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Polygon Nightmare - Old School VR

Enmark
Expert Protege
Hi. im Swedish guy with early dreams of VR since i first tried the "Virtuality" arcade machine "Nightmare" later called "Dactyl Nightmare". My goal is to bring my childhood dream back from the dead, for the historic value and because it was a lot of peoples first VR experience!

I have gain the original Programer and graphic designers blessing to recreate the game. but have failed to reach the actual owner of the Game.

The game will be Free of charge and should NOT be redistributed without my knowledge.



Everything is built from scratch and is measured by eye sight from this lone clip!
all 3D work is made in sketchup and all sound effects are taken from the original videoclip.



201 REPLIES 201

NamelessPFG
Expert Protege

nalex66 said:

Tried it last night. Jeez, the limited FOV emulation is awful! Seems about right from what I remember, though. Makes you appreciate what we have now with the Rift, despite the complaints from some people about its "crappy" FOV.


Funny thing is, the limited FOV emulation is still significantly larger than what I got out of the Virtual i-O i-glasses! VPC, and without the ridiculous screen door effect to boot! People don't realize how far we've come when it comes to home VR HMD tech.

As for other bits of my Polygon Nightmare first impression: the whole "move forward relative to your head, not to your hand" thing trips me up a lot after Onward set the standard of hand-oriented movement. I wonder if the original Dactyl Nightmare has that same issue.

Also, the game clearly wasn't devised with room-scale setups in mind; if you step out of your starting position, you wind up having an out-of-body experience, and I'm pretty sure I shot myself by accident because of this.

I also want to see if the original game spawned a new 'dactyl with those "Bird is hungry" warnings, because the existing ones floating above don't change their circular flight patterns to get you; instead, a new one spawns, just straight-up beelining right for you. Make sure you've got the right one sighted, because your gun probably won't reload in time for a second shot!

DarkTenka
Trustee
I'm not sure the limited FOV is working correctly for me, all it does is put a box around what I'm looking at and lower the resolution.

It's cool to see but I would have thought that should actually stretch out to be my actual display, rather than me looking at the screen from a far. Is that not what it's supposed to do?

cybereality
Grand Champion
It supposed to emulate the smaller FOV of the original headset it was designed for.
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DarkTenka
Trustee


It supposed to emulate the smaller FOV of the original headset it was designed for.


Ah yea I understand now, I was thinking "FOV" in terms of flat, where when you increase/decrease FOV it stretches your display to match. I didn't quite put together that it was emulating the PHYSICAL FOV of the headset. Fair enough .. 😛

Enmark
Expert Protege
NamelessPFG  said:

As for other bits of my Polygon Nightmare first impression: the whole "move forward relative to your head, not to your hand" thing trips me up a lot after Onward set the standard of hand-oriented movement. I wonder if the original Dactyl Nightmare has that same issue.

Also, the game clearly wasn't devised with room-scale setups in mind; if you step out of your starting position, you wind up having an out-of-body experience, and I'm pretty sure I shot myself by accident because of this.

I also want to see if the original game spawned a new 'dactyl with those "Bird is hungry" warnings, because the existing ones floating above don't change their circular flight patterns to get you; instead, a new one spawns, just straight-up beelining right for you. Make sure you've got the right one sighted, because your gun probably won't reload in time for a second shot!


The original game had only a button to move forward on a set speed (slow). I believe you change direction by moving your head, not by direction of your hand but i have to check with my friend at the Retro Game museum. 

About room-scale. i haven't got into that yet,  butt the original game was a complete stand in the small pod and rotate on your feet 🙂

Dactyl behaviour is exactly what you describe. two show dactyl circling and when the dactyl coms for you, a new one is activated and one of the circling ons disappear until you get picked up or plast it. 

the bird diving for you is an animation an is a child to the OVRplayer, this is why its locked on to your HMD view even if you swivel around trying to get away from it. sorry for this part but remember i'm a self learned dev.  😄


DarkTenka
Trustee

Breton said:

NamelessPFG  said:

As for other bits of my Polygon Nightmare first impression: the whole "move forward relative to your head, not to your hand" thing trips me up a lot after Onward set the standard of hand-oriented movement. I wonder if the original Dactyl Nightmare has that same issue.

Also, the game clearly wasn't devised with room-scale setups in mind; if you step out of your starting position, you wind up having an out-of-body experience, and I'm pretty sure I shot myself by accident because of this.

I also want to see if the original game spawned a new 'dactyl with those "Bird is hungry" warnings, because the existing ones floating above don't change their circular flight patterns to get you; instead, a new one spawns, just straight-up beelining right for you. Make sure you've got the right one sighted, because your gun probably won't reload in time for a second shot! 

the bird diving for you is an animation an is a child to the OVRplayer, this is why its locked on to your HMD view even if you swivel around trying to get away from it. sorry for this part but remember i'm a self learned dev.  😄




I don't remember if this is accurate to the original or not, but I don't like the way it fixes it's rotation on you so that it is always facing you no matter where you turn. It seems a bit wierd, though the tech at the time was primitive so it might be how it was. However if this is just due to limitations on your behalf I could tell you how to fix it.

In fact I think I know of a really dirty but effective work-around that will keep it trained on your position but leave it's rotation intact so that it wouldn't "spin around" with you.

Edit: Just tested and this should work:

Step 1: Make your "dactyl animation" a child of an emptyGameObject first
Step 2: Make THAT empty a child of the OVRplayer with its local position 0,0,0
- At this point nothing should have changed and it should still work as normal
Step 3: Add this script to the emptyGameObject

public class fixRotation : MonoBehaviour {

    private Quaternion savedRot;

// Use this for initialization
void Start ()
    {
        savedRot = transform.localRotation;

}
// Update is called once per frame
void Update ()
    {
        transform.rotation = savedRot;
}
}

All it does it remember the localRotation when it began with when it is instanced, and keep the rotation fixed.
Since the Dactyl animation would be a child of the empty, the position will still track along with that empty but the rotation will remain fixed to what was set in the empty when it is instanced.

Of course I've made some assumptions about how you've got it set up:

A. Your animation is a direct child of the OVR player, if this is not the case and there is already a child inbetween the animation object and the OVR player then you could just drop the above script into that object.
B. Your animation is an instanced object or prefab when the Dactyl appears, if this is the case then you may need to remake the prefab with the new empty and instance that Empty with the dactyl as a child.

If this is not the case and it is an object that remains in the world but simply activated/deactivated then you may need to add to the above code to create a random rotation quaternion whenever the dactyl appears.

Sorry if that got a little confusing, if you are interested in any more let me know. I'll gladly help.

Enmark
Expert Protege
KillCard i will try this asap! And you will ofcourse be in the credit for helping me out 🙂

DarkTenka
Trustee

Breton said:

KillCard i will try this asap! And you will ofcourse be in the credit for helping me out 🙂



Let me know how it goes, just be sure to make adjustments where I have made any incorrect assumptions about how you've currently got it set up.

The biggest "question mark" in my mind is whether or not the animation is an instanced prefab at the time that it attacks you or if it is just a hidden object that is set active true/false. Because that might change a couple of things, but wouldnt be hard to adjust for.

Enmark
Expert Protege
https://www.facebook.com/fredrik.enmark.1/posts/10154628192998354

the real deal. @ Stockholm tech museum  

Hopefully i will be able to do a real size 3d model out of this, to remake the boring intro 🙂

Enmark
Expert Protege
looking into "Photon" to create a multiplayer version 🙂