Lift

An interactive Narrative for Virtual reality

 
 

overview

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Oct 2017 - Current

Lift is a VR narrative game originally built for the HTC vive but now branching to Oculus and PSVR. In college, I pitched the idea for a game where the player is an elevator operator in an old hotel, and the story can change depending on how they interacted with guests. It was one of the 13 games chosen out of a pool of 80 ideas to be developed. With a strong team of 12 developers, designers, artists, writers, composers and voice actors, we brought home 4 awards from UCSC Sammy showcase 2017, including 1st in audio, 2nd Overall best game, and 2nd in technical achievement. It was the most nominated game in the history of the Sammy’s. 

Post college, the team and I decided to continue Lift for release. Top Floor Studios, LLC was founded by myself and Daniel Chamberlin, and Lift has been receiving a revamped narrative arc with more of a focus between player/NPC interactions. We have been working hard since October 2017, and we are proud to announce Lift will be released at the end of 2019. 

My Responsibilities Include:

  • VR Interaction design and implementation (Unity, C#, HTC Vive, Oculus, PlayStation Developer Kit)

  • Company Co-Founder / Project Management

  • Co-Founder

DEvelopment

My focus was to design and implement some mechanisms of the elevator.

Hats and Wearables

We quickly realized that people love to “wear” objects. I pushed for the implementation of a hat and name badge in the game, and it was rewarding seeing players getting excited to place these objects on themselves. Some even used them to interact with other patrons, for example, tipping their hat to an NPC as they leave the elevator.

We hope to add more wearables to the game that bring out this sense of joy in the player.

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Floor navigation Lever

The floor lever was meant to simulate a range of motion that was appealing for VR users. The side to side dragging motion was more unique than the up and down lever pull, and provided an interesting art direction for our artists.

While implementing the lever, we noticed that there was a drag that was happening when the player would pull on the lever. This angular drift distorted immersion of players, as it wasn’t anything close to reality. The system we were implementing the lever with (VRTK) didn’t provide the correct tools to correct this angular drift, so VRTK was disabled for this object and manipulated with hard math calculations. Based on where the users hand was on the X axis, we are able to align the rotating piece

Door Opening (v1 > Current)

In Lift_V1 created Jan-June 2017, the door of the elevator was opened by the player bending down and lifting it up. That interaction was extremely inaccessible to some players and different VR platforms, as not everyone has that range of motion or space available.

To fix this, I thought out another lever. The goal was to vary this interaction from our other lever by having it go up and down rather than side to side. This made it easier for players to understand, as it was a binary choice that was extremely visual and intuitive to grasp.

There were similar issues with this lever as the one above involving the angular drift, so this system was also changed from VRTK to math and focusing on the users Y-axis hand position.

The idea was thrown around that we could make a rope that the player would pull to get in and out of the elevator. While this was an interesting mechanic idea, the implementation was too much effort for the little reward it gave the player. Early notes of rope design are to the right.