Author: Hsuan Chao

Trailer

“Escape” is a VR+PC cross-platform multiplayer game. Two players join the game through VR and PC at the same time and they need to collaborate with each other to win. The game is about saving the player trapped in the game world, by completing all the tasks and returning to reality. The work focuses on exploring VR cross-platform technologies and tries to create shared experiences and social presence through different platforms.

For the trailer of this work, I actually went to the photography shooting booth in the uni and shoot some footage that two players playing this game together.

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Poster

I also designed the poster for the graduation exhibitions.

The questions are formulated based on questions in the Social Presence in Gaming Questionnaire(SPGQ) and the Network Minds Measure of Social Presence(NMMSP). After removing the repeated and not suitable questions, 10 five-point intensity scale questions are left. In addition, there are four open questions in order to ask players about their social presence and gaming behaviour.

Results

Players in general agree that they feel connected to each other (Q3), enjoy being with others (Q4), depended on others (Q6) and the other player’s mood affected their emotional state (Q2). All the participants strongly agreed that players must cooperate and help each other to win the game(Q9).

When asked if one’s opinions were clear to others(Q5), it got an average of 3.9 points. It seems that the original indicating graphics didn’t provide a convenient and direct way for players to communicate. Therefore, in later versions of the game, it was removed and replaced by verbal communication.

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Feedbacks

Many participants mentioned that they felt a sense of social presence when they saw the avatar of the other player. Some mentioned that when collaborating with each other, they felt a sense of social presence. For instance, “communicating and guiding each other in order to complete the tasks – e.g. showing which direction to go to and in turn free the pc player character from a room.” or “When we tried to arrive at the same gate and my partner helped me remove obstacles”. Overall, most players give positive feedback and affirm that these types of tasks are helpful to stimulate social presence.

Future Work Suggestions

Many participants suggested that only verbal communication is not enough, especially when they see that VR players can manipulate the avatars and have the ability to show some simple gestures, such as waving, pointing, and making a fist. Some others mentioned the importance of 3D sounds so that the players can distinguish the direction and distance of their partner based on which direction the sound comes from or the volume of the voice. There are also some interesting points mentioned that can be applied to this work in the future, such as tactile feedback or competitive interaction mode.

Research Question

1. How do players communicate and interact with each other in games through different platforms?

2. How it affects players’ feelings of social presence?

These two key points affect all the game’s settings and the following research. A variety of different interaction and communication methods are applied in this work, and user tests are performed to collect players’ opinions on the gaming experience and the impact of interaction and communication settings on social presence.

The purpose of this user test is to observe the players’ in-game communication and interaction behaviours in different platforms and to further find its possibilities to affect players’ sense of social presence. I tested with 4 groups in total, with 2 people in each group. In addition, because of the time and distance limitation, two groups were tested remotely, while the other two groups of the testers performed the test co-located.

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Task1 – open the door

At this stage, VR players need to find the room where the non-VR player is locked. In this process, non-VR players could give instructions of the direction to guide VR players to the right room, while VR players need to shoot the enemies along the road.

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Task2 – Laser area

In the laser area, players need to avoid the laser light that causes damage. Since non-VR players can only control the movement of the avatar instead of dodging or manipulating objects, they need the help of VR players to move the provided reflective cube to reflect the laser and let them pass without being injured.

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This task is designed to be impossible for one player to complete. In this part, players need to further apply the skills they learned from the first task, such as grabbing and shooting and maintaining communication and coordination with each other.

Task3 – Block bridge

At this stage, the small blocks are linked to the larger version of the blocks, and if players move the small blocks, the larger blocks will move accordingly.

VR players need to move the tiny blocks to build a continuous bridge to cross. At the same time, there will be enemies that keep approaching and non-VR players need to defeat them while VR player is trying to make the bridge.

This stage is the most complex task, requiring players to have more fine control, more coordination and cooperation.

Colour code

In this project, all the PC players related objects will be blue, including their avatars and gun; while all interactable objects that VR players could grab would be green. Meanwhile, anything dangerous or belongs to enemies is red.

Shader

Here shows some shaders I made and some are used for the final version of this project.

Avatar representation

AI enemy function

In this work, it applied the AI enemy function,  enemies will automatically move around, chase the players, and attack. By setting the navigation mesh, enemies will move within the designed area.

Health bar function

The health bar shows the health of the players and the enemies so that they can decide whether to save their partner or not.

The map was originally designed based on the concept of the circuit board and subsequently changed to its current state in response to the task settings.

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The minimap shows all the locations of all players and the enemies. Only non-VR players have the access to the minimap.

The perspective of non-VR players is the third-person perspective, so that player could see their own avatar and interact with others. The use of cinemachine plugin help achieves the setting of third-person camera as well as the character rigging.

Cinemachine could achieve the following camera functions, so the avatar will follow the mouse to change the direction they are facing.

Here shows some functions that are applied in this work, including the multiplayer(PUN2), AI enemies system, and the 3rd person perspective camera that is used for PC players.

Background Story Scene

The game is about two players who used to enter the game and play together. However, after losing the game last time, one of the players was caught and trapped in the game forever. Therefore, the other player decided to enter the game again, complete all the tasks this time and save his/her friend from the game world and back to reality.

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Tutorial Scene

The way to manipulate the avatars, as well as the rules, will be explained in the tutorial scene. Also, players could practice the shooting function before they enter the game.

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