Software Used: Substance painter and designer, Maya, Zbrush, Unreal
Hello, Worldy: Asymmetrical VR game (WIP)
Summary:
You woke up to yet another day of the world void of people. While you are going through your mundane routines, your mechanical friend, Worldy, suddenly malfunctions. This has never happened before and you don’t know what to do. Fighting against time, the two players have to complete multiple tasks to obtain the spare parts that were kept in different locations of your house(due to your untidiness) and fix your little robot friend.
Setting:
Post-apocalyptic setting with steampunk-esque architectural style.
Initially, I tried making the base functionality of an asymmetrical VR game with the mindset of it being a local "multiplayer" game. Only did I realise later that, this was the round-about way of doing an asymmetrical game.
Basically, I set up a game mode where the VR pawn and the third person character are spawned respectively.
It worked the way I wanted it to but whenever I tried running the game a second time in VR mode, Unreal crashes.
Later, I found out that there is this new feature called spectator screen, and its function was perfect for what I wanted to make.
However, this means that there is only one player pawn (VRpawn) to receive the movement input, and, therefore, movement input of the third person character (robot) has to be called from the VRpawn blueprint.
Instead of using a normal follow-camera for the third person character, I used SceneCaptureComponent2D and a render target. I made a few adjustments to the Render Target like the window size and target gamma and attach the SceneCaptureComponent to the third person character. The spectator screen mode is then set within the third person character's blueprint. I then set up the camera movement accordingly with the movement of the mouse with Axis value using lerp and rotator.
In terms of the art direction, I looked at a lot of steampunk references. I want to portray the main character as a handy man/bricoleur. kind of character, and I think steampunk would really help sell that idea. I want the overall colour palette to be green white and gold since green gives off a warm and welcoming feeling. I want the player to feel at home while in the game.
His shelter used to be an abandoned botanical lab, but he renovated it to fit his lifestyle. With that idea in mind I started sketching out some concept
This is a very rough sketch because I didn't have time to go in and populate the scene with smaller objects like flasks or wood panels on the floor. I drew this with the idea of getting the layout down, and I can always add smaller detail as I progress along.
Since our main character is a handyman, incorporating assets like workshop tables and welding tables that are made from lab tables would help reinforce his personaity.
I also came up with different iterations for the little robot character. I want to make the robot very cute and friendly.
I ended up choosing the most humanoid-looking one with a cute cap.
I started working on one of the main texture in Substance Designer which is the floor tile. It's still a work in progress but it's getting there!
This is still a work in progress, so more is yet to come :D