Since the Kickstarter campaign in August 2012, Oculus Rift targeted games for Virtual Reality. "If a game works, then everything will work". Even though VR has been used a lot for business and industrial purposes, the community of VR and game developers pushed forward the platform and the limits of this new medium. In this talk I will analyze the process of design and development of Yon Paradox, sharing our results on what went good and what didn't work.

1. Virtual Reality gaming: analysis
of Yon Paradox development
Author: Fabio Mosca – AnotheReality
MILAN 25-26 NOVEMBER 2016

2. About me
<Mosca Fabio>
CTO at AnotheReality
- Game designer & programmer
- VR designer & addicted
- Used the Oculus DK1 for 45
minutes at the first time,
without suffering sickness

3. Summary
Today we’ll talk about:

4. Summary
Today we’ll talk about:
 What seated VR implies for your design

5. Summary
Today we’ll talk about:
 What seated VR implies for your design
 Understanding simulator sickness

6. Summary
Today we’ll talk about:
 What seated VR implies for your design
 Understanding simulator sickness
 Case history: Yon Paradox

7. Summary
Today we’ll talk about:
 What seated VR implies for your design
 Understanding simulator sickness
 Case history: Yon Paradox
 Supporting both VR and normal PC

8. Summary
Today we’ll talk about:
 What seated VR implies for your design
 Understanding simulator sickness
 Case history: Yon Paradox
 Supporting both VR and normal PC
 Design choices in Yon Paradox driven by VR

9. Summary
Today we’ll talk about:
 What seated VR implies for your design
 Understanding simulator sickness
 Case history: Yon Paradox
 Supporting both VR and normal PC
 Design choices in Yon Paradox driven by VR
 Performance issues

10. Summary
Today we’ll talk about:
 What seated VR implies for your design
 Understanding simulator sickness
 Case history: Yon Paradox
 Supporting both VR and normal PC
 Design choices in Yon Paradox driven by VR
 Performance issues
 Results: what went well, what didn’t

11. Summary
Today we’ll talk about:
 What seated VR implies for your design
 Understanding simulator sickness
 Case history: Yon Paradox
 Supporting both VR and normal PC
 Design choices in Yon Paradox driven by VR
 Performance issues
 Results: what went well, what didn’t
 Takeaway

12. What seated VR implies for your design

13. What seated VR implies for your design
SEATED – Fixed position

14. What seated VR implies for your design
SEATED – Fixed position
• No movement (both inside
and ouside the game)
• Actions strictly bound to
your gaze (or hand
controllers)
Limitations come from head
movements and arms
tiredness

15. What seated VR implies for your design
SEATED – 1° person movement

16. What seated VR implies for your design
SEATED – 1° person movement
• No movement outside the
game, movement inside
• Automatic movement or
directed by controlelrs
This mode is subject to
simulator sickness,
expecially if not well
handled.
Movement is key both to
succeed and fail

17. What seated VR implies for your design
SEATED – 1° person movement
• No movement outside the
game, movement inside
• Automatic movement or
directed by controlelrs
This mode is subject to
simulator sickness,
expecially if not well
handled.
Movement is key both to
succeed and fail
Also 3° person movement

18. What seated VR implies for your design
Roomscale experiences
Lo sviluppo di Edge Guardian VR
Marco Giammetti, Maurizio Tatafiore

19. Understanding simulator sickness

20. Understanding simulator sickness
To know your Enemy, you must become
your Enemy
– Sun Tzu
Human specs: 3 motion-sensing systems
- Visual ( eyes detect vection )
- Vestibular ( inner ear )
- Proprioceptive ( body sensation )
- Normally, the three systems agree.

21. Understanding simulator sickness
Simulator Sickness
In VR there’s only visual illusion
- Room scale with real locomotion  Good
- Virtual locomotion  Vection
Vection: visual cues, but not the other 2
Body interprets sensory mismatch as
poisoning and reacts by purging.
PLEASE DO NOT FIGHT IT.

