Kevin Giang - Technical Designer, Programmer
  • Projects
    • Justice League - Battle for Metropolis
    • Plants vs Zombies: 3Z Arena
    • Benno's Great Race
    • Lightmare
    • Bored Space Cops
    • Project Nova
    • OcuBlocks
    • CandyMakers
    • Cubedly
    • Unfolding Tale
    • Ancient Forest & Grumpy Monsters
    • Analog Games >
      • Treasure Hunting
      • Treasure Hunting: Kraken
      • Treasure Hunting: One for Self, All for Self
      • Treasure Hunting: Houdini
      • Shadow Peacekeepers
  • Who I Am

OcuBlocks
Technical Director | Game Designer
Developed in Unreal 3


What It Is

OcuBlocks puts the player into a virtual reality program where something has gone wrong. They must use their mind and body to get to the source of corruption and repair the program.

The Design - Virtual Reality

OcuBlocks was designed to take advantage of the Oculus Rift and Razer Hydra peripherals to create a virtual reality game. I wanted to design a game where the players would be forced to think about and use their physical hands to progress through the game. This created the puzzle game "OcuBlocks".

Players would have to use their hands with the Razer Hydra controllers to carry blocks, glue them together, tear them apart, and throw them like they would naturally in real life.

The Design - Early Prototypes

I was following Oculus Rift development as well as other enthusiasts very closely. I quickly learned about the Razer Hydras being used as a device to represent the players' hands within the virtual world. I got really excited. So the first thing I did when we decided that we wanted to use the Oculus Rift was introducing the team to the Razer Hydras. I quickly procured a set for myself and began coding away to make them work within the Unreal 3 engine the way we want.

The Design - Brand New Hardware

From there, I had to think about how the players would use the device unattended and what their expectations would be. The Razer Hydras had a couple buttons in very awkward positions, so I avoided mapping any buttons to them. This significantly reduced the amount of usable input buttons from the controllers that we could leverage for the design.

One of my early prototypes used the trigger and bumpers for pushing and pulling, but players had trouble using it. This is mostly due to the fact that the hardware they are using has not been standardized and is still very new... and they're basically blinded by the Oculus Rift headset.

We finally ended up having only the trigger button as our interaction button for everything in the game, except for pausing and moving. This was a success as players were able to pick up on the controls very quickly.

What I Did

  • Technical Lead
  • Created the technical design document (see page)
  • Set up interfaces for working with the Razer Hydra controllers
  • Designed and developed levels, including final boss level
  • Programmed in Unrealscript and Kismet
  • Developed several prototypes with the hardware
  • Ran regular playtest sessions
  • Developed the user interface
  • Voice acted for the 'Big Red' character

The Team

Douglas Buzzel
Rachel Clark
Kevin Giang
Justin Jacox
Miria Mirasol
Jie ee Quek
Producer
Modeler
Technical Lead, Game Designer
Sound Designer
Test Lead
Level Designer
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