ANDALUS

GAME INFO

CONTRIBUTIONS

PROGRAMMING GOALS

Create a interactive experience where players strum an Andalus to control the pacing of the experience.

VR IMPLEMENTATION

The first step for me in the project was trying to get the instrument (called an Andalus) to be interactive for the user. In order to make sure that the user would hold the instrument correctly child actors were set on the handle of the instrument that would lock the users hand in the correctly place so long as they continued to hold the correct button on the oculus controller. (This is also had to be set up to work for both left and right handed users)
From there I made sure that so long as the user was holding the neck of the instrument they would be able to strum. Feedback such as audio and vibrations were set up to help using the instrument feel more immersive.
Lastly I made sure that strumming the instrument would call an event that would communicate with the lighting and audio manager to help tie together the functionality of the instrument with the primary systems in the experience.

SYNCING UP THE EXPERIENCE

The pacing of the experience was tied to a musical performance that begins when the user strums the instrument. To follow along with the music our lighting artist had set up tons of dynamic lights all over the experience.
I was tasked with taking lights set up around the map and creating an interactive lightshow that would play dynamically both with the music and strumming of the user's instrument. This would take a lot of iteration and trial and error to make sure that all the lights were synced correctly with the music and looked to the standards set by the lighting artist.
Additionally we want the strumming of the guitar to have some interactivity with the lights so strumming had to alter the lights while maintaining the relative intensity of the lighting in relation to the music. Components and additional tools had to be made in order to help keep track of the lights in the level and to help make sure that strumming communicated with the lights.

PERFORMANCE AND OPTIMIZATION

Because this was a VR experience it was imperative that the executable would be able to run at 60 fps in the oculus at a minimum.(Otherwise this could lead to motion sickness for the user)
The main challenge with this was regarding the real-time lighting, shadows, and reflections that would occur on the surfacing of the environment. This would require us as a team to make compromises and creative solutions to help balance the visual quality and performance.
Some of our solutions included reducing unnecessary lights, faking god rays and lighting with transparent meshes, and changing the color of the skybox to try and mimic the sense of the sun rising and falling.

CONCLUSION

This was one of my favorite projects as it allowed me to learn about programming in both VR and Unreal Engine. While it may not have been a traditional game experience, it still required tons of iteration and problem solving as we had to make sure we worked within the limitations of our hardware.

Michael Benavides