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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

drash
Heroic Explorer
Nice work, sfaok. 🙂 I like how the environment is quite a bit larger than just the clearing in front of the crashed ship. Teleporting is really fun (visually and mechanically), and definitely can be used strategically. High watermark to beat!
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com

sfaok
Protege
^^^ thanks drash + keb33509. Very high praise, glad you like it! 😄

Here are some Crashland Reborn tips:

    * Use Hellfire rockets to launch aliens into the air. Killing them when airborne gives double credits.

    * Damage upgrades boost your pistol damage, rocket damage and explosion force.

    * Accuracy and damage upgrades applied to the burst fire mode turns it into a beast.

    * Reload upgrades boosts reload time on pistol and rockets.

    * Capacity upgrades speed up teleporter charge rate. A few of these and you become a wizard.

    * Every bullet slows the aliens down equally. Rapid fire mode is good for crowd control.

    * You want to upgrade as fast as you can, the aliens won't relent. Always keep an eye out for how many credits you have.

    * Aliens spawn as fast as you kill them. This is an advantage at the start if you know what you're doing, as you can farm them for credits.

    * Once you have upgraded a few times (e.g. burst-fire wizard), teleport to the aliens and kill them. More spawns mean more credits!

    * By mid-game you should only really be glancing at your motion scanner to inform strategy.

    * Credits are also your score, so at some point you should stop upgrading and start racking up those double points!
Developer of Ocean Rift. Follow me on Twitter @sfaok

sfaok
Protege
Here's a playthrough of the final build for the VRJam!




Amazing experience these last four weeks - same again next year?! :lol:
Developer of Ocean Rift. Follow me on Twitter @sfaok

RazTOO
Honored Guest
Now this game is ULTRA smooth !!! And my first ever game on GearVR, where I got a scare jump 😛 These pesky creatures are tricky later on 😛
My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiusRc ... uNEoUS9g4A DracoDux - VRInput (under Development) https://youtu.be/GRRADXH5yzQ Dungeon Escape https://youtu.be/-AvUolM8Uxc

sfaok
Protege
Here's a DK2 build for those of you without a bluetooth controller!

http://llyrie.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/crashland-reborn-for-oculus-rift-dk2.html
Developer of Ocean Rift. Follow me on Twitter @sfaok

mrscratch
Honored Guest
I've put a good bit of playtime on this now and I must say there are two issues I have with some of the games mechanics.

The first one is the way you aim your gun. While it is an interesting concept of controlling your arms with your arms and your head with your head on the GEAR platform the headset itself does something that consoles could only dream of. It gives you a level of precision that rivals a mouse. Not being able to aim with my head is a bit disappointing because I feel I occasionally struggle getting my analog stick to replicate what I feel my virtual arm should be doing which unimmerses me from the game due to hand eye coordination desyncing from visual input. It causes me to think about the flaws of a controller which consistently reminds me that I'm playing a game. Basically when you hear the sound of the aliens scattering around and your motion trackers going off you get sucked into crashlands world and when the aliens starts running sideways it feels like your arm is struggling to keep up, and when you bump up the sensitivity sometimes you overshoot your intended target. It just sucks me back out of the world because I know there is a high level of precision that isn't being utilized. It would be nice if there was a toggle switch that you could hold to make your player's arm follow your head. It would also be alot more immersive if the game used a laser pointer as opposed to the traditional HUD crosshair.

The second one is the body of your player, It feels like the head is sucked into the chest. When you stand straight up and look down directly at the ground you tend to bend your body a bit so that your shoulders are in your peripheral vision and you can see your chest and feet (at least with the body shape that is presented ingame). I feel the game could be alot more immersive if you simply raised your cameras Z coordinates by a moderate amount and your Y coordinate a small amount. That way when a player looks down at the ground and their shoulders slightly bend over IRL their vision of what their body should look like will match the players body ingame.

sfaok
Protege
^^^ Thanks for the detailed comments.

On your first point you know you can aim with your head by holding down the left bumper?

I only really recommend aiming using the right analogue stick if you have a Moga Pro or other high quality gamepad. The game was designed and tested mainly around using the head tracking (left bumper) + Samsung Gamepad. There's a dev diary on the first page of this thread with some explanation of what I was attempting.

The second point yeah I had some trouble with the avatar body, didn't have time to fix it in the gamejam timeframe. It needs to be raised a few inches. If I remember correctly it behaved differently on the DK2 which is why it wasn't an easy fix.
Developer of Ocean Rift. Follow me on Twitter @sfaok

mrscratch
Honored Guest
"sfaok" wrote:
^^^ Thanks for the detailed comments.

On your first point you know you can aim with your head by holding down the left bumper?

I only really recommend aiming using the right analogue stick if you have a Moga Pro or other high quality gamepad. The game was designed and tested mainly around using the head tracking (left bumper) + Samsung Gamepad. There's a dev diary on the first page of this thread with some explanation of what I was attempting.

The second point yeah I had some trouble with the avatar body, didn't have time to fix it in the gamejam timeframe. It needs to be raised a few inches. If I remember correctly it behaved differently on the DK2 which is why it wasn't an easy fix.



Ahhh I did not realize that bit about the left bumper. I guess I must have skimmed over the controller image behind you at the start. I'm going to try that out shortly as I only have a Moga so for some reason I just assumed the game controlled like your typical fps console game.

As for the second part I feel your pain. I started on my project about a week or two before the Jam started and it felt like I had all the time in the world. Then when the last weekend was upon us it really hit home that I was gonna have to strip a few features out in order to get it launched on time. Honestly this whole contest gave me a rather deep appreciation to the whole "when it's done" phrase.


Edit: Yes the head track aiming made a world of difference. Got significantly further this time around and I must say I was caught off guard... I did not see that coming. 😮

KevinLongtime
Heroic Explorer
I am incredibly happy you are working on this game once again. Has to be the best full body experience i've ever tried on DK1 and hydra

HomerS66
Expert Protege
Bugs/suggestions in case this great game gets an release on the Oculus Store somewhen in the future (hopefully):

- sometimes when i buy upgrades and they fall down, they land at places which i cant reach and therefore are waisted/can decide a game. I know tough luck but still would be nice if there was a way around it. Maybe i can try to shoot them down when they land on the big rock but sometimes i dont even see them anymore.

- quite a few times after a i got killed, the next round has lost some colours, the planet is blue and the spiders are all black. Not sure if that is Lollipop related or could have happened on Kitkat aswell. The colours return only when i reboot the phone, just restarting the app doesnt help.

- it would be great that if the overheating/cool down message comes, the game could still be continued (even with throttled performance) as sometimes i was close to the finish line but had to stop after the message came.

- a voice which tells you every minute how much time is left would be nice, as in the heat of the battles i often don't have time to check the timer or i get killed.