Project TimeTravel - 1.3 Tesla's Lab [DK2]

[Anonymous]

Project TimeTravel
www.ProjectTimeTravel.com

* Update: 1.3 DK2

Step gently through the rift of time...
and explore 7 destinations in history.

Choose your destination year and become a witness to the past. Here you will rediscover the history of humanity, cross the time threshold, and enter Project TimeTravel.




The story begins in a garage where you have built a time machine. It is a hack-job machine of sorts, built from loose ends and spare parts, but it works well. Take your hand-held travel device for peace of mind, and step into the time machine to travel to a choice of several time periods. Each destination year has a story - perhaps you will explore a small open-world environment, or maybe you will be confined to detailed interior rooms where you must piece together the past. You will witness events, enticing you to spend a certain amount of time in the period, immersing yourself in the historical environment or, perhaps, running for your life. You may look out of a window, such as in the 1940's decorated flat and see the German aircraft in the night sky while you hear the voice of Churchill on the radio. As the bombs begin to fall, you gradually realize you are in London during the Blitz. Each time period is intended to teach a little more about history or literature.

Project TimeTravel is an educational virtual reality history and literature simulation. This experience was developed for use with the Oculus Rift virtual reality device, a PC, and an Xbox 360 controller (although a mouse and keyboard can be substituted).

* New to update 1.3
- new destination: 1899 (Tesla's Lab)
- new function on hand-held: alert light as player nears actionable object
- visual directions on title screen to explain hand-held functionality
- updated time machine design
- graphical updates and replacements to all destination years
- new layout to 1348 serf quarter
- rebuilt in Unity 4.5.2 for stability and optimization
- DK2 compatibility


The time machine requires a 5 minute recharge before it is able to return you to the present. Catastrophic events will usually occur within 3 minutes of first arriving in the time period. Waiting for the time machine to return gives you the opportunity to immerse yourself in a historical VR environment. Have a pleasant journey.













I am a high school literature teacher with a passion for virtual reality. Like most of us here, I dreamed about VR since childhood and I can’t wait for the day when virtual reality is brought into a classroom setting. I can easily imagine transporting my students into a virtual world of classic literature or an historical time period. For instance, my British Literature class reads several of Winston Churchill’s speeches and I believe a much more effective sense of the impending crisis of the Nazi invasion can be achieved in a virtual environment, available now with the Oculus Rift. Envision cowering in a virtual London flat in 1940, listening to Churchill on the radio as he attempts to comfort the city as the bombs of the Blitz are falling overhead. Or maybe it’s witnessing the sacking of an early medieval monastery by Viking invaders. What about encountering the eruption of Mount Vesuvius from a perspective inside a Roman villa? Perhaps you want to travel far back in time to view the creation of Paleolithic cave paintings. These are the experiences already available in this current release of Project TimeTravel.

Experienced animators and level designers needed for future development. We are now a small team of four working to bring this project to success. We are attempting to bring animated NPCs into the scenes, so if you have experience with animating human characters, we would love to hear from you. Currently, there are six destination years to experience. However, more time periods will be developed in future builds with a Unity Pro license.

Controls: updated for DK2
Movement: WASD (arrow keys)/Mouse, or right/left analog xbox controller
Reset Rift View: R key, or click right analog stick
Time Machine on/off: left ctrl, or A button
Select Destination Year: TAB, or L/R bumper
Lights or Flashlight on/off: left mouse, or X button
Hand-Held Device: F key, or Y button
Action: left shift, or B button

Direct Download Link for 1.3 Oculus Rift DK2 and DK1 edition:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7PUmahFc3FbSDd5UGFxUnVuTWs/view?usp=sharing

Direct Download Link for 1.3 non-VR edition
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7PUmahFc3FbdGtVV2U1cEdEMWc/view?usp=sharing

Official Website:
www.ProjectTimeTravel.com
2 editions: PC with Oculus Rift, or PC without VR.

[nn23]

Hi,

that sounds fantastic, already downloaded it.
I will try it later and give some feedback 🙂

[June]

Excellent idea! Will try it out with my son

[Anonymous]

Hello nn23 and June 🙂 I'm glad you like the idea and are able to try it out.

I'm a little worried that having a 5 minute wait for the return of the time machine and an 8 minute wait for the scripted events may be too long for some people. I purposely made the wait a long one, forcing my students to slow down their pace. Many young people are conditioned to the fast pace of console games, and prefer running and shooting to the slower pace that VR demands.

Not only does the slow pace reduce VR sickness, but also helps create and contributes to the presence of atmosphere. But since most here are VR veterans, maybe I should speed things up. One the other hand, others may like to chill out in one the environments just to relax, without all the excitement and trauma of the scripted catastrophic events.

[Anonymous]

Update: Project TimeTravel 1.1

- improved title screen
- darker cave
- historical wall paintings and mosaics in Pompeii
- more plant life in AD 793

download
www.ProjectTimeTravel.com

[Twitchmonkey]

Tried all of the current scenarios I think, so I suppose I'll give my thoughts on each of them individually, note that I do not currently have a Rift, so I can only comment on the game in its standard monitor version

~15000 BC: Not too much to say about this one, at least not at this point. It is constructed well, and I could see this being a bit foreboding with the rift on, people who are claustrophobic might have a bit of difficulty seeing this one through. The paintings were a nice touch and gave a good sense of the period.

