Guns are cool. Magic is cool. Motion controls are cool. Combine all three with virtual reality and you have a prototype experience that looks, well, really cool!
Developers have now had access to retail quality, VR-focused motion controllers via the HTC Vive and SteamVR since the developers kits began shipping en masse back in June last year. It’s taken a little time, but the distillation of ideas and maturing of skills required to build original VR experiences using this new control paradigm are beginning to elicit some exciting results.
A good recent example of this is a new prototype produced by developer Victor Blanco Ruiz from Mad Triangles, whose previous effort VRMultigames explored a similar playfulness in exploring VR motion control possibilities. His latest effort, simply known in the demonstration video as DWVRPrototype3, attempts to throw together two disparate play-styles and appears to pull it off with aplomb.
The demo shows a first person action title, which gifts the player with an automatic assault rifle in their left hand and a magical, fireball-casting ability in their right. The result is a mix that looks at once completely ludicrous and incredibly appealing.
Not only that, but the locomotion technique demonstrated here is also worthy of note. Explained by the developer in his Reddit post revealing the prototype, “The current locomotion its the exact same i have in VRMultigames,” says Blanco, “When you press “grab” you get a teleport point with an arc, and time also slows. If you release that grab button, you fly to the teleport location, but if you press the other grab button from the other hand, you turn around 180 degrees.”
This particular experiment was built in response to receiving a pair of Oculus Touch development units, something he says was no mean feat. “It took publishing a Vive game which got 10.000 installs to not get ignored in the email,” says Blanco, “I had to prove myself with VRMultigames to get noticed”
As for what form the new prototype may take, the developer has yet to even give the experience a name yet. But given the positive response to his early progress, we’d be disappointed if we didn’t see this one evolve. In the mean time, you can check out VRMultigames on Steam right here.
