93 - Steam Dev Days

[matt]

Here, I discuss what was talked about Steam Dev Days and my thoughts on the conference.

[gagaplex]

I would imagine you could use Oculus Rift for tons of things that don't require an actual virtual world. Imagine an RTS where, moving/looking in a different direction gives you a different view of the battlefield, like, say, in Supreme Commander with the map view versus the more up-close views and whatnot. Dunno, it'd of course not be making the most of the feature, but it could be employed for lots of things that are not full VR.

[matt]

I think the thing they were saying at Steam Dev Days is that it feels wrong and disorienting when it's not "full VR". You may be right. I have no experience with this myself, but that is the impression I got from the VR talks at Steam Dev Days.

[ranger_lennier]

When Matt was talking about keeping people from looking away from Neverending Nightmares with the Occulus Rift, I started to imagine a device holding players' eyes open Clockwork Orange style.

Matt asked who will be the John Carmack of VR. Since Carmack is at Occulus now, perhaps John Carmack will be the next John Carmack.

I think a lot of the observations about VR limiting game design is because there haven't been a lot of VR game designers yet. There are a lot of game genres that won't make sense for VR. And even among those that do, like FPS's, we'll want to modify them to more accurately represent human movement. But at the same time, I can't help but think that after a few years of clever designers working on it, we'll have brand new genres that can only work in VR. I don't really see VR replacing traditional gaming, but I hope to see some really inventive experiences in the next few years.

I'm not sure that VR makes sense for a 2D game like Neverending Nightmares, but I see it fitting well with Amnesia-style survival horror games. Amnesia involves exploring an atmospheric environment, solving puzzles, and keeping track of your surroundings to avoid monsters. All of that could translate really well to VR. And it would probably be scary as hell. I think I'd be more interested in seeing an original VR horror game from Matt than a VR version of Neverending Nightmares. And Virtuix Omni support would make it even better.

[Grabthehoopka]

Actually, I think the Oculus could work with a 2D game like Neverending Nightmares.

Earlier on in the production, when Matt made the dev diary in which he read The Dwindling Party (by Edward Gorey), I thought that it might be neat to make the game look like a pop-up book. Not necessarily like a gimmick to build the whole game around, but like for transitions between rooms and stuff, like you'd go through a door and the wall would fold down to reveal the next room, or something like that. I thought about it for a bit more, and thought that unless you did it juuuuuuust right, it would probably take away from the immersion of the game and just make it less scary overall. That, and they would probably have to rebuild the engine from scratch to put something like that in. So. I didn't suggest it.

But anyway, building off of that idea, I think you could make a game based around multiple planes in a 2D space, like a diorama. It could be 2D but you could still allow movement into the foreground and background.

And, crazy idea #2 that I came up with just now, since any time I look at an Oculus Rift, I'm always reminded of a viewmaster,

(you know, one of these: )

You could base the visual style of it on that, and make everything glowy like light is diffusing through all the images. And you know how you always have to turn your head around to find the brightest point to look at in a viewmaster? Well, you could make a gameplay mechanic out of that, I suppose. If everything was black & white, but there were different sources of light that were, like, different colors or something? And you had to look at them to do different...stuff? Puzzles?

I don't know. Anyways, I think you could totally make a 2D game with the Oculus Rift in mind.

[matt]

Yeah, I asked a Valve guy about the idea of a VR game where you can't look away because that was my dream. TOTAL immersion. He didn't seem as enthusiastic about the idea as I did. hahaha

It's quite possible John Carmack may be he John Carmack of VR. However, Palmer Luckey was trying to make the case that YOU could be it because they want people to develop games specifically to VR. It does seem like games have to be designed around the platform. That also seemed to be the point of the talk as well.

I was originally thinking about a pop up book style of 3D, but I think you are correct that it would make things less scary. In particular, it'd ruin the lighting effect because that is in screen space. There is no way to make it work in 3D.

My new idea is that you are looking at a book in 3D, but maybe we'd add some additional things flashing in your peripheral vision and maybe some other things where there is scary stuff in a 3D world around your head. Perhaps not the best idea, but it might be cool. Anyway, who knows if I'll ever get around to it, but it seems like it might be interesting and fun.

[ranger_lennier]

Does the Occulus do eye tracking? The idea of images that you can never quite make out flashing in your peripheral vision does sound pretty freaky.

[matt]

I don't think anything (including the Steam VR hardware) does eye tracking yet, but that is on the TODO list for VR developers. I haven't used the Occulus very much, but when I did, I mostly looked forward, so things on the edge would be in my peripheral vision. I suspect that is how most people use it.