[WIP] Oculus Maximus

[8bit]

The Ultimate Gladiator Experience
Grab your weapons, enter the coliseum, and battle to the death.

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Demo is available through our release thread
viewtopic.php?f=51&t=3943
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It’s simple but not easy
In this game you will fight other gladiators with a sword and shield in hand to hand combat in the coliseum.
The “not easy” part of this project will be the physics. We want all sword and shield play to be driven by physics to get realistic swings, clangs, hits and parries. We also want realistic, nicely polished assets so this will be a challenge for our artist.

Features planned for this demo
The jam is quite limited in time so we have limited our feature scope to just a few things.
- Physics based sword swings and blocks
- AI characters that respond properly to physics from attacks
- Blood particles and decals
- Limb severing
- AI opponents with different weapons


Progress Screenshots
Here are some shots of what we have thus far.

Gladiator Model 1st Pass
He is pretty awesome but James is almost done with his second version which is even awesomer.



1st Person View with Sword and Shield
The sword and shield are not perfectly lined up but it is still fun to swing your arms around and look at yourself in the Oculus.



Don’t Lose Your Head!
It’s just funny to look at our 1st person model from an outside camera. We have to cut off the head to put the camera there during gameplay. Please excuse all of our debug drawing (the colored lines) that’s just for development and will not be there when we are done.



Attack!
Another cool screenshot of our gladiator raising his hand to make a strike.



Meet the team
We are three seasoned game developers who are totally psyched about the opportunities that virtual reality has brought to the gaming world. We would love to bring gaming to the next level using this new medium that Palmer, Carmack and many other have brought us. Below is a quick description of each member on our team.

Rick (8bit) – Programmer handling various tasks like gameplay, AI, asset handling and other project management things
Eugene (Eelkin2000) – Lead Programmer handling physics, graphics, characters and lots of other hard stuff
James (Nymb) – Lead Artist creating the gladiators, weapons, coliseum and almost any other content we need. James is also head of design for campaign mode (that will be post vrjam, of course).

As we make progress, we will keep y’all posted. We hope you are as excited about the game as we are.

Good luck Jammers!

[8bit]

@Tgaud
The concern you have of separating your virtual arm from your real arm is quite valid and was one of our own peek concerns when designing this game.

The options we considered to deal with this were:
1. Show a ghost image of your real life arm whenever you experience physics feedback.
2. Use some type of haptics that would restrict your arm movement. This is obviously not viable.
3. Never allow separation of physical arm and virtual arm by design. This is what you have proposed.

After much discussion we went with option 1.
Amazingly though we are finding that the ghost image is not necessary. Your brain seems to be happy with adjusting to the physical feedback you see on screen.
We are really happy with the way the arm responds on impacts.
We have also had a dozen or so other people try it and they have all really enjoyed interacting with the other guy too.
When we release the demo you can try it out and tell us how you like it.
Thanks for the feedback.

[Tgaud]

Yeah i have no doubt that its "cool" (its oculus rift and Hydra... after all)
But this actually could be "awesome".

You should add a weapon like I told you in your list, and test with it, just to compare.
Nothing is like the experience.

[eelkin2000]

@Tgaud

Actually a flail was our first weapon we tested in game. After experimentation and comparisons we decided to go with a sword and shield approach. The brain is an amazing thing. I'm very surprised my self at how natural the physical feedback seems.

[Tgaud]

And not shield + soft sword ?
Well It would be interesting to test anyway 🙂

[drash]

That stadium looks epic! Come to think of it, I've never stood on the in-field of such a stadium and maybe now I'll get to. 🙂

Looking forward to this one (for more than just the stadium obviously). 🙂

[MikeFesta]

That fighting test video is impressive. I like how the characters naturally grapple and interact with each other. Do you have pre-defined poses that the models move into when certain conditions are met? There was very little clipping, are you using physics and collision detection?

[totallymichael]

This looks so awesome. After watching the "fighting" video it does make me think that positional tracking in the Rift would make this infinitely better. Being able to naturally duck and dodge incoming blows would be amazing. I'm very excited to try this out though. I've been waiting for a fighting/sword game that uses the Hydra.

[eelkin2000]

@MikeFesta

Thanks Mike. The demo is pretty much a physics sandbox. The player is currently entirely driven by hydra. The AI is controlled through skeletal animations. Both player and AI have another layer of IK and physics. It's very exciting to see how unique each battle and player/AI interaction is when played by different people.

We will update you guys with more progress soon. Looking forward to more suggestions.

[8bit]

@totallyMichael
Position tracking of the head would add a lot to the experience. Most people end up instinctually pulling back and dodging side to side when they tried our game. I still find myself doing the same.
Another advantage we would gain is for keeping the hydra hands in correct location relative to player. We have found a technique to handle this but head position tracking would almost completely solve the problem.

Sixense has announced a wireless hydra which is supposed to come with extra position sensors. If we get a hold of one these would be one of the first things we would try. We have signed up for devkits and are impatiently waiting. 🙂

[cybereality]

This is looking really awesome.