The 5 Design Ideas 3-9/10/22

This First blog is about me discussing the 5 Individual technical and design challenges that i want to tackle to learn about VR game development and learn about the design of VR interaction. I have chosen:

General / All purpose Interactions

• An interactive and animated button and lever interaction system
• An interactive door system
  
• An interactive radial menu as an in-game smartwatch, attached to the player’s wrist
  

Specific Interactions

• An in-game painting tool where the player can pick up a brush and paint onto a canvas
  
• A main menu system using only 3D, diegetic/in-world components

Animated Button and lever interactions are common in many VR games as they have many reason to be used to interact with the virtual world or for changing settings for the game. My design idea for Interactive Buttons would be a simple put your hand near the button and pressed the trigger with that hand to activate, as for the interactive lever design i would be instead put your hand near the level and grab and hold with the grip button and physically pull or push the lever. These button and lever design allow for intuitive link between the physical input and virtual output while not being too complex

An interactive door shouldn't be something like a motion sensor activate door that are in many businesses like supermarkets, rather something the player should touch and move themselves. My design idea for an interactive Door would be a grab and push/pull using the grip button on the controller, a very similar design to the lever, to easily communicate with the player on where the door should be grabbed to interact with it there with be door handle/knob to help direct the players physical actions. This Design idea is similar to how doors work in Phasmophobia. 

An interactive radial menu are featured in many games like Pavlov VR and half life: Alyx. where they are used to either buy weapons or equip a new weapon respectively. They are used as a fast way to search through a menu using the analog sticks that All popular hand controllers come with. The design of the radial menu should be a button press or combo of buttons to open up the menu that would open on/near the respective hand and would follow the hand until closed. I think radial menu shouldn't be used as a settings menu but rather a gameplay feature menu if it is required for the game.

A in-game painting tool can be useful for allowing player creativity inside the game. some VR programs are just for 3D in-game painting with many different tools to help the artist to create in the 3D virtual world. personally i would like to learn about how to code this type of VR feature for uses in different ideas that i have but in-terms of design. It would be picking up an object like a pen or brush and using the trigger on that hand to start painting. The paint lines would follow the end of the pen or brush.

An example of a main menu system that uses only a 3D, diegetic design in a VR game would be Gorilla tag. This game has a computer and keyboard inside of a tree which has many different settings and important game features like private game hosting and joining. This computer is controlled using the keyboard and pushing the keys with your hand. The main issue with using a 3D, diegetic main menu system is that it is more time consuming and can be more frustrating if not designed well. Instead of creating a main menu in this diegetic design i would use it for a different menu one idea could be a wizard spell book, where you change spells the prepared spells and known spells that you have similar to how the wizard class in D&D works.