Halfway through the development, Luke Shingleton had picked up multiple roles early on and did a quick block out of an idea of how the main menu should look. After a couple of weeks, he passed this block out over to me to polish and rework the original design.
*Content in the video produced by Luke Shingleton*
I like the way he had the starting button in the middle of these two pillars to help frame it as a centrepiece, and I wanted to keep this idea but wasn't sure how to bring a design to life from it. After scaring google for hours, I came across an environment based around a broken temple in a forest. I was interested in this idea as I knew we already had temple wall and pillar assets for the temple level, which would allow us to reuse in house assets.
*Author Unknown used as a reference image*
However, I wanted to have curved walls at this level, and instead of putting more pressure on our asset team, I decided it would be more productive to go into blueprints and set up a spline. I wanted to try and keep this spline as dynamic as I could in case anyone else on the team needed to use curved walls in their level. Therefore, as seen in the video below, I set up a variable that would switch on the integer that was passed through and display the wall on the other end.
I was happy to create the original idea from Lukes Blockout, which was to keep the start button as the centrepiece. I wanted to have the player start at the campfire area and slowly progress in an interactable/ moveable environment, which you don't see in many VR games. It usually is a screen and a laser combination. Still, we tried to steer as far from that as possible to try and keep the player in the immersive flow as much as possible, which meant trying to avoid any 2D widgets.
On this level, we also wanted to give the player an options menu to switch between things like snap and smooth rotation and turn off something like a rumble in the controllers.
First Attempt
I wanted to create a rough layout on the buttons that would work and place beside one another. I tried to keep each side of the wall to have symmetric controls across side as according to David Ross he says,
"The simple explanation for our attraction to symmetry is that it's familiar. Symmetrical objects and images play by the rules that our brains are programmed to recognize easily."
As well as he quotes Allan Lightman, who says,
"I would claim that symmetry represents order, and we crave order in this strange universe we find ourselves in,"
I didn't want to make the buttons pop out and be the main thing the player sees, and that is why I wanted to use symmetry only when the player is looking at it, as in any game, players like to have the option to change their settings.
(Link to article for the quotes: https://science.howstuffworks.com/why-do-get-so-much-pleasure-from-symmetry.htm)
Second Attempt
Once I had the base design down, Luke Shingleton was able to design me a quick button with a hand on it to show the player they needed to push them in to activate each one.
I created a button blueprint to make this menu work instead of using widgets. This was because I wanted to avoid using any 2D widgets or in world lasers as it would break the player's immersion. The buttons are set up to set smooth rotation to true within the motion controller. Suppose the state of the button is changed, and the logic follows the same for a rumble. In that case, it sets a variable inside the motion controller to false if the state is changed. Still, I didn't have time to set up a dial for the snap rotation, so I have made it for when the button is pressed; it changed the snap rotation in the motion controller to 30 and when it's unpressed to 15.
Video Of Options Menu
Final Render
Out Of House Assets
These packs were downloaded and used at this level; it was only materials and assets all scripting has been done in house;
Dreamscape Nature : Meadows - Stylized Open World Environment - Campfire, bench, logs, stumps, sticks, pots and pans.
City of Brass: Environments - Materials only
City of Brass: Props - Materials only
Comments