Episode #11 [04-1992]
"Escape The Hedron"



Time flies. Time flies. A whole year had passed since I did anything for this episode, as the past year was used on other episodes, not to mention the massive 4 months headache in trying to get a VR character with arms, legs and body. I ended up using FinalIK, which I purchased in Nov 2023. Works like a charm!

Anyway, during the summer my family was in a invention center where they played with technology in Porsgrunn and there was a really nice optical illusion tunnel where we walked through. The room was dark but there was a spinning cylinder inside with lights, and as we walked through it our brain suddenly disconnected the safe and very still on-ground walkabout fooling our brain to think we really was rotated. It was a quite thrilling brain experience, and then it struck me. I can use this effect in Unity and model up a path way just like that and really fool peoples mind in VR that they are beeing rotated inside a cylinder.

I've added a screenshot of that fully working, not yet final design below on todays date. Further, I will fine tune, tweak and bug fix some other things in this Episode due to the introduction of FinalIK, but I have to really try to start developing some mini games that must be played in order to find the exit from this level.



Time flies since April last year! Naturally, this episode #11 was left back in May 2022 in a working state so far. From May and until December 2022 was used to develop other episodes but most importantly the "Prolouge" or the Time Machine section that ties everything together.

Anyway, after the merge of 6 episodes together with the main project I had to spent some weeks getting back all the XR rig, controllers, animation, effects etc. to merge fine with the main project in Unity. Just, today, I finally managed to get the extracting part of now two bars that will glide towards either the left or right hand towards the player, amongst some nice PostProcessing fader and heaps of logic and code that will be controlled by the GameManager to keep every episode in checks and balances. I can now successfully walk out of the TimeMachine (main unity project) and get into the Dome and start playing that game. No bugs, no errors or strange behaviours.

I have still to figure out some introduction section to enter the Dome, but also start to think about more sounds effects, speech or posters and effects to occur in that state. I also need to figure out what kind of mini-games one are expected to play for each block that appears (just like the Lawnmower man movie, which this Episode takes its inspiration from).

I cannot finalize anything in this episode just yet, as I still have bugs to sort out (as a cause of the merge in November 2022) for at least 2 other episodes.

For now, I'll leave with a screenshot where you can now see the Time Machine located beside the dome game play area :-)




All available time since 10 Apr was used only on Episode #2, as I needed to code, design and finalize the key element of this VR Experience in which I can now select a random block in the dome and this extractor is spawned out with some polygon animation (in Lightwave, called Morph, but in Unity called BlendScapes) which work fantastic. I have also implemented sound effects and more interraction. There isn't much visually to show since last time, but quite a lot of details at the end of that Extractor tube is shown below.

Until next time, I will probably work a bit on Episode #3 (which was posted today), but also come back to Episode #2 to try to clone the extractor so that players can have 2, maybe more selected and animated at the same time. But, there is a problem that the source of my original inspiration ever showed: No objects came from the same place, thus leaving out the logic of how to explain/show collisions between these Extractor tubes?!!

Oh well, I'll have to figure something out, or I will just leave it alone with only 1 tube available at the same time. In addition, I think I must configure a "hands only" for this VR Experience, as its meant to be played/experienced that way to be true to the original source. Right now, naturally I use only the Oculus Hand Controllers during programming and testing.



As this Episode deals with an single scene environment mostly, this VR project might be quicker in production that for example some other VR episodes. The main object in this VR episode revolves you are inside an ball, but more specifically its actually called an "Goldberg polyhedron", also known as "Truncated Icosahedron sphere", "Geodesic Polyhedron - Goldberg/Clinton Truncated Icosahedron" etc

I actually stared experimenting with the object itself on 21st of May 2021 (about 1 month before I actually got an Oculus Quest 2 headset, as you may already know, I started learning Unity in January 2021 or so).

The amount of single objects for this experience involves 2252 blocks that can be touched. As with all my other episodes they draw inspiration from a specific time period, movie, game, event or just something that stuck out in my childhood memories, hence the "Moment in Time" nameing of this 10-episode project.

From May 2021 until 1st of March of 2022, not much was done, other than gathering research material and working on Episode #7 regarding coding in Unity and more. From 3rd of April 2022 things evolved and was worked on for about 1 week, from doing a lot of manual work with the "dome", trying different importing techniques in Unity and how to detect each block as a unique gameobject. After that code and stuff was more or less figured out of, I started working on the overall graphics and feel of this project. You may seen some resemblence to something that has to do with Virtual Reality and a story that is mostly forgotten these days (but not on my watch!) I intend to honor my thoughts and experience with that story in my own way.

For those who know what story I'm looking to re-create, well, enjoy the developing show in the form of posts and pictures from this project as it evolves.

The software used to far to get to this point of today was:
- Lightwave Modeler / Layout 11.5
- "enumerate_surfaces.py" / SaveSurf_20.zip for Lighwave Modeler
- Blender to create that original polyhedron object
- Photoshop CS4
- Accutrans 3D
- Unity setup with URP/VR/XR/Quest2.

Other research reveals that this experience/game will have an single level, 1 out of 2252 chances to get out (win the game), but only 8 or 15 minutes to solve it/get out. It's probably gonna be one of the most challenging mini-games you'd ever had to play if you really want to win. But, again, my projects isn't about gaming, its more VR experimentation and experiences salted with a game-like approach. After all, make your own life a happy game and you'll live longer than you'd expect.