Thread: ffdev roll call
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Old 06-10-2014, 04:59 PM   #79
trepid_jon
Ray Ray Johnson
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Hey blister, don't feel like you're interrupting anything. If you want to contribute in any way, let's do it.

VR is awesome and FF should support it, just like almost every game ever made once VR becomes more mainstream.

We can definitely create good VR support in FF, even with the movement being so extreme. VR would be a gimmick if not, and it's not a gimmick.

The main thing is remembering that VR is just a bonus. If someone doesn't have it, they should still be able to play and enjoy it however they want without losing quality of the game (gaming room / living room, mouse & keyboard / controller, etc). If you rely on gimmicks, like a bunch of stuff flying at the camera for cool VR effects, people without VR will be like "this is lame" so I think it's best to go the subtle route and avoid gimmicks, focus on improving the game with the aide of VR instead of trying to cram some shallow VR stuff in. The direction of the entire experience is important, VR or not.

What happened with me, messing around with the original oculus dev kit this past year, is just how "old school" it makes even current games feel. I don't really know how to explain it, but it's like VR exposes the flaws. Or maybe a better way to put it would be that VR allows you to fine tune things so well that it sorta naturally diminishes the flaws during development if you're always testing and iterating with VR as well as the normal stuff.

Things like scale, for example. With VR goggles, accurate/believable/consistent scale becomes more important (and it's already important, but like I said VR exposes the flaws). It's not just the scale of the world around you, it's also the scale of the player's character...you can feel like a big troll, a tiny fly, a regular person, etc. And in thirdperson games, VR makes you feel like more of a ghost following a character rather than a basic camera scripted to follow a character. VR kinda makes things feel more literal, as in like...firstperson is one character but thirdperson is a character watching another character but you're controlling both at the same time...aka 3rd person haha.

Overall, the immersion that VR enables has changed what used to be a simple camera and audio listener for the player's perspective / frame of reference. With VR, you start thinking about how to really make the player feel like they're there, and you can accurately test how it feels instead of relying on 2D monitors and whatnot. In doing so, it makes the non-VR modes even better too. If you always treat VR as an option, you're better off, like if you focus on making a great game with great VR support instead of an awesome VR experience for a so-so game. I think you need both, the flashy VR demos (Blockbuster Movie: 3D) and the more subtle stuff (kinda like Avatar)...but 3d movies aren't even that good of examples, because VR is nothing like going to see a 3d movie...and most people have to experience it to truly understand that.

With those things in mind, think about the TF classes and how the immersion of VR could enhance the variation of playing each character. A scout should feel different than the heavy, and not just a simple weapon swap and speed changes. The heavy could be taller, the eyes a little different, the movement in general could feel different instead of just a speed change. Then think about being a spy, disguising...how could that feel different, pretending to be another class, making the player know they're a spy pretending to be something else without even needing hud stuff. I don't think we'd worry about all that with the TFC remake, but maybe so...and then definitely in the FF remake.

And I haven't even gotten to how VR has improved / is improving other systems like audio...and then you add in finger/hand/arm/attachment support through tech like leap, kinect, move, etc...plus the haptic feedback stuff, and projections...things are getting kinda awesome to say the least

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