My Development Process

This project was made in Unity and my first project developing in Virtual Reality (VR). In this unit, we were first tasked with creating a conceptualisation for a VR game followed by creating a prototype for it. Due to my association of motion sickness with VR, I opted to make a stationary VR game with the only camera movement having the player move around. Therefore it would also serve as an entry piece for new VR users.

My project was chosen for its feasibility and brought forward to be developed by my team. During the collaboration, I worked as the programmer and also refined the game's aesthetics.

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Prototype Development

I created the prototype based on my concept pitch. With the help of knowledge I obtained from a previous unit (IGB383 AI for Games) I was able to create a state machine to keep track of the game states from start to the end condition.

The initial prototype only had one scene, spawned enemies with a fixed sequence and fired projectiles using Unity's physics system.

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Group development stage

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After being assigned the project for development, our group discussed and assigned ourselves roles based on interests and strength. Robin and I assumed the roles of programmers, Jon was in charge of level design and sounds, while Adrian created the art assets for our game. As I initiated the project, I was also the producer and created a task list that we expected the final game to have.

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Development Cycle improvements

The first sprint cycle focused on making the experience more streamlined while improving the goals that the prototype initially aimed for.

• The tutorial was separated from the main level's scene. 

• The enemy spawning sequence was now created in a style of a 'beat map', where designers can follow a format to create a level by inputting the sequence that enemies spawn on a text file.

• Shooting was changed to ray casting for smoother shooting experience and fixed collision issues. It also transitioned from bullets to laser projectiles to maintain the sci-fi theme.

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The second sprint cycle focused on improving the general quality-of-life and feel to our game.

• Assets both sourced online and created by our artist were imported into the game

• The tutorial continued to be improved upon with the UI and Environment being the focus

• Multiple levels were created to test the difficulty and feeling of the game

• Data-logging collected variable data that indicated player performance was added to support play-testing. It was helpful to reference when making changes for the upcoming final sprint.

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The final sprint cycle focused on fixing inconsistencies and polishing up aesthetics for the game to evoke a rewarding feeling for player as they interacted with the virtual world.

• Lighting, post-processing and particle effects were added to the scenes and object interactions 

• Polished versions of models were created and replaced previous versions

• Sound effects were adjusted to feel more impactful

• The UI of the main level scene was improved upon. Giving additional feedback such as changing the colour of combo texts and giving it a slight shake when a threshold is met.

• The tutorial was completed by adjusting layout based on feedback while also ensuring no bugs would occur.

• I added an additional interaction of asteroids in the environment that explode on impact using unity physics and picking up blender's slice tool.