Dream Desk Fighter
Dream Desk Fighter was the first game I’ve made entirely independently. This was a school project that I had two weeks to work on. It was originally supposed to be an assignment that was about making a simple 360 video, but I was given an optional challenge, since I was much farther ahead of the VR class curriculum, to create a VR game that incorporated a 3D video.
Roles
- VR Game Designer
- VR Game Developer
Design Challenge
Implementing 360 video into game
One particular challenge I had was that I needed to implement a 360 video into my game. Even though I could make a game, I still had to include a 360 video in the project. As I was looking for good 360 videos to use, one particularly stood out to me. It was one that was in space and was a sea of stars. It was moving in a way that made it feel like you were moving through space. This inspired the main dream section of the game. I also used a different 360 video that was a time lapse of midday to sunset. I used this to give a sense of time if you looked outside the window.
Design Challenge
Innovative game play loop
Another challenge was to find a game play loop or mechanic that was not overused in VR. I did not want to use an overused concept, so I tried thinking outside the box. What I came up with took aspects of mechanics that are found in the “Typing of the Dead” arcade game. Normally in VR, typing is done with a flat panel and the keys are close together. This can make it somewhat difficult to type with hand tracking and speed. So I tried to figure out a different way that would have that same arcade typing fun.
Design Challenge
Interactive keyboard design for game play
That perfectly leads into the next challenge. The keyboard had to be carefully designed since it was the core interaction point. Looking at the design of the standard keyboard, many of the keys were close together and hard to use with hand tracking. So what I did was i made 3D interactable buttons and spaced them out enough so that you would not be able to accidentally press the wrong button.