The creator of the Ocean Rift demo is hard at work on an atmospheric FPS for the Oculus Rift that looks wickedly fun. The game affords full avatar embodiment with arms controlled by the Razer Hydra. So far the developer has released a few teaser videos and plans a public demo release in the near future.
Llyr, from Bangor, Wales, UK, is the man behind the popular Ocean Rift demo. His next Oculus Rift project is Crashland, and it looks excellent thus far. Though the demo isn’t yet available, Llyr has released a few teaser videos which are well worth a watch:
The demo reminds me, in a very good way, of the forthcoming game Destiny (Bungie, 2014) — I suppose it’s something about the cape and terrain…. The sense of avatar embodiment looks great and I can’t wait to jump into those shoes! Just imagine co-op multiplayer!
Llyr has been keeping a diary of his Oculus Rift projects at this blog, Llyr’s VR Experiments. In it, he talks about the features and development of Crashland, which he is building in Unity:
I try to work on my Crashland VR project any chance I can. I genuinely can’t wait to let other people experience it – it’s amazing fun to shoot guns in VR. It’s even better when you’re shooting giant car sized aliens. This is probably the most complex ‘hobby’ project I’ve ever done though, and it doesn’t help that for every feature I need to polish I create another two. Here are the main features coded so far:
- Full body awareness. Head controlled by Oculus Rift, hands by Razer Hydra motion controllers, arms by Inverse Kinematics, Legs by Unity’s Mechanim. Works extremely well, but its a calibration nightmare.
- Alien insectoids with dynamic animation. A long time ago I worked on a spider animation system that did for six and eight legged animals what Euphoria does for humans. Lets them walk on walls, across ceilings, react to physics, basically little virtual animals with muscles etc. The aliens in this game contain some of this AI, which allows them to all have dramatic death animations! (Editor’s note: really amazing work, definitely worth checking out)
- Dismemberment
- Guns. Right hand hold a 12 shot pistol, left hand a gun that fires explosive spears.
- Motion Scanner!
- A Cape!
I’m almost at a stage where everything works well enough together to record a new video. Once that’s out of the way my intention is to stop expanding and polish what I have ready for a public demo release.
We’re watching this project closely and will certainly let you when it becomes available.