22. Understanding simulator sickness
Until we get those, we have to find our
workarounds!

23. Understanding simulator sickness
Eletric signals to your vestibular system?

24. Case history: Yon Paradox

25. Case history: Yon Paradox

26. Case history: Yon Paradox
Yon Paradox is a survival puzzle game where the hardest puzzle is
yourself. Set in a cyber dimension, an antimatter-powered time machine
broke, causing periodical time rewinds. You will have to solve riddles to
repair the time machine, while avoiding your past alter-egos to not
create paradoxes.
Released on Steam from 06 May
2016. It supports Oculus and HTC
Vive, as a seated experience

27. Case history: Yon Paradox
Yon Paradox is a game born for VR: we were able to make it run on a
Sapphire Radeon 7850 at 90 FPS on the Oculus CV1. You can imagine then
how smooth is without an headset 

28. Supporting both VR and normal PC

29. Supporting both VR and normal PC

30. Supporting both VR and normal PC
Market & Revenue:
• 130M users on Steam
• 150K – 200K VR users ( estimates of Oculus and HTC Vive)
Gameplay Design:
• Experience needs to be good both in VR and on PC
• Usually VR has more limitations and problems: better to
start from VR design and then migrate to desktop version.
User testing:
• Double testing: need to test both in VR and desktop
• VR testing is troublesome: needs lot of time for check
simulator sickness, requires bulky and expensive hardware).

31. Supporting both VR and normal PC

32. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR

33. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
The problem: performance
Virtual reality is performance hungry. Target is 90 frames per second,
2160 x 1440 resolution, without frame drops.

34. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
The problem: performance
Virtual reality is performance hungry. Target is 90 frames per second,
2160 x 1440 resolution, without frame drops.
Our solution: aesthetic
A graphic style that does not
require lights (all is unlit)
Close to no textures ( 130MB
download from Steam)
Worked only on shaders

35. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Our solution
We started to design the graphic style starting from this.

36. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Our solution
Before: standard toon shaders, with
static light
Now: custom shaders, no
lights.

37. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Our solution
Antichamber:
Prevalence of white / light
colors.
In VR means more pixels turned
on, more strain on the eye
This isn’t a real problem,
but having the screen
«darker» is a bonus for who
plays in VR extensively

38. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Results
The aesthetic initially thought for
performance saving has turned in a
strong selling point of the game.
Players who tried the desktop game
naturally think that this is a VR game

39. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
The problem
As a first person game in a large space, locomotion is required.
The game is prone to cause motion sickness, and we cannot really use
teleport since it breaks the core gameplay of the clones and paradoxes.

40. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
The problem
As a first person game in a large space, locomotion is required.
The game is prone to cause motion sickness, and we cannot really use
teleport since it breaks the core gameplay of the clones and paradoxes.
Our solution
Movement with constant
speed.
Rotation rachets to turn your
head, simulating the eye
blinking
Level design without any
vertical movement

41. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Our solution
Confort mode / rotation rachets

42. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Our solution
Constant movement speed, without accelerations

43. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Our solution
Level design of the environment tailormade, without using any
external asset.
All the game is on the same height level. No uphills / downhills, and
no ability to jump.

44. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Results
Even if during our playtests we had very few people that got VR sickness
(less than 5 people on 100), on Steam all the bad reviews come from the
ones who had nausea.

45. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
The problem
How do you show information in a VR UI? We do not have a screen with
corners. Where would you put information?

46. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
The problem
How do you show information in a VR UI? We do not have a screen with
corners. Where would you put information?
Our solution
Diegetic UI
Menus made only with
3D elements

47. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Our solution
See the hourglasses? They’re placed in the game context, and give you
information about how much time before a time jump.
That’s what diegetic means!

48. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Our solution
Main menu, pause menu and [spoiler] credits are entirely made with 3D
modelling, instead of 2D icons and text. This is to make the most of the
Oculus / Vive, where you can lean forward and backward.

49. Design choices in YonParadox driven by VR
Results
After a lot of iterations in all various levels, the UI is self-explanatory
enough to be understood to all our target users.
The only UI not working well yet is in the astrolabium, probably due to the
lack of animation.
The UI works perfectly also for desktop gameplay

50. Takeaway

51. Takeaway

52. Takeaway
VR in games forces you to find workarounds for performance. Use them as a
strong point. Games in VR does not require absolutely photorealism.
Users who get some motion sickness will surely write a bad review about
this. People without sickness won’t write a good review because of that.
Tell your users very clearly about this, or give them various options to
choose for the movement.

53. Takeaway
The experience you make developing games in VR, the constraints, the
users… is easily converted for B2B VR applications, which have a real
market, NOW.
Consider to make games prone for commercial licenses (Arcades / VR cafè),
which is an exploding market right now.

54. Ready to join the VR Community?

55. Thanks!
MILAN 25-26 NOVEMBER 2016
All pictures belong
to their respective authors
fabio@anotherealityvr.com
www.AnotheRealityVR.com
Twitter: @Gounemond
Facebook: AnotheReality
Interested in VR? You can join the
Virtual Reality Milano Meetup!