HTC VR Game: AJ CYBORG

Developed & Created by Zon & Kabeer

“AJ is a U.S. Marshall who wants to drop his criminal record of the jobs that he has done for the government. After catching a Dangerous terrorist his mission goes wrong and he ends up losing his limbs in a blast. The government is now offering him a Cyborg body to go on a few more missions and in Return, they will wipe his record clean. There is one problem; someone has kidnapped his brother Dave who is a navy officer. Now it is up to AJ to save his brother, the country and become the ultimate Hero.”

You can view the FULL GAMEPLAY below:

PROJECT DETAILS:

We would like to express our gratitude to Ms. Anezka Sebek & Ms. Tammy Walters for giving us the opportunity to explore this project with immense creative liberty. Without their support, I would never have learned and absorbed so significantly from this project. We are indebted to Katherine for letting us integrate this project at LCCS and work with the Kids. Their valuable guidance, keen interest, and encouragement in various stages of this project have been highly valuable.

We are also thankful to my fellow classmates and friends Brandon Palmer, Erica Kermani, Kris Lee, Nelson Vassallo, Greg, Vishal Ravi Kumar for providing a voiceover and their valuable encouragement.

This is the First Environment Prototype we are developing for this week. We will be asking duke to block out the scene using Legos so we go into production with the First Scene. This was made using a free Sci-Fi-fi asset pack on Unity using basic Tools to create the environment. We will be also continuously trying to improve and re-Light the environment.

We also blocked out the positioning of our various characters in the environment with Aiden by using Play Doh as medium. This helped us in understanding the placement of events and the triggers that he wanted in the game.

We are now working towards shifting this environment into google cardboard via a VR Controller so that interaction and triggers can be added into the same.

THE PROCESS:

Aidan loved this level and gave a go ahead to the 3D model of AJ which appears in the center of the screen. We also asked Duke to collaborate with us in making the maze more interesting and playable. He had drawn out a few maze set pieces for us; which we incorporated into the second level of the game. We then asked Aidan to Play-test the level so that we can get his feedback about the Game Mechanics, look & feel of the level.

This was a total development week where we spent most of the time developing the third puzzle level and it’s interactions. We used a few plugins for the HTC VIVE which helped us design them easily like STEAM VR & NEWTON VR. You can a have look at our development model & Zon testing for the VIVE :

We built most of the third level as discussed before straight up into VIVE to avoid and code break and the interactions worked pretty smoothly. The game was still difficult to run using STEAM VR but worked perfectly if played directly on Unity.

Some time was also dedicated to developing the branding for the event at Playtech so that we could collect feedback and things to giveaway. We also set-up our final area for play testing with the VIVE as it requires a detailed setup for the sensors and Head-mount.

Both the kids loved the level and asked us to increase the airtime of the player so we could see the maze for a longer time; this was easily fixed by decreasing the gravity of our base object. We also discussed the possibility of using an HTC VIVE and the boys gave us an eccentric yes as they could now get away from the low poly environment and can have a more visually appealing environment.

Since we had two levels already built for the game we started discussing the third and the final level of the game. The idea was for the level to be a puzzle solving level where AJ unlocks a safe to access the location to his brother.

Based on all the feedback some specific problems that we will be addressing in the future are as follows :

Connecting all the three levels using a motion graphic animation can make the story arc and character motivation clearer to the user. We have to make the Second Level (Maze) a little bit easier to complete as we fell the difficulty is really high. One way of solving this problem would be a map popup if the level is not completed within 1:20 mins.

We have to get the lock & shape mechanic working on the third level so that the level becomes completely playable.We will also focus on making it a playable single package game which can be started through STEAM VR.

Additionally, it was lovely to meet the families of the Kids we have been working with so long and understanding the reason behind their motivations. We look forward to running this last lap at full sprint !!