Chapter 226 Principles of VR Game Production

How popular was "Minecraft" in Chen Mo's previous life?

In a nutshell, it is the most successful indie game in terms of popularity and business; it is the second-highest-selling game in the world, with sales exceeding 100 million, second only to Old Antique Tetris.

Considering that Minecraft was released in 2009, when there were already a lot of very good PC and console games, it was a miracle to get this sales volume.

Moreover, the strength of "Minecraft" is that it can be used in the hall, in the kitchen, on PCs and consoles, as well as on tablets and mobile phones, and all platforms can be successfully ported.

There are also some data that can slightly corroborate the popularity of this game.

In 2014, Mojang Studios, which made Minecraft, was acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion.

Minecraft has 4.31 billion views on Youtube.

During Minecraft's beta period, more than 10 million players applied to join, making it the most popular beta game.

It is said that the Military Survey of the State of Corruption created a topographic map of the entire British Isle in Minecraft, using 22 billion squares.

Why does this game have so much magic power that countless people are addicted to it?

Simply put, because "Minecraft" greatly reduces the difficulty of making a three-dimensional object on the computer.

In fact, many people have the idea of ​​"creating their own space/world". When they were young, they could experience it through sand castles, building blocks, paper molds, etc., and when they grew up, they entered various games to experience.

On the computer, there are many ways to create a virtual world, but traditional 3D design software has a very high learning cost, and most people do not have the patience to learn from scratch.

And "Minecraft" can make it easier for most people to make a 3D virtual world.

Just stack blocks.

No need for materials, textures, rendering, terrain, vegetation, particle effects, none of them, anyway, just choose a correct block and pile it up.

The squares in "Minecraft" are unconventional, with a standard size of 1m*1m*1m. It is not easy for players to get lost in the scale of the virtual world, and the finished product is more convincing.

And, Minecraft isn't just a world creator, it's also a rich game. Hanlin

For Chen Mo, porting this game to the VR platform is a very challenging and meaningful thing.

...

After Chen Mo explained the concept setting draft, everyone started to hurry up to prepare for various tasks, especially the technology tree, art style and derivative gameplay mentioned by Chen Mo, which was enough for everyone to have a headache for a while.

After all, there is no game for reference in this world. How to make a game similar to building blocks? What does it look like? How should some details be designed?

This is a question that everyone should consider carefully.

As for Chen Mo himself, he returned to the second floor of the experience store and began to study the relevant rules for making VR games.

Fantasy World Editor supports the production of VR games, but the specific production methods are different from PC and mobile games.

Chen Mo is now an A-level designer and an honorary member of the Tourism Committee. He has high authority in the Fantasy World Editor and can open the corresponding section for making VR games.

When he became an A-level designer, Chen Mo had already browsed the relevant process of making VR games, and now he has confirmed it again.

Chen Mo has also experienced VR games represented by "Earth OL" before. In short, the VR technology in this world allows players to directly input their consciousness into the game cabin and receive feedback signals.

The game pod replaces traditional input/output devices, such as keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc., and becomes the bridge between the player's consciousness and the virtual reality game world.

The game cabin has the ability to analyze the player's consciousness.

For a simple example, if the player wants to reach out for a certain item in the game, the game cabin will parse this awareness, convert it into the actions of the characters in the game, and interact with the game world. The final result is the game character. picked up this tool.

Similarly, moving, climbing, jumping, attacking, shooting and other actions are also achieved in this way.

In theory, the virtual reality technology of this world can analyze any intention of the player, but whether it can be applied to the game depends on whether the designer has designed corresponding rules.

To put it simply, in a game of cold weapon combat, the player can send out the awareness of "I want to pull the trigger", but after the game cabin is parsed, it is transmitted to the game world, because the game world does not support this action, So the characters in the game will stay motionless and not react.

Specific to a certain VR game, what actions are supported and what operation methods are supported, all of which depend on the designer's design. [Comprehensive] Disabled and determined

For example, in the game, you are a soldier with a gun, and you want to make the action of "stepping the gun under your feet", but the designer did not design it, then your character will remain motionless.

It sounds strange, but after playing VR games for a long time, you will get used to this setting. (Just like in the 3A masterpiece, you can only do the actions that the plot requires you to do in many cases.)

So, the more executable actions the designer designs for the game, the more freedom the player has in the game, the more things they can do, and the more realistic the game appears.

But in this way, the greater the load of the game, the more energy the player needs to consume.

This is one of the reasons why VR platforms generally do not do games like RTS.

There is no particular advantage to artistic expression.

Expensive.

Players need to consume too much consciousness, resulting in easy fatigue and unable to play for too long.

If there is an RTS game on the VR platform now, the player's consciousness needs to select a certain unit and then perform a certain operation. In the process of infinite looping, he must constantly think about the combat strategy. For the player, the mental power that needs to be consumed becomes times increased.

The PC platform is different. Players also need to think about these things, but all the operations are done through the mouse and keyboard, and many of them are subconscious habitual actions, so they are not that tired.

Therefore, some VR games will also deliberately simplify the game operation to prevent the mental fatigue caused by the overly complicated operation, so as to achieve the purpose of prolonging the game time in disguise.

For example, in some VR games, all the "attacks" of the player are punching attacks, and the direction, angle, strength and other attributes of the punching cannot be determined. This is to simplify the game operation and reduce the burden on the player's spirit.

In addition, in terms of perception, VR games have the ability to fully simulate the player's senses, including sight, hearing, smell, touch and so on.

The in-game screen will be transmitted to the player in the form of visual signals, which is 124 degrees the same as that of normal people's eyes, and the focus area is about 25 degrees, which is consistent with reality.

Hearing and smell are transmitted to the player in the form of signals, which can fully simulate the sounds and smells in the real world.

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After understanding that the basics of VR game design are far away, there are some basic principles of design.