PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

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Throughout the development of Thank you for your Service, I faced many technical problems that had to be overcome. Here I will list the problems that I had, and how I found solutions.

 

Problem 1:

 

One of the earliest problems I had was to get the game working properly on Valve's new VR headset, the Index. This was a major problem because this was the main headset that my university used, which was where I was going to be final testing for my game. This was a major problem that had to be fixed.

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From the beginning of development of this project, the game was mainly built on the Oculus Rift, as I own the headset myself and have the most experience developing on it (please see Trenchcoats). So, to get this game working on the Index, I had to lots of research in how to develop for the Index. After this research, I found that for it to work properly, I had to install a custom plugin into my version of Unreal called 'SteamVR Input for Unreal'. Once I installed this, it allowed me to access the input functions on the Index Knuckles. After some tweaking around, I managed to get my game working properly on the Index.

 

Problem 2:

 

The next problem that will be discussed is with the gameplay flow. So, in the game when you pick up a package, the player gets a list of requirements that they have to meet for the package to be sorted correctly. These requirements include a destination, which chute to throw down and what box it should be in. This box requirement was actually made up of two parts, a box type and size. When I played the game, I found this very easy to understand and I always got it correct. However, when I gave the game to people who have not played it before, they would get the box type correct but would never get the correct size. After seeing this, I decided that I should remove the size requirement because it made way too complex for the player and would ruin the gameplay flow. 

 

Overall, I actually redesigned the whole system that I created for the boxes because the original way I designed was too cumbersome as it was designed around using a one class. This meant that doing simple things such as setting the correct model was made more complex because I had to check which box type had be chosen, set the correct name, etc. So in the end, I made three separate classes for each box type which made the whole process much easier because I didn't have to loads of code for very simple tasks, such as setting the name which had to be originally done with a function. Now I just set it in the constructor.

 

Problem 3:

 

Like with my previous game Trenchcoats, one of the major problems I was going to have to deal was with motion sickness, or VR sickness. This is a major problem for many VR games because it takes people out of the experience and breaks their immersion as they can't play it. To fix this, I designed the game so that game takes place around you in either a standing up or sitting down position. Overall, I think this was a good idea because it made development much easier, which was great as I am developing this game by myself and it eliminates motion sickness. Later on down the line, I might implement some movement into the game but I will probably design it the same way how I did it in Trenchcoats which was with teleporting the player around the level, as it doesn't cause as much motion sickness.