Adventures in Location-Based VR Development. I had the pleasure this last year to work with the great folks at Darkslope Studios on their location-based VR free roam game, “Scarygirl”.
- The first original, large-scale free roam game currently in production from Dark Slope Studios is Scarygirl: Mission Maybee, a fully immersive 4-8 player, untethered free-roam VR game. The experience is 15 minutes in length and played in a 60’ x 30’ room scale environment.
- The game literally places the audience inside the beautiful, colorful world of Scarygirl, the award winning graphic novel by Canadian artist Nathan Jurevicius. The graphic novel is a cult hit with fans and collectors who have fallen in love with the main character, Scarygirl (Arkie), whose designer toys, online games and artwork have won her millions of fans world-wide.
- The VR experience launches players into a fast paced witty game that subverts the first person shooter genre so prevalent in VR games. Users don backpack computers and head mounted displays (HMDs) to enter the world and join Arkie on a fantastic adventure; untethered and fully immersed. The physical game space is up to 2000 square feet but the virtual world is limitless.
It was lots of fun to work on and brought me into some new technologies, challenges and problem-solving. Development mixed Blueprints and C++ in Unreal Engine, and got to work with the Optitrack motion capture tracking system, Striker gun system, as well as the iKinema IK solution along with the Vivox VOIP system.
The game is being ported to the Zero Latency platform for worldwide distribution.