PRODUCTION
Concept
APR 2019
Concept Created for the Game
Station Six was originally created to be a story driven virtual reality experience in which the player would control multiple robots, each designed for a specific role. These robots would perform maintenance and jobs to keep a space station online and running. Our team knew we wanted to do something to do with space and virtual reality as these topics peaked all of our interests, but we were not completely sold on the plot and mechanics we were going to include.
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After some early user tests and discussions with our advisor, we decided to go in a different direction with Station Six.
We found that controlling multiple robots for maintenance was a little stale and tedious, so we decided to change the storyline for Station Six. Instead of controlling up to six robots, we rescoped down to just two. With these two robots, the player will explore an abandoned space station and figure out why it was abandoned, as well as what mysteries the station holds. While doing this, the player would solve multiple puzzles along the way while furthering the plot.
While doing research into games based in space, we came across games such as Lone Echo and Elite Dangerous which has a similar theme and setting set in space. We really enjoyed their art styles and decided to follow a similar path with many shades of grey/white as well as accents of orange.
Suggested Advisor
David Thue was the best fit as advisor to our team for the development of our game. David has studied and researched topics such as artificial intelligence, game design, development, and interactions, and interactive storytelling. These areas were of interest for our project and we believed that Professor Thue would be an excellent advisor for our team.
Research
MAY 2019 TO AUG 2019
Team Roles Finalized
Selby Juskans - Team lead, Designer, Story Writer
Jack Goodman - Design Lead
Jonathan Jackson - Developer Lead
Nick Chojnacki - Developer and Designer
Leyalee Alsaadi - Developer, Social Media Coordinator, Story Writer
YuFeng Yao - Developer
Source Control and Project Management
The team decided on Agile Scrum development as it would allow us to complete tasks in sprints. It would also make sure that our team would be in constant communication with each other. We chose GitHub as our source control as it provides all of its services for free.
Hardware and Software
The primary candidates for VR headsets were the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, we discovered the Oculus Rifts had better Unity integration, plugin support and community support compared to the competition and thus we opted to use it. Plugins such as OVR and Steam VR were essential and make up the backbone of our build. The team also had previous experience using the Oculus Rift from a previous course, and the BIT faculty had ten to rent out. We chose Autodesk Maya as the modelling program to use as all team members have experience modelling in Maya from previous courses. Adobe Photoshop was our chosen software for any graphic design related tasks as all members have a lot of experience with it. Substance Painter was chosen for texturing models as it is an excellent program and works with Autodesk Maya. Lastly, we chose Discord to provide communication as it includes channels for text and voice, making it easy to have meetings. It also provides screen share functions to make it easy for members to show their progress.
Unity vs. Unreal Engine
Since both engines are good for game design, research was done to see which one would work best for a smaller team. The decision was to use Unity as the game engine since it is very user-friendly and is easy to use for beginners. Another big reason we decided to choose Unity was due to Professor Thue’s experience with the engine, as well as his glowing review of it.
Physics for Unity
Once Unity was chosen as the game engine, research into how physics work in Unity was done. It was determined that using Unity’s rigidbody was how physics could be added to objects. Adding rigidbodies is very simple in Unity, you just need to select an object and then add it from the component window. In order to create boundaries and collisions in Unity, they have another built-in mechanic called colliders. These allow for proper collisions between objects in Unity. Gravity is another built-in mechanic that is easy to manipulate in Unity, with it being an option to enable in rigidbodies. Unity also allows you to change the gravity of the entire scene.
Animation, Rigging, and Optimal File Formats in Unity
Unity allows for rigged models from Maya to be imported into it. You can then animate objects using Unity’s built-in animation window. Maya has the ability to export objects for use in Unity, making the process of moving finished models to Unity easier. Unity is able to open Maya binary and ascii files, while keeping the original position, rotation, and scale nodes from Maya.
Game design
The setting of the game is in space. Games relating to ours were researched for inspiration. Lone Echo, Elite Dangerous, and Adr1ft were VR games that have been successful. Lone Echo in particular was a VR game that we wanted to take inspiration from because of its huge success. The zero-gravity VR movement has been noted as the best VR movement experiences. VR sickness was an important research task for game design. VR sickness is a type of motion sickness that happens when a player uses the VR headset. The issue mainly occurs because of a player moving in VR but not moving in ‘real-life’.
