meant that the hands positionings and models needed heavily adjusting to accomodate the change in OS.

Developing a Quest 2 Build (APK)

After having these issues i also wanted to have other ways of palying the game by also supporitng an Android APK build that could run natively on the Oculus Quest 2 Headset without the need of a tethered computer to further help with user testing and also making it more accessible around the universty and for the end of year show.

Conducting User Testing On-site

The user testing of my experience started this week onsite in the MA Virtual reality classroom with a majority of the testers being available to try the experience. The testing was conducted with only small issues occuring during the testing and minimal restarts or changes were required.

Conducting User Testing Online

he user testing of my experience started this week online with of the testers being available to try the experience. The testing was conducted with only small issues occuring during the testing and minimal restarts or changes were required but there were some issues orginally with sustaining network connection for both playing the game and talking to the users online for guidance and collaboration.

Questionnaire Creation

The questionnaire that was created asked the user about the three interactive elements of the experience including The three tasks, their thoughts on competition, cooperation and their overall opinion and feedback on the gameplay, level design and the games story.

General Feedback from Questionnaire

• Player motivations differ greatly when playing cooperative experiences with some wanting to socialise and play together, others wanting to play alone without the stress of needing to collaborate with another player and some wanting to compete for entertainment.
  
• Synchronisation and timing is extremely difficult between two real players which leads to unpredictability with certain blocks, precautions and mechanics needing to be created to monitor and tie together player progression through an experience.
  
• More than one player can and will derail the story with most of the focus being drawn towards one another and the interactions rather than the story they are participating in. Linking back to player motivations where some players will want story while others may want fun gameplay.
  
• Guidance and instructions seems to be extremely important to a lot of users with many not wanting to explore or figure out a problem for themselves, most want to be told what to do and where to go next.

Decorating and visuals in the Environment

Checking for glitches and working Models

Additional Sound Effects

Creating the End Goal

Fixed Multiplayer

Some Server Issues but developing

Updates to Character Model

Due to the time constraints and the limitations of the photon pun network and what can be sent over the server, the main character was changed to be much much simpler as you can see from the images below to only geature a head and hand models rather than a full tracked body… this ended up looking like Baymax but it worked well in the game.

Animation on the character model

To add some interesting visual elements to the model i wanted some animations and movement and so i though the easiest way to do this was to have the eyes blinking which was achieved with some simple looping animations and shown from the screenshot below.

Updates to the Stairs

At the moment when the players walk up the stairs it can be very jarring and jumpy for the player because they are literally moving up blocks as they progress up the stairs. So to fix this issue i decided to add a flat ramp so the players could walk smoothly up the stairs to avoid any motion sickness

Online Testing for Photon View over network

After changint the character models and sending the copied data over the photon network, the new changes were very successful with the screenshot below showing my tests with my friend and you can now see one another online with full head and hand tracking being very accurate and even the blinking animations are appearing over the network.

Creating a Hub Area for Player Selection

After having the initial issues with seperating the players and distinctions i decided the easiest way to achieve seperate players was within the scene itself rather than using programming. So i created a small hub area which features two doors, one for player one and one for player two that the players can walk through to be teleported to those specific tied environments in order to progress and play through the experience.

This isnt necessarily the best way to do this in unity but with all of the technical issues i was having with the network this seemed like the best solution and also the solution that could be achieved in the time that i had left on this project.

Continued issues with Photon Pun 2 for VR

There are still multiple issues with the Photon Pun 2 for virtual reality with the tracking being off, controls being inverted or misplaced and worst of all, the camera being shared between players which is still and issue that i am needed to research, develop and fix in order for the full game to work.

Creating the closing credits

The credits were created similar to my previous experience by making JPEG files in illustrator using the correct typeface and were then exported and imported into Unity. These files were then animated and timed to appear after the player enters the credits scene finishing the experience. Once the credits are complete they will be sent back to the opening menu scene.

Creating the Opening Credits

Similar to the credits they were created in a similar way with all text and introductory text being created in Illustrator. The opening menu features a start experience button to load up all of the intro text for the player to read to recieve some backstory and context to what they are playing.

Once they have read all of the opening text a button will appear saying “Enter Multiverse” which will load them into the opening hub area of the experience.

Adding Particle Effects in Hotel lobby

Opening and Closing door sound effects

Glitch Transition for Player 2

Creating the Gravity Switcher

To achieve the floor mirror effect I wanted the players to appear as if they were underneath one another in the experience. To achieve this it meant that the second player had to be upside down and so a reverse gravity script was needed that wouldnt affect player One. After some discussions with my teachers and research online it was found that the rigid body could be singled out and changed on its own without having to change the gravity for the whole level.

This is also easy to trigger in the unity editor by increasing or decreasing the public float to increase or decrease the gravity intensity.

Testing the Gravity Switcher

After setting up the gravity script it was initially working and pulling the XR rig in the opposite direction but there were issues with the Rig going through objects or rapdidly being pushed around the environment. There were also problems with the rotation and position of the player causing some very unplayable conditions.

Issues with the Gravity Switch

Initially there were issues with the colliders affecting how the player could move in the environment and the opposing gravity almost fighting. After a few attempts and tests it was found in a strange way that turning off the character controller and using a capsule collider instead seemed to fix the issue and allow the player to appear upside without any major issues with movement.

Issues with Multiplayer Spawning

I was able to successfully have a stable network connection and able to spawn a player but i am having the issue of differntiating the players and spawning 2 seperate prefabs to have a seperate player one and player 2. It seems to only spawn one player at a time and this seems to be due to the game launching and not recognising that another player has already join the scene as player one

Multiple methods have been attampted including transforming the second player using a counter to see how many people are in the scene which doesnt seem to be working very well. This will need to be continued to be tested and investigated to see how this can be fixed otherwise the two player cooperative experience cannot be achieved…