Eye of the Temple is among the uncommon VR video games that focuses on not simply on pure room-scale motion, however dynamic room-scale motion. The result’s a uniquely immersive expertise that required some intelligent design behind the scenes to make all of it work. This visitor article by developer Rune Skovbo Johansen explains the strategy.
Visitor Article by Rune Skovbo Johansen
Rune Skovbo Johansen is a Danish unbiased sport developer primarily based in Turku, Finland. His work spans video games and different interactive experiences, centered on tech, surprise, and exploration. After constructive reception of the 2016 VR sport jam sport Chrysalis Pyramid, he began engaged on a extra formidable non secular successor, Eye of the Temple, and on the finish of 2020 he stop his day job to pursue indie sport improvement full-time.
In Eye of the Temple, you progress by means of an enormous atmosphere, not by teleportation or synthetic locomotion, however through the use of your individual toes. It makes distinctive use of room-scale VR to ship an expertise of navigating an expansive area.
In Eye of the Temple you progress round massive environments utilizing your individual toes
However how does it work behind the scenes? To mark the upcoming launch of Eye of the Temple on Quest 2, I wished to take the time to elucidate these elements of the sport’s design that I’ve by no means absolutely gone into element with earlier than. On this article we’ll go over quite a lot of the methods the sport makes use of to make all of it work. Let’s begin with the fundamentals of holding the participant within the play space
Conserving the Participant within the Play Space
Say you should go from one tall pillar within the sport to a different by way of a transferring platform. You step ahead onto the platform, the platform strikes, and then you definately step ahead onto the subsequent pillar. However now you’re outdoors your bodily play space.
Shifting platforms are positioned in a method to preserve gamers contained in the play space
If we as an alternative place the transferring platform to the aspect, it goes like this: You sidestep onto the platform, it strikes, and also you sidestep onto the subsequent pillar. Because you took a step proper, after which left, you’re again the place you began within the middle of the play space. So the sport’s methods are all about how the platforms are positioned relative to one another.
Now, to get a greater sense for it, let’s have a look at some combined actuality footage (courtesy of Naysy) the place a grid representing the play space is overlaid on high.
Blended actuality footage with a grid overlaid on high which represents the play space
Conserving an Overview within the Degree Design
Now that we’ve seen how the trick works, let’s check out how I preserve observe of all of it when doing the extent design for the sport. First issues first – I made this sample, which represents the participant’s total play space – or the a part of it the sport takes benefit of anyway:
A sample representing the bodily play space
As you may see, there’s a thick white border alongside the sting, and a thick circle within the middle.
Each platform within the sport has a delegated spot within the play space and a sample overlay that reveals what that spot is. For platforms which might be a single tile massive, it’s usually one among 9 positions. The overlay makes it simple to see if a given platform is positioned within the middle of the play space, or at an edge or nook.
The play space sample overlaid on every platform and its finish positions make it simple to see if they’re lined up appropriately within the degree design
Further overlays present a ghostly model of the sample at each the beginning and finish positions of a transferring platform. That is the true trick of holding observe of how the platforms join collectively, as a result of these ghostly overlays on the finish positions make it trivial to see if the platforms are lined up appropriately within the degree design once they contact one another. If the adjoining ghostly patterns are steady like puzzle items that match collectively, then the platforms work appropriately collectively.
It nonetheless took a number of ingenuity to work out learn how to place all of the platforms so that they each match appropriately collectively and likewise take the participant the place they should go within the digital world, however now you understand how I stored the complexity of it manageable.
Getting the Participant’s Cooperation
The entire premise of getting all over the world by way of these transferring platforms is predicated on an understanding that the participant ought to step from one platform to a different once they’re lined up, and never at different occasions. Essentially the most primary approach the sport establishes that is by simply telling it outright to the participant in security directions displayed previous to beginning the sport.
One of many security directions proven earlier than the sport begins
This directions is proven for 2 causes:
One is security. You need to keep away from leaping over gaps, in any other case you’d threat leaping proper out of your play space and right into a wall, for instance.
The opposite is that the sport’s system of traversal solely works appropriately when stepping from one platform to a different once they line up. This isn’t as important – I’ll get again to later what occurs if stepping onto a platform that’s misaligned – but it surely nonetheless gives the very best play expertise.
Other than the express directions, the sport additionally employs extra refined methods to assist make sure the participant solely steps over when blocks are appropriately aligned. Contemplate the next instance of a bigger 2 x 2 tile static platform the participant can step onto. A transferring platform arrives from the aspect in a approach that will enable the participant to step off nicely earlier than the platform has stopped transferring, however that will break the sport’s traversal logic.
On this room, ‘foot fences’ are used to discourage the participant from stepping from one platform to a different when they don’t seem to be appropriately aligned
To keep away from this, “foot fences” had been positioned to discourage the participant from stepping over onto the static platform (or away from it) at incorrect positions. The fences are purely visible and don’t technically forestall something. The participant can nonetheless step over them if they fight, or proper by means of them for that matter. Nevertheless, psychologically it appears like much less effort to not step over or by means of a fence and as an alternative step onto the static platform the place there’s a spot within the fence. On this approach, a purely non-technical answer is used as a part of the sport’s arsenal of methods.