Pre-Alpha
SEP 2019 TO OCT 2019
Story
Playing as an advanced AI emergency response unit Minerva, designed by the AME Corps, you are sent to investigate a distress signal sent from Station Six. Station Six is damaged on the outside as Minerva approaches it, but it is unclear what caused the damage. Minerva enters the station, but is forced to solve puzzles in order to move forward through the station which is in lockdown. As Minerva delves deeper into Station Six, it becomes clear that the destruction of Station Six was no normal accident.
Environments
Tutorial room: The player would need to locate the generator room, find a way past the locked door, and enter the generator room.
Generator room: The player needs to find a way to restore power back to the generator room.
Captain’s bay: The player finds the Captain’s assistant bot, Metis, damaged and acquires the time tool. The player can then test the time tool. They will locate an audio recording and record information gathered from it.
Workshop: The player will locate clues to Station 6’s destruction, find blueprints for the experiment, locate another audio recording and record information from it, then locate another audio log from one of the researchers, then locate the Aevium.
The Escape: Once the player finds the remaining Aevium, the ship starts shaking. The player must make it through obstacles to get back to the pod before Station Six explodes.
Characters
Minerva: This is the main character that the player controls. Minerva is an emergency response unit that is sent into dangerous areas to prevent human injury or death. The first design of Minerva featured a bipedal AI robot which was created within Autodesk Maya.
S5-ANT: The S5-ANT’s concepts were created within Adobe Photoshop using paint brushes.
Metis: A robot that was assigned to Station Six. Special modifications were made to it that damaged its body. Metis was to serve as an objective in the story, which was removed in future versions. This change was made because the time tool which he acquired was no longer used.
Strength Bot: A bulky and stable utility robot native to Station Six to move trading supplies such as crates, and materials. Minerva can control this robot to clear her path from obstructing objects. The Strength bot was removed in future versions of the game due to the implementation of the pulse cannon, which served the same function.
Test Environments
The Maze: The maze was created to test the initial movement mechanics and thermal visions. Players were asked to travel through the maze, using a freezing tool to move past obstacles and finding the right direction using thermal vision to spot the particles. This tested the functioning of the time tool and the heat puzzles.
Hacking world: The initial hacking world was created to test the teleportation system between the station and the hacking world the S5-ANT enters when hacking.
Initial Movement Controls
The Thumbsticks: The thumbsticks on the Oculus controllers were used to move the player around in the game. Rotation was determined by the Oculus Rift movement; when the player moved their head, the camera moved in the game. A prototype level was created.
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Propelling: Propelling the player by simply holding the trigger down was tested. The player was propelled in the direction in which they had their hands pointed. If they chose to move backward, they simply held their remotes to their chest. This replicated similar controls to an airplane joystick. A prototype scene was implemented to test these controls, walking over ramps, opening doors, and picking up various objects to complete tasks with them.
Initial UI Designs
HUD UI: A HUD UI for Minerva and the S5-ANT was created and parented to the Oculus Rift to serve as a HUD. This HUD will provide the player with information about their tools and what room they are in.
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ARM UI: Many concepts were created for Minerva's arm UI because motion sickness and depth of field was taken into account, these concepts contained a radial arm UI and a planar UI.
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Start menu: The first menu that players see when starting the game.
Tools
Terminal Hack: Used only by the S5-ANT, hacking a terminal teleports the S5-ANT into the hacking world, a virtual room that the player has to solve. The S5-ANT uses its thermal vision to find hidden numbers around the room to complete a code to input into the door.
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Time Tool: Only used by Minerva, it is used to pause the world around the player. It is collected from Metis and is used to upgrade Minerva.
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Powercell: An item in the world that can be placed in the generator to power the station.
Thermal Vision: Only used by the S5-ANT bot, it is used to see heat sources and air flow.
Puzzles
Terminal Hack: Used only by the S5-ANT, hacking a terminal teleports the S5-ANT into the hacking world, a virtual room that the player has to solve. The S5-ANT uses its thermal vision to find hidden numbers around the room to complete a code to input into the door.
