For this project I wanted to create a VR game as I am more interested in video games than virtual experiences. I am highly fond of the fantasy genre, in particular medieval fantasy, and so I made that the theme of my project. A historical fantasy version of medieval Europe. I then needed to think about what type of game I wanted to make and roguelike kind of just kept coming back to me. I have played many roguelike games and I enjoy them very much, so I just went with it. I haven’t played any VR roguelike games but I have played Hades, The Binding of Isaac, even Pixel Dungeon on mobile, and many others so I already had a pretty good idea of some things I wanted to include.
To justify making this game and why it would benefit from being in VR compared to on a computer is spatial awareness. Roguelikes are usually played from a third-person or top-down view, meaning you can see things the character you’re playing shouldn’t be able to and react differently because of that. A roguelike in VR would restrict your spatial awareness incredibly in comparison as you can only see from the first-person perspective. You would have no idea if anything were behind you or around the corner unless you turn around or hear a noise. It adds that extra fear and suspense.
I was planning to make my own assets and characters at the start of the project, however I quickly got busy with other work and put this project on the backfoot, thereby running out of time to make any and have enough time left to make the game. I did come across the UMA Character Unity asset pack and tested it out a little, but I quickly forgot about it amongst all the other things I needed to do and I ended up just using a bunch of pre-made assets from the Unity Asset Store and Mixamo.
For weapons I used the following:
- LOWPOLY – Weapon Pack Demo by IV team (Unity Asset Store)
- Low Poly Weapons by SICS Games (Unity Asset Store)
For characters I used the following:
- Dragon for Boss Monster : PBR by Dungeon Mason (Unity Asset Store)
- erika_archer_bow_arrow (Mixamo Character)
- Nightshade J Friedrich (Mixamo Character)
- skeletonzombie_t_avelange (Mixamo Character)
- Vampire A Lusth (Mixamo Character)
- Paladin WProp J Nordstrom (Mixamo Character)
For the environment I used Ultimate Low Poly Dungeon by Broken Vector (Unity Asset Store).
With these assets I came up with a list of rooms I could construct and fill with items and then drew a floor plan. It’s a rough floor plan but it let me start the project.
That rough floor plan was good enough to get by but my indecisiveness meant I actually needed to flesh out the plan before building any more of the project. This next floor plan is the most accurate version that I used to make the layout.
And below is what it looks like top down in Unity. Looking through the ceilings of course.
The original concept for this game was to make a tower for the player to conquer but I took too long with making the mechanics that I ended up with only one level. The name was meant to be “Tower Dungeon”, it is now called “Castle Dungeon”. The setting changed from “Tower Dungeon is a roguelike dungeon crawler set in a historical fantasy version of medieval Europe. The player takes on the role of the Undesirable One trying to make their way to the top floor of Fortitude Tower – a tower safeguarding the power of the gods, said to be conquered only by those chosen by the gods.” to “Castle Dungeon is a roguelike dungeon crawler set in a historical fantasy version of medieval Europe. The player’s task is to defeat the occupants of the castle along with the evil Dragon Lord who reigns over them.” As the setting describes, the objective of the game is to clear out the occupants of the castle along with their evil overlord. You can clear room by room or you could go straight to the big guy.
The main mechanics for this game that I wanted were random/procedural generation, enemy AI, and sword mechanics. Each of them are described in their own post. There were also a few other partially developed mechanics that didn’t get finished in time or were being developed before I decided not to use them.
I came across a lot of issues and challenges when creating this game. The main challenges were to do with the enemy AI and sword mechanics, as described in their respective posts. Those took up a lot of my time trying to figure them out and get them working that I ended up not having the time or even forgetting about getting doors to work properly, or triggers to spawn things in rather than everything at once, and even sounds and menus. I also ran out of time to set all of the objects with interactable events, mainly just to pick up and move them around.
Annoyingly there are some pretty serious issues that have remained in the build upon submission. The player moves around just fine when not holding anything but when they pick up a weapon all of a sudden they can only move in the direction roughly 120 degrees counter-clockwise from where they are facing and at a stupidly fast speed. My guess is something in the custom weapon pickup script or configurable joint is affecting the player incorrectly. The sword wrist either works fine and I didn’t test it against an immovable object, or it looks like it’s working the opposite way of how it should and is moving the object it is touching around a pivot rather than itself. The player detection on the enemies has also stopped working in the build but it works in the Unity project file when you play the scene, so I have no clue what is up with that. You can find videos showing these problems here: https://artslondon.padlet.org/whobbs0120191/i1gut10jra6z46ao.
I would like to develop this game more and bring it closer to the original plan that I had but I’m not sure if I will as I might start a new project and use what I have learnt from this one to make that one better. If I do develop this game more, here’s a list of things I would want to improve/add besides the issues mentioned before:
- Add more levels to make it a tower, not a castle
- Add more progress attributes (upgrades, lore, difficulties, etc.)
- Add friendly/neutral NPCs (e.g. shopkeepers)
- Add/finish more combat mechanics (magic, ranged weaponry, weapon stats, character stats, etc.)
- Add inventory system for collection of item drops
- Add item drops
- Add more room types (e.g. puzzle, trap, etc.)
- Add random room generation