This week-end I participated in the Global Game Jam 2011:Â 48h straight to create a game ! I decided to bring my VRKit-HMD to see if we could make a game with that, and we did !
(update: it seems the video is blocked in Germany because I used a song by Nine Inch Nails .. will try to modify that tomorrow!)
(update2: i’ve updated the video, is it working now?)
(see also the VR Escape webpage)
We created a VR Geeks team composed of two 3D artists, two sound designers and one game artist that we met during the team building meetings, my fellow VR Geek Nicolas Conil and myself.
We settled on a game idea, an adventure where you have to find out how to escape from a dark lab, and started to prototype the interactions: take an object, drop it on another to trigger an action, navigation. We decided it would be easier for people to just move along a predefined path with just forward/backward. After a few hours we had a first working prototype with simple cubes, and after 48h we had integrated the incredible work of our 3d artists and sound designers !
All the people who tried it said they were really immersed in it. Although we did not create a full game we think we have some interesting basis to build on that. At least we have created an interesting experience in terms of presence and basic interactions, and can turn that into a real game with more work. We will try to have an improved version for Laval Virtual, since we have been invited there to have a booth !
Creating a game in 2 days is a great and intense experience: it forces you to focus on what’s really the core and discard unnecessary details. We were very lucky that everything went smoothly: No fights, no hardware failure (appart from the Vuzix HMD going black when used too much and some brain cells that died somewhere between 3 and 4 am).
It’s also a great experience to share with people you know or don’t know, and see games around you being created and finished!
The game is compliant with the VRKit-HMD specifications so it should work on your HMD based system if you have setup a VRPN server, tracking the head, the hand, plus a two-axis joystick and four buttons. You also need one more component so if you decide to try it, drop me a mail and I’ll help you set this up. You can find more information on the VR Escape webpage.
The game is using Unity and we will release the source code soon.
As for interfacing VR with Unity … you’ll have to wait 🙂
Looks promising!
Respect to you guys! 😀
My heroes ♥
And some media coverage :
http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/2011/00048616-48-heures-pour-creer-un-jeu.htm
Very cool, I would like to try this out myself it looks very immersive. I’m currently working at the Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles, and we have integrated a wide-fov HMD with Unity, which is a great engine for this stuff!
We want to release the game one day so you might want to follow to the VR Geeks blog (http://www.vrgeeks.org/blog) or even join the VR Geeks mailing list ! (http://www.vrgeeks.org/vr-geeks/global)