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Time Tool: Only used by Minerva, it is used to pause the world around the player. It is collected from Metis and is used to upgrade Minerva.
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Powercell: An item in the world that can be placed in the generator to power the station.
Thermal Vision: Only used by the S5-ANT bot, it is used to see heat sources and air flow.
Movement Controls Changed
Back triggers used to move player and controller positions determine the direction the player goes in. The joysticks are used for rotation along with the Oculus Rift movement.
Alpha
NOV 2019 TO JAN 2020
Story and Levels
Based on feedback from the design document, the Captain’s Bay was removed as it didn’t make sense to have one for a Station, which is stationary. It was replaced with an emergency escape room with escape pods. The updated story is that the crew of Station Six left with the pods because they thought the station was going to explode, and in their hurry they left their precious research materials.
Tools
After developing and testing several iterations of the thermal tool, the team felt that it never felt natural. We couldn’t get the tool to function in a way that both made sense in the game, and felt satisfying to use as a player.
The sonar tool was created in its place because we still wanted a ‘wayfinding’ mechanic, and found a much better implementation solution. The sonar tool began to be implemented for the Alpha. It was partially completed for the Alpha presentation. The sonar tool has a depth bar, which is a post processing effect that adds a line over objects based on their distance from the camera while the bar moves further away from the camera. The environment is also grayscale to make the depth bar easier to see.
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Based on feedback from our project advisor, we decided to implement AR tooltips into the game to help the player progress through the game easier. The tooltips appear when the player looks at an item of interest, it glows gold and provides a text tooltip that will give the player some useful information.
Start Menu
A skybox of space was implemented for the menu and the menu is seen from a cockpit. An animation of the cockpit approaching the menu was also added. We needed to start in another scene in order to avoid tracking bugs when they load into the main scene bugs.
Characters
We had to remove and modify a character in order to fit new needs and changes to the gameplay. First, Metis was removed because of how we modified the story line and the amount of levels in the game. This character was not needed, and as we were falling behind, Metis was cut. Minerva was fully modelled, rigged, and implemented the game in. S5-ANT modelled and textured in Maya and Substance Painter, but not implemented into Unity until later
Environments
The entrance, storage room, and generator room were modelled and implemented into Unity. Animations for the environment were finished and implemented into Unity. Textures in progress, but not implemented.
Next, the Hacking world was changed. Instead of having the player switch scenes to enter the hacking world, the player was teleported to a different part of the same scene instead. This would ensure that all gameplay happens in one scene, and we would avoid load and transition times.
UI
Radial arm menu was changed, replaced by a rectangular hologram UI that appears on the forearm. This is because it was difficult to implement a circular UI menu, which posed a ton of different rendering issues inside of Unity.
Mechanics
Next, we made changes to the switching between Minerva and S5-ANT. We added the ability for Minerva to spawn the S5-ANT by adding a raycast to Minerva’s fingertips, then she could place the S5-ANT on the ground wherever she wanted.
IK arms and blendshape hands began to be implemented. Oculus’ CustomHands was used to create different hand poses, required for Minerva’s hands to be remodeled and separated from the arm mesh in order to work with Oculus’ CustomHands.
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Finally, we began to implement our Inverse Kinematics arms system, as well as blendshape hands. For the IK system, we used a simple IK controller script we found on the Unity store, and made some changes to make it work in VR. Essentially, it tracks the hand positions, then calculates where the shoulder is, which will then find the middle ‘elbow’ point. For the hands, we used Oculus’ custom hands in which we implemented our own model, and it would deform based on Oculus’ own hand rig.
Beta
FEB 2020 TO MAR 2020
Mechanics
Ant Spawn Visual: During the Beta development period the ANT spawn visual was updated to include a hologram and spawn location point.
