Projects:
Hell Yeah Burgers VR <<<
Hell Yeah Burgers VR
The idea for Hell Yeah Burgers originally cam to out group piece by piece, we knew that we wanted to tackle a VR game, then later we decided that a kitchen would be a good setting for some VR tasks, even later, we decided that the stacking mechanic for a burger was simple enough for us to tackle. But the intro duction of the character of Gianna Remy would cement the whole idea and tie everything together, our own version of a stern talking, not afraid to be rude or mean Chief of Hell Yeah Burgers.
Working With VR
Once again, I worked with our Character Artist to bring Gianna into the game, however compared to Terrasphere, there was significantly more factors at play, with multiple animations, face blend shapes and a much more complicated character in general. Maddy, our character artist did a great job with the modeling and animation of Gianna, but it was up to me to bring that into the game and hook everything up to a control script so they can fit with the context of the game.
At first, the team had to catch up on how VR projects worked, as it is the first VR project we tackled, we worked with the default framework for steam VR provided by VIVE. It took us some time to get used to having the player in the game more like an actual character rather than observing from a camera.
Character Implementation
The Main animations for Gianna was simple enough to implement, though not without issues(Shown Right)
But the Facial aspects were a whole new level, as this as an NPC standing quite close to the player in a VR game, a lot had to be quite detailed, and our talented artist created options to be used in game, however this meant I needed to rig up not only a basic animation controller for the character, but also a controller for the face, using blend shapes to show expressions and blinking, while mixing a few together for a “Speak“ animation.
I also worked with our character artist to get Ginna eyes that could track objects in the game world, for an added level of threatening when she is yelling at you for some over cooked patties.
Order System
I was in charge of creating an order generation system that would generate order for the players to complete, this system could take in the difficulty of the level to generate a random burger, or when used by the tutorial and earlier levels, it could generate a fixed order.
Next came putting all the information on to an actual order item for the players to receive and act upon, I took inspiration from restaurants around us at the time and threw in some modifications to make it clear to the player while also adding in some fun flavor text.
The other half of the order system came in the judgement system, as when players complete a burger according to an order, it needs to be judged on how close they followed the order, The system would deduct points for extra unasked ingredients, wrong stack order and missing ingredients.
Event System
Gags and Gadgets
Place holder logo I created for the earlier days of the game
Fire particle effect for the stove, producing light for a lights out event.
From an earlier idea, we wanted to spice up the already chaos fill kitchen with not just cooking, but events that would suddenly pop up and would demand the player’s attention, The one we could come up with was that of a power outage.
I created a script that would randomly trigger power outages, plunging the kitchen into darkness and requiring the use of a flash light before the player could reset the fuse and bring power back.
To deal with the event, I worked with our asset artit to create a fuse box along with fuses that would slot into it. I coded a snapping system that would allow fuses to snap into their slots and a lever that worked with the VR framework to turn power back on.
I also give a Q&A on events in a devlog here.
While working on the game, I came up with ideas for these little gadgets the were perhaps more fun than function, such as the shrink ray, a cartoonishly looking toy gun that will actually shrink the object hit. Another object was the “Ditto” which will become what ever object it comes into contact with, potentially helping the players with the game.
The items weren’t created with the idea that they will play apart in the completion of levels, but they added a hell of a lot of fun even for us while we play tested and contributed to many laughs.
