Attack of the Space Boulders - Asteroids on the Rift (1.0!!)

[ScsiOverdrive]

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Download version 1.0:
Windows
OSX

Changes for 1.0:
- Targeting system overhaul
-- Target objects with the right mouse button or left bumper (xbox controller)
-- HUD will display velocity relative to targeted object
-- Added lead target reticle for easier aiming
- Updated difficulty curve, starts easier but quickly gets much harder
- Added explosion particle effects
- Locking mouse to game during gameplay

Changes for 0.9.5:
- Added high score board
- Support for standard monitors
- Small gameplay tweaks and balances

Attack of the Space Boulders is a game that is heavily inspired by the Atari classic Asteroids. The twist, and what brings AOTSB into its own, is the fully 3d gameplay designed with the Oculus Rift in mind. We really wanted to transport the player into the cockpit of a virtual space vessel. The feeling of space flight and navigation being of the utmost importance.

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[drash]

This is really awesome, and I'm seriously surprised to be the first to comment.

• This game REALLY channels the vector graphics of the old days and having that wrap all around you is pretty great.


• Love the way you show the current velocity vector, and how it becomes faint when you slow down to a halt.


• Wasn't sure what the % was in front of me until I died, then I figured that out. 🙂


• Collisions are terrifying, which is awesome, and is helped a lot by the sound it makes.


• Overall, sound is very immersive.


• I found that if I spam the cannon, I eventually "run out of ammo" and it has to recharge, but there doesn't seem to be any visual indicator of this. (Not saying there has to be, if this was your intention.)


• The wire-frame is done really well, with all the outlines being bold.


• It was a bit slow for me at startup (GTX680, tried 1920x1080 on Fantastic, so I backed down to 1920x1080 on Good), but once gameplay gets going I think it evens out.


• I'm guessing this is because the neverending field of asteroids hasn't had a chance to thin out a bit.


• Also, the mouse cursor is still there during the main menu and during gameplay, and since I'm using the mouse to move around it can be distracting.


• I LOVE THOSE UFO'S. Just the coolest thing ever the way they have colored lights on the inside (like a translucent glow-in-the-dark deep sea creature), including their weapon attacks. The use of color in a sea of white wire-frame asteroids really stands out.


• After I looked at the Input tab of the initial config window, I realized there's a "target" feature. I went back and played around with that a bit. I think I understand that it's meant to select something and make it red and therefore easier to track? I'm confused by the fact that it tends to highlight a bunch of different asteroids or UFO's all at once. (Guessing they share the same material, so that sounds like a tricky problem!) In any case, once I realized I can use my head to target, I was able to use it effectively, but when UFO's are red they don't look quite as cool anymore.

Thanks for sharing this, would love to see more.

[tresch]

Hi!

This came about when I was doing some brainstorming for another VR project I'd been wanting to do for awhile, and a friend of mine was talking to me about how he found someone local who was selling an old Asteroids arcade cabinet pretty cheap, and he wanted to buy it for his apartment.

I've had the chance recently to play on an original Asteroids machine with a brand new vector display on it. It's quite an experience! That singular point bullet is not just a dot. The vector display is BRIGHT. It's like a very limited High Dynamic Range display. That bullet is so bright it blooms out naturally both in your vision and on the phosphors of the display. It's really something special in today's raster world.

I immediately thought it would be awesome to try and mimic that feel in VR, and like a lot of other people have discovered, the challenges of zero-g no-friction space flight are really interesting when you look all around you!

I currently moved to Baltimore and haven't found a job yet, so I figured I'd use my time well and make a game. Asteroids seemed simple enough so I dove right in! Once I had something basic together I showed it to my cohort Ryan (scsioverdrive!) and he was at least as excited as I was, and together we whipped up what you see here. After getting things kicked off I got into a bit of a slump, and he really helped pull it together. Working with other programmers is hard sometimes, but it's definitely worth it.

It's... pretty basic. We didn't get everything we wanted into it at this point but we wanted to get it out there for people to play with before spending tons of time on it. Some notes on some of your points!

