Walking Design

I was tasked with designing and developing a way for the players to walk in our experience.

Research into existing systems

My first step in designing a movement system for our game was looking into the systems of other games. I researched various systems in other VR games (Skyrim, Half-Life: Alyx, VR Chat, Golf It! (from playing it), etc.) and noted them down. Afterward, I decided if they were a potential solution for our project and if they were I slightly adjusted them and wrote them down.

After I noted down several ideas I picked out the best ones and worked them out into a walk options design document:

After I made the walk options document I asked my team for feedback on the options. We chose option 1, afterward I slightly adjusted the design. I also slightly iterated on the design while I was writing the code for it. You can read more about that in Walking Development.

Sprint 4 - Iterating on the walking

In previous sprints and during this sprint I got feedback from various sources that asked me to change the walking mechanic in various ways. I got this feedback from peers, teachers and my teammates. Some of the feedback conflicted with each other so I had to carefully think about what users actually wanted.

Some of the requested changes:

· I want to walk without buttons

· I want to walk while holding buttons

· I want to alternate my steps, because it feels more natural

· I want to be able to use both my legs at the same time to move forwards if I feel like it

· I want to be able to move backwards

· I move backwards on accident, could you remove it?

· I move to slow

· The motions I have to make to be able to move are too big

· The motion the player needs to make doesn’t look like how someone normally walks

Of these requested changes I had to figure out what users actually wanted, while still keeping it in scope and fitting to our environment. Because I was unsure of what would feel right I decided to prototype several of these changes.

I made 4 main prototypes with various variations within each of them:

· Vertical movement walking where I have a slight interval where I ignore movement of the opposite velocity (so people don’t move backwards on accident).

· Vertical movement where the player constantly moves when moving the controllers.

· Horizontal movement walking.

· Vertical movement walking without holding or repressing buttons, where I switch between standing still and walking by entering/exiting a walking state when the player presses a button.

After having tested each of these systems internally and some bigger changes externally I settled on the walking method where you press a button to enter walking mode, and after that you can move your arms normally along your body to move forward.