I worked in a team to make a VR Bowling game for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets. I did this in the Media, Marketing, and Communications Scholars program at The Ohio State University. This was my first time using the Unreal Engine but it was not the first time I made a game.
The Battle Grounds 3 is an ongoing long-term project that I have already worked on for more than 5 years. The game pits British soldiers and American patriots against each other in the American War of Independence.
To create this game with my team, I have worked on everything and the kitchen sink: AI programming, world design, 3D modeling, and website design.
I made this game in Unity for the Oculus Rift headset. Stack the blocks as high as you can without it falling down. The record is about 8 meters, marked by a red halo high above. The higher you go, the more the tower waves around, like a skyscraper. I made the models in blender, coded it in C#, interfacing directly with the OpenVR API for controller input, and assembled it all together.
The Bots in BG are a big mega system built from many smaller subsystems. All of the little parts work together harmoniously to make the computer players smart, skilled, and life-like. A list of these systems is below:
- Environment & Enemy Scanning
- Situational Strategy-Patterned Brains
- Randomized Bots Difficulties
- Waypoint Navigation
- Context-Sensitive, Team-Based, Responsive Vcomms
- Population Manager
In all of my experience using different programs, development suites, apps, applets, widgets, or however the hell else you want to label them I’ve had a lot of run-ins with poorly chosen words. I’ll share some of the principles I’ve learned, so you can use them to create an optimal user experience in whatever you’re making.
The archaic Jurassic Park: Trespasser was released in 1998. Hyped up for its promises of open world, interactive, dinosaur-infested adventures, the game ultimately flopped as home computers of the time simply couldn’t handle the intense processes the game required.
In the mod, I used tools created by the still-active TresCom community to build a single contained map the player could adventure on.
Carnivores: Desperation was an old mod I made for an even older game. The game Carnivores 2 was first released in 1998, and there is surprisingly still a strong community around the game almost 20 years later. In the game, players hunt for dinosaurs across expansive prehistoric landscapes.
For the mod, I replaced the original content with new dinosaurs, new maps, new sounds, new weapons, and more.
Many years after release, a Youtuber name Saurian Target made this popular review for my game:
I’ll keep this post short so that you won’t have to choose how much to read.
More choices is better, right? Not always. It’s important for a designer, businessperson, or creator to know how many choices they should offer to their customers. To learn about this, we’ll take a look at some examples. Continue reading “The Paradox of Choice”
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