VR Titan Combat Part 1 - Locomotion

Player Character - Consider a slow moving robotic character, heavy but combat responsive. The player views the world through the cockpit control center. Think Titanfall or Archangel. This type of a character and combat system suits VR in a number of ways as will be demonstrated.

Health System – Consider a health system where the cracked nature of the cockpit glass is a representation of the health. As the player takes damage, the more cracked the glass becomes.

This gives us the opportunity to create diagetic UI, i.e. part of the game world. It may seem trivial, however with VR I believe it is critical to remove all elements of gamelike camera locked UI which break immersion.

Additionally, there is an interesting negative feedback loop that could be exploited regarding world visibility. The cracked glass could be used to obfuscate portions of the game world making combat more difficult the more damage the player takes. Essentially the opposite of an equalizer. It may seem counterintitive, but there is potential to make for interesting player choice when combined with the right health regeneration system.

Consider a health regeneration system that is powered by health collectibles. The player and his AI enemy both have very little health left. The player now has to choose between trying to finish the enemy off with his limited world visibility or try to find a health collectible. Both choices pose a different nature of risk. Finding a health collectible entails greater survival chances once it is found. However, the player may wind up dead before it is found. On the other hand continuing battle with impaired vision means lower odds of winning.

This health system could be even more interesting when layered on top of a second health layer such as a regenerative shield. Player’s health does not drop until the shield goes down. The shield regenerates over time automatically and separate power ups are available to restore shield as well. Think Mass Effect. This adds another layer of decision making when the player is deciding whether to engage with enemies or back away to regenerate shield or recover health.

Mobility – As mentioned before the player should be using her tools at a subcsonscious level. Something that aids this greatly is a symetrical control scheme. Consider a system where the player uses either joystick on the Oculus Touch Controller to move steadily. Inline with character’s large robotic structure, the player lumbers slowly. The forward direction is indicated based on the orientation of the HMD. This essentially provides a navigation system that is coupled with the player’s frustum of view.

When the player uses both controllers simulatenously in the same direction, the character boosts for a short period of time. There is also a cooldown period between consecutive boosts. This ability is primarily intended to evade enemy attacks. The conceived user experience is for the player to be using one joystick to be moving around and when an enemy attack is seen, momentarily to use the other joystick.

This type of a navigation scheme is beneficial to VR in a few ways :

1. Slow Movement - By keeping movement slow, we allow the player to engage with enemies all around them. Farpoint is a good example of a game that employs fast movement and is forced to spawn enemies directly in front of the player to avoid nausea due to rapid head movement.
2. Continuos Movement – Movement is non teleport based, which is benefitial for a VR action game for a number of reasons.

• Teleporting introduces additional combat design issues. With any teleport system, there is a lag between player action and character movement. What happens if an enemy projectile hits in this interval? In addition, there is a tradeoff between providing a comfortable user experience of the teleport and the desire to minimize this lag for combat effeciency.
• Teleporting breaks the flow of combat and forces the player to reorient once the teleport is complete.
• Saves development effort of having to implement nausea free effects.
• Teleporting tends to be an over powered evasion mechanism:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YrXn1O6ScY