Volume Warning.
RocketGlove was an early prototype of a game slated for a 2021 release, which instead became a toolkit of features aimed at easing the development of complex action shooter games for VR. While many of the visual effects still require an upgrade from Unity’s legacy Built-In Render Pipeline (BiRP), the core functional elements are still portable.
RocketGlove’s Core Features include:
- A “Multi-Locomotive” VR character controller, which combines walking, sprinting, climbing, vaulting, and flight
- A highly configurable weapons system, with integrated, isolated instance pooling
- A rule-based NPC/Agent formation system for controlling swarms of enemies
- A performant, yet crazy-configurable visual effects shader, which is responsible for a wide variety of effects in RocketGlove, and can be used for even more purposes
- A custom bi-state inverse-kinematics (IK) system which can switch between manual control (“Control-Point IK”), or allowing Unity’s physics simulation to animate the articulation
- A custom IK implementation “Control-Point IK”, which provides influence points, much like a B-Spline, to allow for more pose-like control of long chains
- A hierarchical state machine system for designing phase-based boss battles, and other complex scenarios
- A logic node system which includes toggles, accumulators, Boolean comparators, and other components to quicken puzzle design
- A really awesome, high-powered laser beam weapon, with custom sound effects
An example of the VFX Shader created for RocketGlove is shown below, in balls of magenta plasma at the base of the laser weapons, the explosion fireball, and the faint blast ring from the initial laser emission. The explosion smoke, which is less visible, uses the same shader.
Below is a shot of the “boss” enemy character, which was driven by the hierarchical GameObject state machine system. The character had two long articulated arms, and an eye on a neck, all of which use the Control-Point IK system. This allows the character to animate in-battle with control of the arms, and then drop with gravity using Unity’s physics simulation, whenever the character goes into a “stun” state. The arms can then re-align to resume manual IK control.
At its disposal, the Boss character, using its arms, would switch between each weapon available in the game, and then from its eye, emit the iconic high-powered magenta laser beam. Mounted to its back are two reservoirs which release swarms of Drone enemies, who will assume a formation around the player, while still under siege of the Boss character.
RocketGlove’s holographic spatial UI features:
- A spherical enemy and goal radar
- An expandable 3D map, scalable and manipulable by the player
- A concentric dial system showing speed, altitude, fuel, and health
- A compass / objective indicator
