Comfort Food
A VR experience about reliving good memories through food.
Click here to view design documentation
Click here to play the game (requires Oculus Quest headset and Side Quest loader application)
Team and My Responsibilities
Comfort Food was created by one environment artist, one sound designer, and one programmer. I served as the single programmer and as such was responsible for integrating all assets, as well as creating the interactivity of the scene (head tracking, hand tracking, object interactions, etc.), handling the transitions between scenes, and queuing and playing the animations. All three of us had input on the design of the experience and how best to direct guests through the experience.
Game Description
Comfort Food was an interactive VR experience about capturing the warm feeling of reliving past memories of food and friendship in sometimes dreary modern settings. The experience uses a linear story line to evoke the desired emotional states. Using visual and audio cues, we sought to guide our guests through a fast food restaurant, a transition to an ethereal beach scene, and then back to the restaurant having been changed by the experience of the memories.
Challenge
Midway through the development process, the team transitioned to remote work due to Covid. We were unable to do live tests of the experience, but we were able to record the experience on our own and then receive feedback from both our peers and faculty. We needed to establish common meeting times across three time zones and much of our communication became text based as apposed to face-to-face.
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I was the sole programmer on the project. As both of my partners had no Unity experience, I became the critical path to incorporate all assets (both art and sound) into the experience. I needed to work with my partners in order to properly place and integrate these assets, compounding my workload. I held multiple remote meetings with one of my teammates to teach her how to use Unity to enable a more effective process.
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Development Environment / Tools Used
We used an Oculus Quest 2 along with the Unity engine to create our digital experience. We communicated using Facebook Messenger for text based interactions and Zoom for video calls. Version control and asset management was accomplished using Unity Collaborate.
Highlight
The experience received input from the user by tracking their head movements to control movement through the scene, tracking hand positions to use gestures to interact with the environment, and using object interactions in the scene to trigger events. These features were a complex set of tracking systems that elevated the overall experience and provided great learning opportunities.
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