Making Things Go Pew Pew Pew: Weapon Design in the Context of VR Gamedev
The Weird Kid Studios team put player experience at the center of every design choice in Galactic Bar Fight. UX and player-centric design is especially important in VR game development because the extra level of immersion means even the smallest details matter and the tiniest errors can be flow-breaking.
When it comes to FPS games and arcade shooters, the weapons - and more specifically how players interact with them - are what its all about. Galactic Bar Fight is a very combat-oriented game where the weapons take center stage and the fun is all about the creative and zany things you can do with them.
I sat down with co-developers Jonathan Jennings and Travis Vanessen and picked their brains about the design choices that went into the weapons, about where they take cues from other VR games that do weapon design right, and how they make their swords and rifles and lasers go “pew pew pew.”
Interview:
Travis T: Hey fellas! Thanks again for meeting with me today. How's it going?
Jonathan: Doing pretty good Travis! Funny enough, I’m working on the beginnings of our in-game weapon ads as we’re talking!
Travis T: Haha wow, what perfect timing! 😄
I wanted to interview the both of you about weapon design in the context of VR game development. Some of the topics I'd like to cover are:
Lack of physical feedback
Player fatigue
Two-handed weapons
Aiming mechanics/Camera control
Let's start with something more general. Here's my first question:
What do you hold up as the best examples of weapon design in VR gaming, and what makes them the best? Boneworks comes to mind.
Jonathan: So my personal top two favorites. The first is the lightsabers in Vader Immortal, they nailed the feel, sound, visuals, lighting, Wielding a lightsaber in that first episode feels like everything you'd hope a lightsaber would feel like, and who of us hasn't imagined wielding a lightsaber since they were 6 years old? Lol
Secondly, I'd say Gorn is a huge influence, I love the stretchy physical properties of the weapons, it rewards both understanding and manipulating the physics of your chosen weapon.
Gorn is an Arena Combat game similar to GBF but more centered around a colosseum and ancient weaponry. You have axes, shields, swords, morningstars, maces, and all sorts of other weapons including I think wolverine claw gloves. The cool thing about Gorn though is your weapons are "Squishy" almost like squeak toys for you but they hit your enemies full force, so my favorite thing about Gorn was Grabbing the tip of a weapon, pulling it back like a slingshot, and letting it go to fire into the face of an enemy. It's goofy but fun goofy and allows for a lot of creativity when fighting since the physics are so bouncy.
Travis V: To jump in quick. GBF is really my first trip into the VR world. I played quite a few demos but being demos you never really get to experience all the features. The best “weapon” experience I have had is with Beat Saber. Which they nail the “feel” of lightsabers as you smash the incoming notes.
A common problem I see talked about in VR gamedev spaces is accounting for physical feedback, particularly where melee weapons are concerned. Players are often disoriented when they make the physical motion of swinging a sword etc. but nothing is actually there. This was a problem when consoles started experimenting with motion controls too e.g. the Wiimote and the Xbox Kinect.
How have you solved for physical feedback in Galactic Bar Fight, as well as other VR projects? How do you simulate that feeling of physical combat?
Travis V: Jon would be able to better answer this. From my experience, I don't think we will necessarily solve it but hopefully, we can make it enjoyable. The only real feedback I can think of would be to make sure the rumble can be felt and the visual effects on screen represent something cool. When you hit an enemy with a bullet, we might not deliver the most incredible feedback, but you can display some kind of effects to let the player know they hit the enemy and that the blast came from their weapon. Currently, when shooting the gun, you can see a blast from it. Same thing with hitting an enemy. You can visually see these particles hit and damage the enemies.
