Devlog 1: First Mechanics

Hello everyone! Welcome to the first A Little Help From Above devlog. The first devlog will present our first prototype that we’ve just finished working on, but also give some general context on the project.

We’ll be referring to the VR player as “VR” and the PC player as “PC”.

Tech we’re developing with

To develop A Little Help From Above, we’re using Unity and SteamVR’s unity plugin which offers many out of the box functionalities which help streamline VR development. This allows us to concentrate on the game design and development aspect, and not so much on the technical aspect of VR, all while guaranteeing compatibility with most VR equipment.

Game design changes

We had our colour mechanics idea for a while but it needed refining for specific circumstances. We decided to add a grey colour which is used for world objects like unmovable platforms and so on, whereas white elements will be elements that VR can interact with (pick up or whatever).

We also realised that with two hands, VR could easily bring PC anywhere by locking their hands in a succeeding manner. This broke the game in a major way. We decided to have it so that VR can lock each hand once until PC touches the ground again (anything that isn’t VR’s hands). This functionality isn’t part of the first prototype.

First prototype features

For the first prototype of A Little Help From Above, we wanted to have a solid foundation on which we could add functionality later on. The objectives were:

• Basic PC gameplay
  • Third person movement and basic platforming
• Basic VR gameplay
  • Tracked headset and controllers mapped to in-game hands
  • Possibility to “lock” hands independently, creating a fixed white hand, and possibility to “unlock” hands
• Working colour interactions and tangibility
  • Blue < > White
  • White < > Pink
  • Grey < > Blue
  • Grey < > White
• Basic world
  • Very simple level to test out previous mechanics

Basic platforming:

VR locking hands:

Colour mechanics:

That's it for the very basic mechanics! We'll be back soon with more :)

~Waddles