Mechanics – The Chaotic Journey of Will Hobbs

Save Data

I wanted to have a save system for the game when I started and I got a very basic one working using a binary formatter. I wanted more complex save data though and that obviously required more complex setup, which I didn’t end up doing, leaving save data partially developed. A binary formatter can be used to save simple data such as int, string, float variables.

Magic

Another combat mechanic I wanted to implement was magic. I didn’t figure out how I wanted it to work exactly, but I did create some custom particle effects that would be triggered when casting.

Procedural Room Generation

The random generation of the game was meant to include the spawning of random rooms, but I didn’t spend the time to figure out checking where the door ways were in a room prefab. The base random generation is already in place due to the random enemy generation, but random rooms requires a lot more complexity than I could be burdened with at the time.

Potions

Another combat mechanic I was originally wanting was potions and grenades. Simple enough to implement, and they would use the same generation as the weapon spawning, but I didn’t have the time to complete this mechanic.

Sword Mechanics

I really dislike the current popular method of melee combat/interactions; most objects don’t feel like they have any weight and they can move as easily and as quickly as the controller can. They also pass through most objects in an environment instead of receiving force based on object size and weight. This would be solved with force feedback if it were widely available and safe, as that much force to stop a sword could easily break an arm if done wrong.

I wanted to bring a realer sense of combat and logic to my game and not just have someone flailing their arms around to sporadically move their weapon. I ended up finding this: https://evanfletcher42.com/2018/12/29/sword-mechanics-for-vr/.

Evan Fletcher devises a way to create a more realistic feeling of feedback from an object with the current limitations of VR. He doesn’t show any of the set up he did except for the settings on a configurable joint. The rest he vaguely mentions as bullet points for what needs to be done, leaving me to figure out what he means and recreate to the best of my ability. Weeks later after ignoring this for some time trying to find an alternative, I finally sat down and had a think. First I tried to interpret the referencing of his Unity scene setup, before then creating a C# script to crudely run through the bullet points presented by Mr. Fletcher. These are what I came up with:

The wrist prefab has the configurable joint on it and is instantiated by the script when you pick up a weapon. The wrist object becomes a parent to the weapon object and a child to your xr rig hand/controller. When you drop the weapon the wrist prefab is destroyed, but the weapon stays.

This worked, somewhat surprisingly, but I know there’s things I haven’t thought of when deciphering Mr. Fletcher’s notes.