Inspiration
I wanted to create a game that could be original. I was inspired by games that focus more on the mechanics then anything else.
What it does
You can drive a spider in VR and in Mobile and be able to play a game like tag. In VR you have 2 hand held controllers to move around. In mobile you move with GUI buttons. When players spawn into the game they will see a mechanical spider they can mount and control. Players move into the Tag arena meetup area. To begin a game of Tag via infection. One spider is randomly chosen to be infected and the goal is to tag all players in the game. Other players will want to survive as long as possible. Each player tagged also becomes infected and increases the difficulty of remaining players as they become outnumbered by the infected spiders.
How we built it
First I made sure to prove the concept of driving a spider, by using simple primitives and code blocks. Once that was figured the development become much smother. This game was build using blender, typescript, horizons code blocks and inkscape for the UI. Tanzer put together the wearables for IWP also set up the lighting and overall world ambiance. He also helped create the world thumbnail and play tested with me. Last thing he helped submit the competition criteria.
Challenges we ran into
One major challenge I ran into was trying to figure out a good work around for the seat gizmo. In VR I have to make sure the player does not lose the spider. In mobile the seat gizmo kept rotating my player so I have to loop and keep rotating the seat where the player sets down. Another challenge I ran into was when the player exit mid game I was deleting their seat gizmo (on run time) which destroyed all the seats in the game.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of the mechanics of the game. I had a vision of a fun experience of driving a mechanical creature that had realistic animations and functionality. I feel we really brought that to life in Spider Rider giving players a fun new way of interacting with each other in Horizon Worlds.
What we learned
I learned so much this last 1 month since I got into the MHCP program. I learned how to use the core API, UI API & camera API. I been also catching up with 3D modeling for horizon. The MHCP mobile competition has accelerated the learning curve for me.
What's next for Spider Rider
I want to create a user customizable spider, where a player can select thorough a menu and the menu will prompt them to chose spider colors, headwear, shoes, fun stuff for the spiders. Where the spiders can be as customizable as their avatars. I also want to create more maps. The game now asset spawn the map. My code has been setup to accept other asset maps in the future. Lastly, I want to implement another game mode which is a spider race. Where players will race down a track and be able to knock each other out and whoever finishes first wins the race.
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