Time Rifters New Experiment Mode

Beta feedback introduced Experiment mode. Plan your attack with infinite gold to optimize your high score.

~Jackie

Printer Levels

We were intrigued by the idea of a level that worked like a 3D printer. Our vision included walls covered with the spawning blocks that would "print" enemies in certain patterns.

Here's what we came up with:

For the second level, we upped the ante and turned the printer into a twisted donut!

~Jackie

Floating Gold & Super Jump

Although our focus has been on polishing, tweaking and bug fixes, we did take some time this week to add a few new features into the game.

Each character now has a glow around them, which should make it easier to spot your past lives in the levels, especially on some of the new darker maps.

The gold/silver now floats in the spot where the enemy was destroyed instead of falling to the ground. This produced a really cool stereoscopic effect, but also introduced a new challenge: how do you collect the gold/silver when an enemy dies in a higher up place? Our solution: give the player the ability to super jump.

Tunnel Vision

We wanted to have at least one level where the world moves around the player (think of the original Half Life tram ride). This brought up the question, is it possible to make that experience comfortable in VR?

In theory it's the acceleration that causes some simulator sickness, not velocity. So if the platform is always moving at a constant speed in the same direction, then perhaps your brain will accept it.

Our first test started with just a platform that moves forward through a large tunnel. Then we added pillars to anchor the player's virtual body to the platform (preventing your entire FOV from being consumed by moving walls). Tinted glass panels were added to push the tunnel walls into the background. Finally, particles were added to provide additional visual cues for the movement.

This level is still an experiment in progress, but at least for now it seems like it is possible to have a moving level while maintaining a comfortable experience.

Player Movement Experiment

Here is a new video where we discuss recent changes to the player's movement.

Time Rifters 0.4.0 - Optimization

Try it out now: http://www.protonstudio.com/p/time-rifters.html

Check out this video where we discuss a few of the changes for Time Rifters 0.4.0:

Changelog:
- Tripled the frame rate on some computers
- Removed dynamic lighting & shadows (adjusted art to fit)
- Added MSAA & downsampling (crisp anti-aliasing)
- Added analytics to help gauge difficulty
- Changed from deferred to forward rendering
- Adjusted HUD transparency and colors (more transparent)
- You can always progress to the 2nd level
- Hold start or F1 to reset entire game
- Optimized CPU usage of music visualizer
- Made visualizer have more accurate representation of the music
- Hide/show geometry at the correct times (small optimization)
- Remove all gold that was not picked up at the end of a round
- Texture resolution reduction via memory profiling

3D Movie Trailer in a 3D Game Environment

In anticipation for the Oculus Rift, I experimented with showing a 3D movie trailer in a 3D environment (specifically the Unity Bootcamp demo scene).

Shark Week in BeGone?

Coding up some new gun movement with Max. The pivots need work, but I had to capture acting like a shark on video.