Project type: Game
Date: 04-09-2023
Status: Finished
Software used: Unreal Engine, Perforce
Language used: Blueprints
Role: Developer
Team size: 9 developers en 10 artists
About the project
For this project, I worked with a large team of interns during my internship at XR Lab. We created this VR game for the MediaLab at the Cinekid Festival. The game was exhibited there, and many children played it.
Among other things, I worked on the game’s flow, the option to restart the game, and the orientation settings.
In the game, children step into the shoes of a wizard. They can throw different combinations of ingredients into the pot to see various effects.
In this project I worked on the parts below.
Cinekid Festival
The game was on display at the MediaLab during the Cinekid Festival. I spent several days helping out at our VR installation, putting on the headsets, explaining the game, and restarting it for new players. It was really fun to see how excited the kids were.
Game Loop
Since the game couldn’t go on for too long—so that as many children as possible could have a chance to play—I created a timer. When the time is almost up, the pot starts to vibrate, smoke comes out, and the spoon shoots up, providing a visual cue that something is about to happen. Then, a large meteorite slowly falls from the sky. When the meteorite hits the ground, the game is over, and the screen fades quietly to black.
Level Reset
To make it easy to restart the game, I created a convenient tool. You can press both joysticks simultaneously for 3 seconds to reset the level. I set the controllers to vibrate when the reset is successful, so we don’t have to keep putting on the headset to check if it worked. This was very useful during the event.
Orientation Reset
To align the orientation of the VR headset with the physical pot in the VR setup, I used the same method as for the level reset. All you need to do is press one of the two joysticks for 3 seconds and point the VR headset toward the physical pot.
Doing this makes it look more fun to bystanders, because the children are throwing ingredients toward the physical pot.