Dream's Final Milestone Meeting
During the middle of October (on the 15th), members of HVRE met together for the last Milestone Meeting for this year's project - Dreams - and some new (and final) changes were introduced for all to see. Considering this Milestone centralized around what games were being updated and presented at Lexplay Gaming Convention 2017 in Lexington, Kentucky, only a few of the members (and their games) made it on the roster; let's see what kind of changes took place:
- In the last week before Lexplay, Shea made some big changes to his personal game, "Interaction", changing a lot of the features so it would be more PC-compliant (compared to the VR versions we had been working on up until now). He made a more top-down camera, that would zoom in and out, depending on what was going on in the scene at any given time. With this new camera, he also added in a "fog of war" feature, giving the players more of the illusion of exploration and tension. Alongside these minor updates, Shea also decided to overhaul the game, implementing a plethora of new interactable NPCs, that gives the game way more depth and creativity, and a small story that gets fleshed out the more you involve yourself with these NPCs.
- As for "Shadow Play" - a joint effort between Shea, Zachary, and Shylo - some new artwork has graced the walls of the room the player is in, updated sound effects and animations can be found all throughout (including a new "mother NPC," who berates you for messing up your already messy room, rain effects on the ceiling, and a few other awesome updates), new UI features to help players understand their objectives, and a nice little menu that takes you in and out of the game has been added!
- Christopher's initial game, "Sol Mates," with the help of Zachary and Leonard, came out with some nice, new changes, as well! The Cleansed and Pure souls now have new sound effects and textures/animations, each Uncleansed NPC now has their own sound effects (to minimize repetitiveness), players will now have to find the right amount of souls, instead of just three, to be able to create a Pure Soul, a new, animated menu has been added, a winning condition has also been created and pushed, some polishing and tweaking was added to the scripts, and lastly, a special Easter egg has been added in, as well (a creature model that was eventually going to be implemented, to give a new layer of challenge to players, but had to be cut because of time - the model, itself, is still in the game, for those with sharp eyes).
- Christina's game, "SPAce," with help from Christopher and Alexander, didn't get too many new features added (except for an interactable menu, end game message, and a totally new galaxy to explore at the end of the game), but a lot of polish was put towards the scripts, textures, and overall feel of the game, itself. Some of the music tracks have been switched up, the reticle now reacts to items accordingly, updated textures were added to some of the models, as mentioned before, a whole new, animated galaxy was created and put in the last portion of the game, and scripts have been somewhat overhauled, to give players an overall, better experience.
- The last VR game that was made into a PC version for Lexplay was Dustin's experience, "Toy Room." He didn't have a lot of free time to add anything new this time around, but instead created an interactble menu that takes you in and out of the game, updated the room, itself, with new topography (new windows, doors, etc.), updated the lighting of the room, and took some time to change out a few things in the scripts, to create a more polished product.
We'd like to thank everyone that was involved with this year's project, whether you were a dev that had a hand in the VR or PC versions of the project, or just an onlooker that watched our streams, or came to see our many events this year. HVRE is a community, a group-effort, and we can hardly do any of this without the support of those that also have a passion for gaming. Keep on the lookout for another blog post later this week, where we will talk about our involvement with Lexplay 2017!
