SteelSoldierVR

This is a short VR demo created for Introduction to Virtual Reality at Rowan University.

Steel Soldier allows the player to step into the shoes (or suit?) of the very blatant Iron Man-knockoff, Steel Soldier. The player is given the ability to fly with repulsors located on the hands, shoot lasers, and launch rockets to survive waves of enemy aircraft.

The target platform for this game is the Oculus Rift.

Controls

Hands

The player is given control over than hands of Steel Soldier, thus the real-world position of the Oculus Touch controllers determines the position and orientation of the hands in-game. Pretty simple. Unfortunately, there is no individual finger tracking (such as for the hands in Oculus Home) for this game.

Thrusters

Like Iron Man, Steel Soldier can fly using thrusters located on his palms. The palm thrusters are activated by the triggers located near either index finger. The triggers output an analog signal, so pulling only a little bit will activate the thrusters only a little bit, and pulling all the way will activate the thrusters with full force. In game this is accompanied by a semi-randomized, looping thruster sound effect which takes its volume from the thruster intensity.

Lasers

Steel Soldier is also able to shoot lasers using the grips located near either middle finger. The lasers shoot directly from the middle finger tips and deal a small amomunt of damage over time.

Missiles

Lastly, Steel Soldier can fire missiles that deal massive damage to enemy aircraft but travel much slower than the lasers. The missiles are launched by pressing the A or X buttons. They will be launched from the hands, traveling in the direction in which your fingers are pointing.

Objective

Steel Soldier is a survival game. At the start of the game, the user is dropped (no really, literally dropped) in a barren, desert-like landscape. Airplanes will spawn above and around the player. The player is tasked with shooting down as many enemy airplanes as possible before being shot down himself (i.e. running out of health).

Aircraft AI

The aircraft AI are the only other "character" in the game other than the player. The planes are controlled by an invisible entity, the Air Traffic Controller (ATC). The ATC dictates when planes are spawned, how many planes are spawned, which planes are seeking the target, and which planes are in a holding pattern awaiting commands. Essentially, each plane is given a distance to maintain from the target. The planes will loosely adhere to this constraint due to a hardcoded PID controller for the steering mechanism. They will also break this constraint in order to avoid obstacles such as the terrain. The ATC will randomly choose different planes, one at a time, to be the seeker. The seeker breaks out of the holding pattern and makes a direct path toward the target's current position. At this time the plane will slightly increase its speed and begin firing upon the player. Just before reaching the target destination, the plane will cease fire, pull away, and do a barrel roll to avoid colliding with the player. (This is a pretty exciting event in VR.)

When planes are shot down, they will spiral out of control, leaving a trail of smoke until finally crashing into the ground, at which point they are removed from the game.

Contributors

• Lonnie Souder II
  • Aircraft AI
  • Player Controls (Oculus Rift)
  • 3D Modeling (Maya)
  • Texturing (Substance Painter)
  • Sound FX (FMOD)
  • Particle FX
• Stephen Glass
  • Player Controls (HTC Vive originally)
  • Game Logic (waves, player health, etc.)
  • HUD
• Brendan Nugent
  • Post-Processing FX to indicate player damage
  • Terrain
  • Debugging