Pulse Gun Vs. Time Tool: Originally scoped for the project was a time tool. This would pause objects around you allowing the player to interact with the world in unique ways. After coming up with a functioning prototype for the Pre-Alpha this feature was put on the back burner. While other features were developed and implemented the time tool wasn’t thought about and by the time the alpha came about we realized that our levels would struggle to take advantage of this tool. Thus we came up with the pulse gun that would allow players to push objects out of the way. The pulse gun also helped us fix our first level. Originally, we had the ramp leading to the second floor in the storage room be broken to help create the atmosphere of a broken ship. However, after other features were implemented we were left wondering how the player was going to bridge the gap. This is where the pulse cannon came in as instead of making the ramp broken we added debris blocking the player that the pulse cannon can push out of it’s way. The pulse cannon is also used to push the vent grates out of the way for the ANT to access.
Sonar & Tooltip integration: The tooltips and sonar were merged together. This was because independently they didn’t fit nicely into gameplay. Together they are used to navigate the user through the plot and provide hints to help them progress. Additionally, Sonar was given a new shader to help improve the visual style of the game.
Audio Log: The audio logs were placed throughout the game and included information about the Station. The logs consist of text entries from the personal accounts of crew members aboard the ship about the true nature of the ship's purpose.
Environments
Old Hacking World vs. New Hacking World: Since conceptualizing the ANT bot we knew that it needed to be able to hack into terminals to allow Minerva to access different parts of the Station. In the first iteration of the Hacking World the player was asked to implement a button and light sequence to hack into a door terminal. The fundamentals of this were kept for the final implementation; however, the visual style of the Hacking world needed to be updated to better suit our theme. The new hacking world was made to be reusable throughout the game and had a revamped visual style.
All models had their textures applied to them in Unity and the environment lighting was baked. Sound effects for the Labs were implemented and a library of sounds was curated.
Start Menu
The start menu functionality remained the same but the cockpit that was used as a placeholder was replaced with our space pod model. The scene transition between the start menu and main scene was taken out as having the player observe themselves in 3rd person broke the game’s immersion.
Tutorial First Implementation
The first implementation of the tutorial included audio prompts and highlighted objects of interest in order to move the user through the tutorial.
Characters
Minerva’s hands got updated to look more robotic and we finally assigned the textures to Minerva.
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The S5-ANT was given inverse kinematics for the player to control it’s arms and a menu for the player to switch back to Minerva and toggle sonar. The model was also textured during this time.
UI
The Arm Menu received an updated look.
Story and Levels
Captain’s Bay & Workshop -> Laboratory: During discussions with our project advisor we decided in order to reduce the scope we decided to get rid of the workshop and escape pod room. After removing these levels we were left with a smaller scope but our game was now missing an ending. In comes the laboratory level.
Laboratory: The lab was split into 3 different sections and in order to reach a lab the player had to divert power from the generator to open the doors. Lab 1: Walking around the first Lab Minerva discovers a voice recording. She discovers that the recording was made by one of the engineers. In this recording, the engineer discusses how Station 6 is actually a front for illegal experiments for the element that the Captain mentioned in the earlier recording. The engineer mentions how the element’s working name is Aevium. The engineer also voices their worries about the dangers of the experiments. In the middle of the room is a crate that has a button on it but the power to enter the lock combo is off. Minerva then records this information and continues to examine the Lab and notices 2 doors on opposite sides of the room which are locked.
Lab 2: After entering the now open lab 2, Minerva discovers an experiment where the Aevium is being used to dissolve power cubes. When Minerva presses the button to activate the experiment the power cube appears and then the Avium liquid is dropped onto it. As the cube dissolves the power is drawn through the tube that leads back into the power room. After three presses of the experiment the experiment breaks.
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Lab 3: As Minerva enters the 3rd Lab she notices another experiment where the avium is being used to teleport power cubes from one position to the other and then being dissolved and turned into energy. The energy flows from the experiment room into the container in the first lab.
Release
APR 2020
Visuals
All textures for the environments have been finalized and implemented. All environments have updated textures to make Station 6 look more ‘damaged’. All other textures have been finalized and implemented. UI elements have been finalized and implemented.
Tutorial
Completed tutorial including narration, visual aids and supplementary animations.
Sound
All ambient music and area ambience has been added. All in-game sound effects have been added. All dialog and narration has been added.
Polish
Finalized all mechanics, interactions and textures. Debugged critical game breaking bugs and glitches. Website for the Senior Project Fair has been finalized. End credits scene has been added.