Da Vinci's Workshop is a collaboration project between NHTV University of Applied Sciences and Ubisoft for in-house experimentation with Virtual Reality in the form of a VR "escape room"-styled game using the Assassin's Creed IP. In this cooptional experience players have to take on puzzles and challenges together to discover a piece of Eden.
There is no plan for a commercial release, this is a student only project. As part of the learning experience the staff from Ubisoft have given the team valuable feedback from their field of expertise.
Platform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, created in UE4.
Roles: Technical Design, Scripting, Puzzle Design.
Project Duration: September 2016-July 2017
There is no plan for a commercial release, this is a student only project. As part of the learning experience the staff from Ubisoft have given the team valuable feedback from their field of expertise.
Platform: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, created in UE4.
Roles: Technical Design, Scripting, Puzzle Design.
Project Duration: September 2016-July 2017
Personal Contributions
Puzzle Design: I took ownership of one of the games' puzzle sequences and lead its development from start to finish. That includes concepting, creating paper prototypes, technical implementation in engine (see Technical Design), tuning based on player feedback, and bugfixing.
At the beginning of the project I struggled with that role a bit, as it was my first time doing puzzle design and I had to work with high expectations and tough deadlines. However, despite some early missteps in the end I am happy with my work and I managed to learn a lot both about puzzle design and about working under pressure in roles I m not comfortable with.
At the beginning of the project I struggled with that role a bit, as it was my first time doing puzzle design and I had to work with high expectations and tough deadlines. However, despite some early missteps in the end I am happy with my work and I managed to learn a lot both about puzzle design and about working under pressure in roles I m not comfortable with.
Technical Design: Using Unreal Engine 4's Blueprint system I programmed logic and behaviour for elements of my puzzle sequence, for example our version of the iconic Assassin's Creed crossbow (as seen on the right).
I also helped with the implementation of bigger underlying systems like Audio or the Hint system, developed additional interactions unique to the challenges of VR and focused on debugging and bugfixing towards the end of the project. Mentoring: During the project the opportunity for me to mentor some of my team members in the use of Blueprints, Unreal Engine's visual scripting language, arose. Depending on their level that meant teaching programming and scripting fundamentals in some cases, and joint development of systems in other cases. Here you can see a prototype for a puzzle sequence we created during mentoring sessions on the left and the final in-game version created under my supervision on the right |
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