Successes

Our success lies in the game world and environment. We have a really strong and cohesive environment where the game exists. Our team built a world that feels alive; there’s movement in the world, with flames on torches. Enemies move in the world so there’s an extra depth rather than feeling flat. We designed the world to have a medieval look; every texture and asset support that aesthetic. In addition, we have movement animations for our enemies so they don’t look and feel flat. 

Although our game doesn’t have multiple levels, our success also lies in the game’s simplicity. It’s a first-person VR shooter. The variation of enemies and waves that they arrive in allow for progression, without overcomplicating the game. In addition, we can dramatically reduce motion-sickness and make it easier for sensitive users to play the game. 

Struggles

As previously mentioned, our team really struggled with debugging the game. For much of the development timeline, we were plagued with bugs and difficult coding issues that prevented us from using the full potential of our team’s creativity and the game itself. As a result, we had to reduce our scope. This means it’s a simple game, but can be too simple and redundant. 

The progression of the game works, but isn’t as advanced as we would like it to be. Additionally, because we struggled with the Oculus controls, we did not have the time and resources to implement wider weapon choices. As of now, we only have one gun. We would have liked to add more weapons, giving the player more choice on how they can play the game.

Our struggles, and inexperience, with VR from the beginning defined how our game would be. There were instances in which we felt defeated by the bugs or the inability to have a smooth VR playtest. We spent a lot of time fixing so unfortunately our scope was drastically reduced to fit our situation. Nevertheless, we wanted to present a working and polished game that had less content than presenting an unfinished game filled with bugs.

Lessons Learned

Scope was a big lesson that we all learned. We learned the hard way, that we should have established a clear scope from the beginning. In some ways, we overscoped our project; we wanted more and more, but couldn’t ever get there because of the bugs. As a result, we’ve learned to better work with the given scope and be flexible. Our ability to be flexible worked in our favor, as we navigated situations we thought we wouldn’t encounter.

Next Steps

Our next step is to improve game progression and add more content to the game itself. As previously mentioned, the game could be improved by giving the player more choice in how they play the game. This could be through weapon choices, the ability to move around the world, repairing the tower, and so forth. These would impact the game positively by providing more playability.

In addition to content, we would like to polish existing assets and content. Primarily, we would want to polish death and hurt animations so that they trigger correctly. Furthermore, sound and other environmental assets can be improved to provide a more immersive experience.