Concept and Ideation 

 When we found out about the Great Pacific Garbage patch, we were inspired to use VR as a medium for education. We wanted the experience to feel friendly and casual, without undermining the seriousness of the issue. To accomplish this, we built a fictional narrative around the player’s character (Scuba) and decided to juxtapose real world issues as interactions in the game.

Game Mechanics

VR is a new territory when it comes to what mechanics work well within the medium. For the purpose and scope of this game, we decided to focus on swimming and exploration as the main mechanics. Swimming in 6 degrees of freedom is difficult in VR - we put a lot of effort in reducing nausea when moving. The speed had to feel just right as well. So for reducing nausea, we implemented a vignette to the peripheral vision when the movement speed increases, and the vignette goes away when the player is standing still. Another key to this mechanic was swimming in the direction that the player is looking at. So the axes of movement are not world-centric but player-centric. We learned that it is easier to orient to oneself in VR - and this also reduces nausea by reinforcing the sense of one’s own body in virtual space. Swimming and exploration are two sides of the same coin - one activates the ‘self’ and the other activates the ‘world’. Since education was the aim of this game, exploration contains things like facts that can be found all over the map, sea creature interactions and different types of collectible garbage (using Scuba’s hands and water cannon).

Developing in Unity: Physics, Art style and Optimization

For VR development in Unity, we went for Steam VR and VRTK SDKs. The physics parameters were set to be believable but not realistic to underwater physics. We found that exaggerating things like the water cannon projectile force and reducing the drag on objects that would normally be applied by water - made the gameplay more fun and interactions smoother.

The art style is geared to feel semi-realistic sci-fi, with a cartoony touch. We took inspirations from the Pixar movie Wall-E (since Scuba was a similar character) and Subnautica (game) which is also set underwater with stylized art-style and rich colors. By complementing vintage look (rusted parts since everything is underwater) with modern/futuristic technology (showcasing futuristic concepts of recycling and garbage collection).

The challenge, however, was to reduce overdraw calls and optimize for latency. We used LODs and detailed texture maps instead of high polygon meshes to optimize. Textures from the Megascan library and Quixel Mixer were an important part of the workflow. Particles within Unity were used to make some areas of the water murky and look polluted.