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[APK download] Crashland Reborn

sfaok
Protege
Hi my name is Llŷr. In this thread I'm going to document the development of my VR gamejam entry.



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ChallengePost : http://vrjam.challengepost.com/submissi ... and-reborn
Download : Crashland Reborn APK
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In Crashland Reborn, you will find yourself marooned on a hostile alien planet. Armed with only a smart pistol and motion scanner, your will need to fend off waves of increasingly ferocious aliens and survive until rescue arrives.

While the odds are stacked against you, killing aliens yields credits which can be spent on various power-ups for your gun. These will (probably) come in two forms:

• Firing modes (single shot, three round burst, full auto, rockets).
• Upgrades – stackable stat boosts (damage, reload, accuracy, rate of fire, capacity).

Power-ups will be purchased via a HUD that appears when you tap the Gear VR’s touchpad. The HUD will also display information such as credits and time left.

The power-ups will be delivered in the most metal way imaginable - via mortars launched from orbit! These will land in your general vicinity to encourage movement.

The game’s theme and visuals will be a pastiche of films such as Aliens, Predator, Robocop, Dredd and Starship Troopers. Very blocky, 1980’s design with Paul Verhoeven levels of blood squibs.


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There are four salient aspects to my entry:

1. The aim is to develop a fast and action packed FPS that adheres to VR best practices. Of paramount importance is how comfortable the game is to control. All rotational movement will come from the player’s own body, balanced around using a swivel chair. There will be no analogue rotation. I will attempt to create an intuitive control scheme that combines head tracking with decoupled aiming.

2. The game will be wholly designed around a short 10-15 minute experience, which I believe is the perfect length for mobile VR.

3. The gameplay is designed to invoke a constant arms race between the player and the attacking aliens. It will be completely up to the player how they upgrade their pistol, yielding many permutations, strategies and meta gameplay for the community to discover.

4. The aliens will hopefully be driven by a procedural animation system. This means that every encounter will be unique and should result in a very visceral minute-to-minute experience.

I'll leave you with a work in progress render of the alien species you will face in Crashland Reborn, 6 legged terrors I'm calling Frog Demons!



Note: As mentioned I released a DK1 demo called Crashland in Summer 2013 and I will be reusing the name, premise and some assets from that demo here. However I want to stress that the experience I am developing for this gamejam is completely new and will be designed and coded entirely from scratch for the competition.
Developer of Ocean Rift. Follow me on Twitter @sfaok
72 REPLIES 72

HomerS66
Expert Protege
That Spidersnake err i mean Frog Demon looks awesome.

cybereality
Grand Champion
Good stuff.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

mallmagician
Expert Protege
"HomerS66" wrote:
That Spidersnake err i mean Frog Demon looks awesome.

Where are up votes when you need them? Here.... this is virtual gold....

I remember playing crash land with my friend Elie in the dk1 days with my hydras. It was the best thing ever. I'm intrigued if you can manage some new mechanics that are as groundbreaking as those early days rather than being a gaze shooter.

At the least, I'd love a decoupled aiming mode, as it just seems too easy to look and shoot.

Best of luck. And thanks for the original.

cybereality
Grand Champion
We're actually working on a new forum that will have "likes" and other modern features. Should be fun.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

Jose
Heroic Explorer
Crashland was one of my favorite games for the DK1. It was hilarious the first time I accidentally timed a grenade so it exploded as the monster stepped over it, sending its corpse flying straight into the air while I emptied the pistol's magazine into it. 😮 :shock: :lol:

It seems like your sequel/reboot might be more arcade-y. It might be cool if your game recognized whenever a "strange" kill happened. Maybe a power-up reward can be given whenever a stylish or creative kill happens? Just a random unsolicited idea, feel free to ignore it.

Thanks for making Crashland for DK1.

sfaok
Protege
Thanks for the feedback!

"HomerS66" wrote:
Spidersnake

Awesome! You're actually pretty close. I am toying with the idea of giving them serpentine tongues - left a little gap for it as you can see. It would mean an extra draw call for each creature though...The original design also had 8 legs, but I made it six to simplify the ragdoll physics calculations.

"mallmagician" wrote:
I remember playing crash land with my friend Elie in the dk1 days with my hydras. It was the best thing ever. I'm intrigued if you can manage some new mechanics that are as groundbreaking as those early days rather than being a gaze shooter.

It's going to be tough without the wow factor and presence given by motion control but I think the fact we have no wires is a huge benefit if you design around it. It's the reason I'm attempting this idea and I'm hopeful I can capture some of the same experience.

"Jose" wrote:
It seems like your sequel/reboot might be more arcade-y. It might be cool if your game recognized whenever a "strange" kill happened. Maybe a power-up reward can be given whenever a stylish or creative kill happens? Just a random unsolicited idea, feel free to ignore it.

Yes that's exactly what I'm aiming for! I can't be sure until I see if I can run ragdoll physics on the hardware, how the controls feel etc. but one mechanic I want to try is double the credits if you execute an airborne alien.
Developer of Ocean Rift. Follow me on Twitter @sfaok

sfaok
Protege
Here's a video that explains how aiming works at the moment. I'm attempting to combine decoupled light-gun like aiming with head tracking. It's based around either sitting in a swivel chair or standing, so it's difficult to show how accurate it is on a DK2 but I'm pretty happy with how responsive it is.


Developer of Ocean Rift. Follow me on Twitter @sfaok

nilstastic
Explorer
Looks awesome! 😃

Question: Are you only testing on the DK2, and if yes - how do you approach the issue of making it work well with the gear vr? I've yet to receive my note/gearvr so I'm kind of worried that keeping a low poly and drawcall count simly wont be enough. 😃

sfaok
Protege
"nilstastic" wrote:
Looks awesome! 😃

Question: Are you only testing on the DK2, and if yes - how do you approach the issue of making it work well with the gear vr? I've yet to receive my note/gearvr so I'm kind of worried that keeping a low poly and drawcall count simly wont be enough. 😃

I find it much easier to develop and record footage on the PC, hence the DK2 95% of the time. I developed Ocean Rift as a launch title for Gear VR so I've got a pretty good idea about the limits of the hardware by now. I still check every now and again that it still runs ok on the Note 4 though! Generally I've found if you keep draw calls < 100 and poly counts around ~100,000 the Note 4 can handle quite a lot, especially if you limit yourself to a single directional light, mobile shaders, baked lighting etc. Follow the Oculus Mobile best practices basically.
Developer of Ocean Rift. Follow me on Twitter @sfaok