~79 AD: Probably my favorite visually. The colors were very nice and the lighting was also well done. the scaling seemed a bit off. Either the character is quite large or the interiors are quite short, as I was barely clearing the ceilings. I've never been in an ancient roman structure, so if they really were constructed this way then well done, but if not you might want to address that. The Parthenon had a few collision issues and some of the elements of the villa or whatever the word for it is looked a bit wonky from the outside, but I imagine that's being worked on. The smoke and sound effects from Vesuvius were pretty good, though it could certainly use some lava and more of an initial punch from the eruption.

~790 AD: Good design here as well, really captured the bleakness of the period well and the sounds of the wind and fire once the monastery had been sacked were very effective. Of course it would have been more impactful if the vikings actually landed their ships on the beach and set the fires themselves, but in its current state it works well enough.

~1940 AD: Probably my favorite all-around experience. The interior really felt period-appropriate and the sound design was quite effective as well. One big problem I noticed was that the range of the radio just seemed too limited. I wanted to look out the window to see the planes and explore the house, but being anywhere other than right beside the radio made it difficult to clearly hear the address. Perhaps this is accurate to the technology of the time, but I think the experience would be better served by bumping the range up a bit. It would also benefit a lot by simply having more of what is already there. The amount of planes present didn't feel like an air raid or bombardment, but more like there just happened to be a few planes flying overhead. The explosions ans smoke effects that were there were effective, but again, it didn't feel like a large scale attack. I did particularly enjoy the sirens and the alarm lights, those brought me into the experience quite well.

Present Day: Overall well planned out, looks believable fr a garage, time travel device looks good. The painting travel doesn't really work too well though, walking into the machine while looking at Shakespeare has taken me to ancient Rome, and WW2 London.

Misc thoughts:

Having to start the game and activate the time machine works well on a controller, but right Ctrl is pretty awkward on a keyboard when my left hand is all the way on WASD and my right hand is on a mouse.

Overall I don't think there is enough content yet to justify the amount of time you're forced to stay in a a single time period, though that may change as more content is added. I'm not sure that allowing the player the leave before the catastrophic event occurs is the best plan either, as that's a big part of most of these scenarios and it kind of communicates that the experience is over when the time machine appears.

I'm not sure that making these events based around a timer is the best approach ultimately. People are going to go through the content in their own time, so inevitably you'll be left with people that feel rushed and people that get bored. I think a better approach is to add objectives that must be accomplished the move the scenario forward. This would also allow for more immersion and educational experiences. Even if it's a matter of doing simple things like having to make a cup of tea and turn on the radio before the bombardment can commence, it keeps the player engaged and can help add elements which bring the player more into the setting. Even better would be to add NPCs that need to be interacted with. This would also give you an opportunity to quiz your students. Put a child listening to the radio in the 1940s scenario that asks questions about who the Nazis are and what they're trying to accomplish and make the player have to answer those questions before they can proceed.

I would potentially like to help with this project, I have experience 3d modeling, UV mapping, and texturing in Blender, 3dsMax, Zbrush, and Photoshop, but unfortunately I've been struggling to import normal maps and collision into Unity and the Unity forums have been less than helpful in figuring these things out, so I'm not sure if I could be of much help.

Hope some of my input helps you out.

[karrtoon]

This is an excellent idea. I feel you could be on the verge of something amazing here. I kept getting a sense of how VR could be in the future while trying your demo, and that we just haven't "tapped" it or know yet.

I really tried to make myself believe I was in fact going "back in time", and I think it was a really good idea that you set the machine to return after 5 minutes or so. (I would say maybe add a countdown timer somewhere, I did not know at first then caught on later, I was basically just exploring.)

You could almost make this like that show "Quantum Leap" where you travel to a specific time period.. have to accomplish something in order to return to present day.

I really liked the slower pace and atmosphere.. It allowed me to enjoy some of the scenery and I get what you were trying to do here.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Twitchmonkey and karrtoon for your reviews. I definitely plan on improving and expanding upon this project.

Twitch, the standard non-rift version does have issues with clipping in a few places, but does not in the rift version, and I have now disabled jump. You weren't supposed to see outside the Pompeii house, which is why it looked so weird 😮 I have been tinkering with the radio volume for awhile, but can't seem to find a setting that's comfortable for both speakers and headphones. The Shakespeare picture is a teaser for my next time period - the picture of Alexander the Great is the one you are to face (it was a mosaic found at Pompeii). Hopefully, I can find someone better at coding to help me with the time machine to eliminate the wonky "entering from multiple angles" mechanic. I would like to remodel the time machine (right now it's just a Unity asset placeholder) and find a way to make one of the computer terminals pull up a menu of possible time periods, where the player selects a desired time and the time machine responds accordingly. As soon as I find an animator, I hope to add some of your great ideas. It would be interesting to interact with people/characters in the past. Also, good idea with adding more planes...that will be in my next update.

Karrtoon, thanks for your enthusiasm. With a little more work, I think some gameplay elements could be added to make it more challenging. Maybe there is a way to create puzzles to solve in each time period.

[taginda]

This sounds like the kind of experience I'd really enjoy in the Rift. Will download tonight and check it out.

[Anonymous]

Update 1.11

- violent tremors in the cave
- 2 Oculus Rift versions now available:
Exploration Edition - 5 minute wait for time machine, 8 minute wait for catastrophe.
Quick Disaster Edition - 1 minute wait for time machine, 3 minute wait for catastrophe.

Shorter wait times for events are now available in the Quick Disaster Edition. The longer Exploration Edition is still available for those who want to explore the scenery at a pace closer to real life.