Experience "Rick and Morty VR" at PAX West

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On September 4th, Beijing time, the extremely popular animated series "Rick and Motie" developed by Dan Harmon, the creative community of the Wattle League, finally launched VR games! The game is called "Rick and Morty Simulation: Virtual Reality" and will be released at the 2016 PAX West Game Show. The following is an article published by David Jagneaux on uploadvr, which describes his personal experience.

Rick and Morty Simulation: VR game interface

Into the 2016 PAX West game show, I know what to expect. The PAX Game Show has never been famous for the large-scale press conferences or start-ups of various hi-tech events organized by the media. In short, PAX Games is an event tailored for fans, and it has an extraordinary level of excitement.

As a media participant in such an exhibition, generally there will not be much surprise. However, from time to time, there will always be some information published before the show, which will generate interest on the Internet. Sometimes it is a game based on big IP adaptations or famous development teams. It is released in a not-so-noisy exhibition area separated by a black screen.

This year, this game is "Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-ality" (Rick and Morty Simulator: VR), an awesome game.

"Justin Roiland (Justin Roland), one of the founders of "Rick and Morty", has a very sincere and intense passion for VR", Alex Schwartz, CEO of Owlchemy Labs Chris Schwarz) said. "...he retransmitted our game "Job Simulator" on Twitter, so I responded that he said it was a game we made. A few days later, I came to an event and met Alex, we drank wine, and then happened to discover that we also had the same idea: 'If we make Rick and Mody's VR version, but in fact it's basically Rick Gardner's Work Simulation? !'... ... A few weeks later, we came to the office of the Adult Swim Channel and confirmed the plan."

When I met with Owlchemy Labs' team at the PAX West game show and discussed the game plan, they both smiled. The immense success of Work Simulation and its upcoming multi-platform operations, recent investment news, and games based on the hottest animated drama series are hardly unexciting.

They took me to the mysterious black curtain just mentioned and came to the Adult Swim's game booth. I put on the HTC Vive head display to experience Rick and Motie VR games.

The initial experience creates a sense of familiarity in the best possible way. Rick, Morty and I stood in Rick's garage and were surrounded by familiar things, as long as they were fans of the show. His worktable was right in front of me, with rows of shelves against the wall.

Rick reached out and handed me a basket of dirty clothes, and Morty's sharp voice proved that I was actually one of his clones. I took the basket, threw dirty clothes into the washing machine, and listened to Rick's grumble. He is never a patient person.

After that, Rick and Morty jumped into the portal and started a new adventure, leaving me entertaining myself in the garage. The entire space is divided into four areas, each about the size of the workbench in Work Simulation.

"We found that if you have a huge space, and people click on the button to start instantly, then they want to move wherever they want to go," Schwartz said. “People can walk freely in the world without standing. Through our system, players can only move between active areas, but still have room-scale tracking and positioning capabilities in these areas, so in fact they are moving on their own. ".

Because I knew that the time for participating in the demo was limited, my actions became crazy. I crossed to the opposite area and quickly grabbed the plumbus (self Baidu). I must get it.

Plumbus

After the twitch stopped, I laughed for a long time, waving the plumbus in all directions and knocking around, basically becoming a fool behind this dark, secretive PAX curtain.

After that, I started breaking the bottle and smashing everything in the garage because I could interact with it in VR and that's what I would do in this scenario. All interactable objects cannot escape my atrocities. This spontaneous game setup quickly became a famous feature of Owlchemy.

"We need to create a lot of things based on "work simulations," Schwartz said. "Since there is now a foundation for flexible adaptation with our engines, we can use a variety of interesting applications."

"Rick and Moti" is the kind of IP that every game designer dreams of owning, but has fear in the actual operation. The fan base is overly obsessed with raw materials, and each episode is full of reference content, so that it is difficult to make choices in the brainstorming of "Rick and Moti" VR games.

Obviously, there is also a lot of original content in the game - first of all, the drama is 2D and the game is 3D, but the game is also heavily influenced by TV dramas. Fortunately, the core foundation of Owlchemy's "Work Simulation" is highly adaptable and has plans for its continued use and iteration.

However, the biggest challenge in the VR production process of "Rick and Moty" is the difficulty that the Owlchemy team had never faced when developing "Work Simulation". It was the player and the NPC (non-player control role). The degree of interaction. Since "work simulation" doesn't have any real NPC other than a few lines of robots, many principles are much simpler.

For Rak and Moti, the VR version said that designing NPC interaction has become their new problem.

"Now we are trying to solve new problems," Schwartz said. "We dealt with these issues and realized that we needed to figure out how to create 3D animation characters that are fully equipped, able to make sounds, interact with players in real time in space, and explain everything crazy in the game."

What happens if you shoot him and interrupt it when Rick talks? If you finish the task before he's finished explaining it? If you embarrass him? These are questions that Owlchemy needs to answer. But generally speaking, these are not problems at all in non-VR games.

In addition, the goal of Rick and Morty's Simulation: Virtual Reality is not merely to complete the repackaging of "Work Simulation" with Justin Roiland's taste. There are also plots. There are detailed narratives. Players can go through the portal to explore and laugh in the process.

More details about the game are still unknown, but it feels like the real, funny, immersive experience that I would like.

Justin Roiland will participate in the creation of the game from time to time, but most of the time as a screenwriter and consultant. It turns out that setting up your own game studio and creating cartoons requires a lot of time.

Regarding "Rick and Morty Simulation: Virtual Reality" VR games, Baidu VR Community (Micro-Signal: BDVRbbs) will continue to follow up on the follow-up reports and pay attention!