Jonathan: That was gonna be exactly my response. “Solve" is a BIG word, I think until we have haptic controllers which actually can apply force to a players hands, and simulate weight when grabbing objects, and also more detailed collision feedback from the controllers themselves, I feel like it's gonna be a key thing VR in general works to solve BUT the closest thing is to reduce the strangeness of slicing an alien in half without necessarily feeling the friction or much feedback from the act. We can focus on making sure those key moments of collision provide a level of feedback whether it's audio, vibrations, particles, all of the above. It's about making the interaction mentally connect in your brain so that it's still enjoyable even if you know you should realistically feel more.
Travis T: So you compensate for physical feedback by making sure the other environmental details are right. Swords slice through objects. Fists punch through walls. Do I have that about right?
Jonathan: Yeah that's a fair way to think about it, we just want to make sure each interaction has feedback, that's something Travis V has been great in helping me define. Hoping the visual details make up for some of the lesser haptic details.
Travis V: That sounds about right. Jon, added in the slicing ability for melee weapons. So, instead of slicing the enemy and they fall then disappear. We can slice them in half. So, you can see the weapon went "through" them in a way.
Travis T: Fascinating! That's also in line with my previous conversations with Jonathan about how VR gamedev requires extra attention to detail to avoid immersion-breaking.
IV. One-handed weapons in VR games are more straightforward. Two-handed weapons are trickier to program because each hand controller is individually tracked.
How did you make two-handed weapons work in Galactic Bar Fight without making them feel “awkward” or “unnatural”?
Jonathan:
We don't really have any two-handed weapons in GBF yet, we may in the future but I do think for simplicity, gameplay, and even accessibility reasons single-handed weapons work a little better with our fast-paced arcade focus on gameplay.
We want you to just see a gun, reach for the gun, pull the trigger to grab the gun, have it fly into your hand like Thor’s hammer, and then fire away. Even better when you dual wield!
Travis T: Dual wielding would be sick af to be honest.
As a brief side note, have either of you guys ever played Just Cause 2? That's my favorite example of dual-wielding done right.
Jonathan: I love the Just Cause games too!
Travis V: I only played the original lol.
To continue off what Jon said, we have bottles scattered around the level that serve as powerups and health pickups. Currently all our weapons (even more large 2 handed weapons) are single-handed, we currently want the player to constantly be running around and grabbing things.
If they aren't dual wielding, they can hold a powerup bottle and a machine gun. Holding the bottle in one hand can serve as a keeping it for later.
Travis T: That makes total sense given the speed of gameplay in GBF. No time to fiddle with two-handed controls if it's going to break the player's sense of flow.
V. I’d like to talk about camera control, particularly when it comes to aiming mechanics and AOE/situational weapons.
It’s VR game design best practice to always keep the player in 1st person perspective. No sweeping cinematic shots like you see in many AAA games. This helps ease the effects of motion sickness.
How do you balance relinquishing camera control with the need for precise aiming mechanics in FPS/arcade shooters like Galactic Bar Fight? For example, do you use auto-lock features or bigger hitboxes?
What about AOE weapons like grenades or situational weapons like mines that would normally call for a wider field of view?
Jonathan: Wow really great Question, so I did some really early tests with grenades in GBF and even in the prototype that's on App Lab right now there is a basic grenade weapon that I didn't get to flesh out as much as I’d like to but I hope we can revisit at a later date.
So to your larger question when working in VR in general you're working against the inaccuracies and features of the human body, one note we got from our previous build was that the swords were too straight when players held them in the hand and it makes sense if you think about a swinging motion, Your sword needs to tilt a little forward because it makes the swing itself feel more natural.
In VR I am a big fan of acting out every new motion, mechanic, or input mechanism you create before we right any code because the in-game motions map to real-world motions as well
and so the perspective should indeed come from that first-person personal perspective because that's the way our players will experience the game but also I think you can focus on making the interactions feel like an aspect with a sense of presence. " YOU are grabbing the bottle and activating it," "YOU are picking up this gun and shooting it," "YOU are Taking this scythe and swinging it."
I think even more than traditional games VR games and their gameplay user stories have to hold the player experience at the core of each and every motion.
