Often times, the inclusion of a system involves the development of various auxiliary features that serve to support the overall goal. This is specially evident for dramatic changes, such as the inclusion of multiplayer. This week, we’ll delve a little bit into one of these systems, the player’s avatar.
But first, let’s take a look at how Lucas looks now:
Previously, players didn’t have a visible body as there was simply no need for it. However, now that a 2nd player exists, players must be able to see each other as fellow police officers, as opposed to the floating guns that we’ve been using. We’d also want to make the player associate themselves with the avatar, so the avatar should follow the player’s motions wherever possible. This is uniquely possible within VR, as we have positional data regarding the player’s hands and head. It’s not enough to reconstruct the entire body, but we can make some approximations such that we end up with a believable result.
The solution we came up with is relatively simple. First, we place the head and hands of the player where they should be; In the same position as the headset and controllers:
The next step is to add the rest of the body. Without additional data, we can, to some degree, make some assumptions about the character’s body. By approximating the body as a mass hanging from the head connected by a hinge, we have a reasonable approximation of the body’s position in most standing situations.
We think the addition of the Avatars will bring alot of immersion to the gameplay experience of The Torus Syndicate, and have already started adding various places where the player can see themselves. See you on next week’s update!
Hurray! The Torus Syndicate is now on Steam.
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