Ye Olde Virtual Reality Post Mortem
Ye Olde Virtual Reality is a virtual reality experience with three mini-games that the player can try out. The experience is set in a Medieval tavern with a fantasy atmosphere. There is a tavern bartender, wizard as well as some mini Cthulhu's to give a bit of a comedic twist to the experience. The player gets to teleport around the tavern, pick up objects and play the three mini-games which are; a spinning wheel darts game, a catapult beer pong game as well as a arena sword fighting game.
There were a lot of members on this team and each contributed in their own way.
The team leaders and managers for this game were;
Hayden: Overall team leader, in charge of making sure the game turns out well, that everyone is doing their work and helping around when needed.
Justina: I ended up being the head of the art department. I was in charge of making sure art assets get completed, have a cohesive aesthetic and all of the textures are completed. I was also in charge of designing the HUB and leading the hub team to create it.
Aeisha: Aeisha was the team leader for the spinning wheel darts game. She also worked along with the art team to get models and textures completed.
Shien: Shien was the team leader for the arena sword fighting game. He was the main programmer for the AI for the swords game as well as a modeler, getting the hands and enemy models and animations completed.
Shawn: Shawn was the team leader for the catapult beer pong game. He mainly took a manager role for this project as well as creating several 3D assets.
The other team members were;
Eric: Eric worked mainly as a member of the HUB team as well as on the arena sword game. Eric made 3D models and textures, and worked on getting the HUB set up.
Roman: Roman worked on the character controller, allowing for the ability to pick up and move items as well as getting the scripting and mechanics completed for the spinning wheel darts game.
Phil: Phil worked on the HUB team as well as the catapult team. Phil made the wizard 3D model as well as the animations for him. Phil also completed work on the catapults team.
Matt: Matt made 3D models as well as working on the scripting of the catapults beer pong game.
Jermaine: Jermaine worked on getting several of the models created for the catapults game as well as for decoration in the tavern.
Brandan: Brandan worked on getting the score scripts done for the swords game and the darts game and implementing them onto the scoreboards. He also made several weapon models.
Dylan: Dylan was an audio student who came to help us by producing many of the audio assets for the tavern and the mini-games.
For this project, unlike our other projects, people mainly worked on the aspects that they were most comfortable and had experience in. Some aspects of the project were completed by people we were collaborating with, for example the audio. However everyone also had to do some things they had little knowledge in; 3D modelling, rigging and animating.
The programs and utilities we used to create this project were;
-Unity
-HTC Vive
-Autodesk Maya 2017
-Blender
-Adobe Photoshop
Most people ended up using Maya in order to create their 3D models and animations as it was what was taught to us during our tutorials however there were several individuals who knew how to use Blender much more effectively than Maya and so they used that. They would then export as FBX files so that myself and Aeisha could texture them in Maya. We used Unity for the game engine as it is the game engine that we are all versed in pretty well, there would't have been any individuals that wouldn't know what they were doing in the program. Photoshop was used to create the textures for most of the 3D assets in the game.
For the first week of the project we mainly focused on getting our ideas down and figuring out how these games were going to play and how to put them in together, as well as figuring out all of the leaders and teams that we would be working in. We all decided that Hayden should be the overall leader as he has had the most experience with leading. All of the mini-game leaders elected themselves to be leaders and I was put in charge of the art and HUB team as I had the most art and design experience, as Aeisha was already also a leader for one of the mini-games. Around the end of the first week and until the end of the second week we mostly worked on getting the documentation down. After the documentation, for a solid week everyone worked on their models and getting the animations down so that we could then work on the scripting. On the fourth week and fifth week everyone worked on their respective work; either scripting or working on art assets. Each week on Thursday we ended up having a team leader meeting from 12-2 and then everyone else came for a meeting between 2-4. In these meetings we would discuss the goals for the week, what has been done and what needs to be done.
One of the aspects I really enjoyed in the project was the tavern designing and putting together. Eric, Phil and I came up with several different designs, which I ended up quickly recreating in a 3D space using MagicaVoxel so that we could figure out the space in 3D. We then were able to put it together and create a pretty interesting play space for the game that players will be able to traverse and experience, picking up items and throwing objects around the tavern.
Another thing I really felt went well was the character controller that Roman made for the virtual reality experience. There were numerous troubles along the way with it however he made it easy for us to all be able to use in terms of scripting it. We were able to pick up items and move them around, to throw the items around and interact with the world around them.
There were several issues that went down with working on a project with so many people. At times there was a lack of communication between members, some just going off to do their own thing without talking to the respective management heads. Some times individuals would push updates that would end up causing issues for the rest of the project. At one point near the very end of our time working on the project before the deadline an individual, we still don't know who did it or what they did to cause it, pushed an update that messed with the character controller, making it so that the teleportation wouldn't work. So in that case we had to revert the project to the last working state. One of the other main issues is that the catapult game doesn't really work. We had to change it so that the player can just pick up the ball and throw it themselves, until the catapult team can make the game function properly like it should be.
Currently I know some of the team, myself included would like to work on this game a bit further, see what we can improve in terms of visual aspects as well as mechanics wise. It was an interesting experience that I had with the VR and would gladly work more with it, however with much more time to work on it, as it is quite time consuming. This project also gave us the experience and knowledge of what it's like to work in large groups, which can be good but also pretty hectic and chaotic. It was a fun experience overall though.
Normally here I'd discuss what each member in the team did well and what they could work on however there's so many team members and I didn't exactly get a chance to see 100% of what everyone was doing. However I can discuss some things that went well and things that need work on as a team rather than just individuals. One thing for example that we did well was getting all of the teams sorted and our ideas written down and concepts completed. I feel like we, on paper, fleshed out a pretty interesting game and virtual reality experience. However I do feel like we still need to work on getting our communication and time management down. I feel like we started doing actual proper work on this project far later then we should have. Some individuals had a bit of a tough time with communication as well, in terms of what needed to be done and what was being expected of them. Would of liked to have also seen some more of the individuals attending the meetings as those who had trouble with communication were the ones not attending the team meetings. Would of also liked to have seen some individuals making an effort to actually come on time, I'm a stickler for coming in on time. It can be so important and can put the rest of the team behind.
However overall I'm pretty happy with what we managed to create with such a team. It was a fun working experience and hope to have many more like this.
