Project start

So it begins! ...again.

The last time it began

So this project technically began about 4 years ago when I got my HTC Vive. I wanted to develop VR games for the new toy and was messing around with stereo rendering and figuring out stuff. Eventually I ended up trying to code some sort of portal. A bit of searching got me to this repository where there was an implementation of a mirror and I figured it wouldn't be that far off from a portal. Figured there were some issues there, tinkered around and got some portals working at last! So that was quite a bit of fun! Next step to settle on a proper setup for the game because all I had was "I want there to be portals... and stuff".

The downfall

So armed with enthusiasm I went ahead and did some research for the technology that I was going to use and things got a little bit darker the more I researched:

• VR was still quite experimental for developers
• Unity was kind of in the middle of switching core systems
• The art pipeline was a big issue for me at the time

So... the project got postponed indefinitely...

The resurgence

So a few things happened since the project got essentially abandoned:

• Unity now makes it easier to develop for VR with a lot of the stuff already builtin
• HDRP is out and it looks amazing
• Quixel Megascans is a thing that could help with art a whole lot
• Hardware is quite a bit more powerful which enables me to do more crazy stuff
• Visual Effect Graph looks like it could fit right in

With all the above and the fact that my creative juices are back to a decent level it seems like the time is right to restart this project.

Project warning

This game is supposed to encourage exploration based on the expectation that what you see in the game will behave like it does in reality. Then using the fact that we can do anything in VR have things behave in an unexpected way. That means that once you know how things will behave the gameplay value will be diminished. If everything goes well and the game gets released then by reading this blog you will essentially make it not worth playing. Just wanted to point this out so you know what you're getting yourself into. This warning basically applies from this point on.

That being said, if you plan on reading the blog then I hope you find stuff to learn from!

What to expect from the game

The current target of the game is to have puzzle rooms that are loosely related to each other. The main idea is that the game looks good enough to create some preconceptions (balloons float, holes in the wall are windows, etc.) and then go into a completely different direction with it. My own goal is to basically play around with interesting mechanics and then build a puzzle around them.

In order to get some sort of connection between the rooms there will be some base rules that apply globally:

• All rooms have a door that must be opened to consider the room complete
• There should be a standard style that makes it fairly easy to figure out the end objective (for example the traces drawn from buttons to the doors in Portal)
• There should probably be a central hub to access the rooms (ex: Talos Principle or Valve's The Lab)

The "puzzle rooms" concept is there to both allow enough flexibility (rooms don't have to be related in concepts or style or functionality) and to make things manageable (I don't need to create huge gameplay systems in order to have a working prototype)