• Vector graphics: Thanks! This was actually my first foray into the concept of shaders! I knew I wanted to do it wireframe, but getting some of the effects that I wanted with the wireframe mode seemed impossible. Then I found out that shaders aren't so bad after all! One funny thing: How the asteroids are bright around the edges was a bit of a happy accident. I'm using SRCALPHA ONEMINUSSRCALPHA for the blending on those, but they're actually rendering in HDR with values higher than 1, so I get a lot of dynamic range on the blooming. The whole SRCALPHA ONEMINUSSRCALPHA thing only deals with values between 0 and 1, so as the fragments start producing light values over 1, the alpha actually inverts. This means that the lines in the middle of the asteroids start fading out. The edges have multiple lines next to each other, which add together and get bright. Or something. I thought about fixing it, but I found it was a really neat effect, if the values were tuned right.


• Sounds: Thanks! This is the area I was least pleased with, and is pretty incomplete. I found a free software version of an old ARP2600 synth and made the sounds with that, then used Unity's low pass filters and reverb to kinda give it a "I'm flying around in a tin can in space" feel. I guess it kinda worked! Still needs alien sounds, proximity alerts, etc


• performance: I didn't test this on anything other than my main PC which is reasonably powerful. Sorry if it's chugging a bit! Try the rift's native res at 1280x800. That's how I tested it!


• Targeting: This is actually just completely incomplete! Initially I wanted it so that when you targeted something, your Velocity indicator would change colors and instead of giving you absolute velocity relative to a fixed point in space, it would give you relative velocity to your target. This would make it a lot easier to line up shots. If people really love this and we do some more work on it, it'll definitely be in a future version

FUN FACT:
The looping is done by just copying the objects over and over again, and syncing their relative positions every frame. This was actually faster than having multiple cameras rendering over and over again at different angles. The large and medium asteroids "layer" three times, and the small ones twice. The bullets only repeat once.

The game stage is a cube, so for a single "layer" of looping, you have a 3x3x3 cube of duplicate stages. for two layers, a 5x5x5 cube, and for three, a 7x7x7 cube. So, for each asteroid in the game, there are 342 copies. Computers are fast! We could probably improve performance by using simpler shaders for asteroids further away, now that I think of it...

[OlivierJT]

Very cool demo, love it !
Bravo

[Hollo]

Just gave this a quick go, and agree with the guys above. This is a great demo! The implementation of that tunnel to keep track of where you're going is a stroke of genius, and the vector styling is damn cool. With a bit of polish I'd buy this if it were available for sure.

One thing I'd like to see is head-tracking being attached to the cannon. Although I'm fine with moving the ship for aiming in other demos (First Law springs to mind), I found myself getting a bit out of control moving the ship around for aiming in this (so many targets). Even having two cannons - a main machine cannon attached to head-tracking, and a slow reloading destroyer cannon attached to the ship.

Can't wait to see where you go with this!

[ScsiOverdrive]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

This game has been a blast to work on and I'm looking forward to implementing our upcoming features. Fleshing out the targeting system, a score board, and letting people with regular monitors play are at the top of our to do list right now.

I'm curious what kind of high scores people are getting. 🙂

[museumsteve]

Thumbs up for a great experience 🙂
I'd love to see the player get lured into it a little slower as once you're in the game there's lots of asteroids.

It's things like this that make me wish I could make this stuff 😞

[tresch]

"museumsteve" wrote:

I'd love to see the player get lured into it a little slower as once you're in the game there's lots of asteroids.

There are actually only 4 asteroids on the first level 🙂 It just LOOKS like a lot more, on account of the looping 🙂

[ScsiOverdrive]

New version!!

Changes for 0.9.5:
- Added high score board
- Support for standard monitors
- Small gameplay tweaks and balances

[LordJuanlo]

Hats off for this demo. You sir are a genius. Ah the memories... your adaptation is as brilliant as the original.

Control with mouse and keyboard is fine, however with the Xbox 360 controller I found it counter-intuitive. Left stick should move the ship left-right-up-down, and right stick should simply rotate it over its axis. It's very difficult to handle the way it is right now.