Grenades and larger AOE effects are tricky and I think creating solid visual references helps smooth out the information you want to deliver to a player, so a blast radius circle can work really well in VR because players accept that the UI is a part of the world. It's kind of bizarre honestly. You don't get many concessions in VR but UX / UI does allow a lot more wiggle room in my opinion.
Travis T: That's interesting, I hadn't considered that before. So, the UI elements like blast radius circles and aiming trajectory arcs just feel like part of the game world?
Jonathan: Yeah I think so. To be completely candid that's still an area we haven't explored much yet, but I think a grenade Arc kind of like in Gears of War would work really well in VR.
Travis T:
I've noticed that a recurring theme that keeps coming up in our interviews is how you and your team put player experience at the center of all your design choices. I'd like to build off of that for just a moment.
Can you think of any good examples of how other VR games implement this? Particularly with regards to weapon design. You mentioned Gorn and how the physics of the bouncy weapons make it feel absurd and cartoony as a design choice, for instance.
Travis V: When Jon asked me to join and showed me the game, I wanted to take it and expand it to hopefully something that hasn't been seen yet. I said, “let's make all the levels fully immersive”.
Our menus are represented by bottles or flyers that have to be picked up. Our save menu is also bottle's the player picks up. I thought it was quite unique from what VR games I had seen/played in the past. That was until Resident Evil 4 VR came out. I watched gameplay and saw they were doing a similar thing to what we were doing in the design of how "everything" is in VR and I mean that is if you think you can pick up and move it you can, or that you have to put the ammo in the gun. We were trying and hoping to achieve similar to that. After reading reviews as well with people praising that it makes me think we are on the right track.
Jonathan: I haven't played it yet but I've seen some pretty awesome clips and would totally agree with Travis Resident Evil 4 is an excellent example very similar to what we want players to do in GBF, I think the interactions feel more real when they are grounded in the world, so when you toss an egg at a zombie’s head before head shotting him with a pistol in RE4 it all feels natural for what is a really unnatural situation 🤣
Travis V: Jon said it better than me lol
Jonathan: Lol but you had the same exact thought which is why I love working with you!
Travis T: Daaaaw 🙂
Those are some really creative ways to merge gameplay and UI elements! Yeah I think you could definitely do worse than taking notes on what RE4 did.
VI. Let’s end on a fun question. What was the most fun weapon to design in Galactic Bar Fight, and why?
Jonathan: ooh that's a good one. So I have the privilege of building the weapons system but my work shines when Travis massages it a bit and makes it feel good. My favorite two weapons are the Slashbow and the Frost Rifle/Machine gun ( I don't think we finalized any names yet ) but after Firing the Frost Machine Gun after Travis worked on it a bit I think it feels spectacular.
I love the Slashbows carnage but the Frost Machine gun just feels really satisfying to shoot.
Travis T:
You had me sold at Slashbow and Frost Machine gun tbh.
Travis V: Ummmm I would say the minigun and the swords. Running around with blasting enemies then as they get close and slicing them in half is quite satisfying! 😄
Travis T: That gives me Painkiller vibes 🙂
Travis V: Oh man...Painkiller, there's a classic.. and it hurts to say that now! lol
Travis T: haha yeah...we're not spring chicken's anymore that's for sure lol 😆
VII. Alright. Looks like that's all I got! Anything you two wanted to add on the subject of VR weapon design before we wrap up?
Travis V: GBF is still early and we want to surprise people. The levels will have varied that forces people to use all the weapons, from close corridors to large open rooms, to multi-level buildings. I have quite a bit of work to do but the weapons and satisfaction from taking down enemies in the different bars will be very exciting!
Jonathan: hmmmm nothing specific I think it's just really fun realizing a virtual weapon from start to finish, figuring out how it should shoot, how it should sound, how it should look, how it vibrates in your hand. It's all super exciting to explore and that's before you've created enemies to aim it at. Weapon design in VR has been one of my more favorite areas to focus on lately.
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