8 ms·

Walking Dream – single-player adventure game for the Oculus Quest

86 points by simonpure 6y ago

sxp 6y ago
> Conrad was ... the author of several technical books, including the classic "Land of Lisp". That book has very interesting art. I hope he brings that style to the game. I hope he does something strange like implement the game in Lisp and use some sort of self-modifying game engine. > Walking Dream, on the other hand, is built on a brand new combat engine with a rich weapons crafting system. This system is shared by both the player as well as the many enemies, and turns each battle into a completely novel experience, requiring completely novel strategies at every encounter!
- tazjin 6y ago
  I immediately recognised the Land of Lisp art style - looking forward to trying this. On a side note, this is one of the few things where I would like to be able to sign up for a newsletter.
  - andybak 6y ago
    > On a side note, this is one of the few things where I would like to be able to sign up for a newsletter. How does one solve the "tell me about this in a few weeks/months when you launch" without email notification? There's no reliable way to notify someone via Twitter or Facebook. Timelines are too noisy and there's no mass private messaging APIs. I love my email but I've noticed that projects and products are beginning to appear that shun email communication totally. I nagged a few projects into starting a simple list via Google Forms because I knew I wouldn't notice when they launched any other way. But "Me nagging" doesn't seem very scalable.
- drcode 6y ago
  The closest the game has to "self modifying code" is that you can "see" the "brains" of the opponents that shows the actions they will perform, and then attack with "hacking" weapons directly against their brain, to alter their behavior.
gfaure 6y ago
The most interesting thing here for me is the use of redirected walking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirected_walking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirected_walking). I saw the video accompanying the paper but this would be the first game I've seen try to use it.
- gwillen 6y ago
  I will be very curious what the minimum area requirement for the game is. I can't imagine redirected walking being very convincing in the Quest's minimum 6.5 x 6.5 ft square.
  - trsohmers 6y ago
    I've played around in Tea For God (https://sidequestvr.com/app/65/tea-for-god-under-development https://sidequestvr.com/app/65/tea-for-god-under-development) which does this on the quest, and it works really well, and I didn't even use the full 6.5'x6.5' (in my case ~6'x4') possible. Within a minute I lost all sense of where I was in the real world.
    - jmiskovic 6y ago
      Tea For God does not use redirected walking. It procedurally adopts game space to available room space, and uses clever mechanisms like non-euclidian geometry and various elevators to allow for huge worlds. Still, movement is 1:1 mapped between room and game. Redirected walking means distorting the mapping when moving or rotating, to fit any game world into limited playing space. In research it's always applied in larger spaces, x5 times bigger than living rooms. If you distort moving or turning too much, users lose balance or become nauseous. Here's a decent intro paper. 15 Years of Research on Redirected Walking in Immersive Virtual Environments https://illusioneering.cs.umn.edu/papers/nilsson-cga2018.pdf https://illusioneering.cs.umn.edu/papers/nilsson-cga2018.pdf
  - polycaster 6y ago
    (2m × 2m if you're curious)
  - 6y ago
kierenj 6y ago
Would love to see a newsletter signup form. Sounds great but I'm not sure I'll remember it. And I can't trust The Great Algorithms to plop this at the top of any feed..
mrfusion 6y ago
Redirected walking is what I’m most excited about. You get another whole level of realism when you can just walk endlessly through VR. I tried tea for god on the quest and I was sold on it. It’s the future of VR IMO.
mrfusion 6y ago
The developer posted more information on Reddit and goes into details in redirected walking. https://pay.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/hlyp0o/walking_dream_an_rpg_for_the_oculus_quest_with/ https://pay.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/hlyp0o/walking...
matty22 6y ago
I don't see anywhere where it says _where_ it will be released. I assume SideQuest?
RBURBURXEIVG3KO 6y ago
When I load the page with Javascript it shows a blogpost about a hack for the Clojure REPL and nothing about the game.
mark_l_watson 6y ago
I can’t wait. Conrad is into so many interesting things. A few years ago he gave a video talk to my local blockchain meetup. The Quest is my favorite toy/leisure activity device. Can’t wait!
stephen_cagle 6y ago
Not directly related, but I just finished "Half Life: Alyx" yesterday. It is exceptional. I can't believe it is running on the same Rift hardware I bought years ago. They have just figured out how to do so many things correctly in that game. Sorry about the tangent, just can't recommend it enough.

86 points by simonpure 6y ago

sxp 6y ago

> Conrad was ... the author of several technical books, including the classic "Land of Lisp". That book has very interesting art. I hope he brings that style to the game. I hope he does something strange like implement the game in Lisp and use some sort of self-modifying game engine. > Walking Dream, on the other hand, is built on a brand new combat engine with a rich weapons crafting system. This system is shared by both the player as well as the many enemies, and turns each battle into a completely novel experience, requiring completely novel strategies at every encounter!

tazjin 6y ago
I immediately recognised the Land of Lisp art style - looking forward to trying this. On a side note, this is one of the few things where I would like to be able to sign up for a newsletter.
- andybak 6y ago
  > On a side note, this is one of the few things where I would like to be able to sign up for a newsletter. How does one solve the "tell me about this in a few weeks/months when you launch" without email notification? There's no reliable way to notify someone via Twitter or Facebook. Timelines are too noisy and there's no mass private messaging APIs. I love my email but I've noticed that projects and products are beginning to appear that shun email communication totally. I nagged a few projects into starting a simple list via Google Forms because I knew I wouldn't notice when they launched any other way. But "Me nagging" doesn't seem very scalable.
drcode 6y ago
The closest the game has to "self modifying code" is that you can "see" the "brains" of the opponents that shows the actions they will perform, and then attack with "hacking" weapons directly against their brain, to alter their behavior.

gfaure 6y ago

The most interesting thing here for me is the use of redirected walking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirected_walking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirected_walking). I saw the video accompanying the paper but this would be the first game I've seen try to use it.

gwillen 6y ago
I will be very curious what the minimum area requirement for the game is. I can't imagine redirected walking being very convincing in the Quest's minimum 6.5 x 6.5 ft square.
- trsohmers 6y ago
  I've played around in Tea For God (https://sidequestvr.com/app/65/tea-for-god-under-development https://sidequestvr.com/app/65/tea-for-god-under-development) which does this on the quest, and it works really well, and I didn't even use the full 6.5'x6.5' (in my case ~6'x4') possible. Within a minute I lost all sense of where I was in the real world.
  - jmiskovic 6y ago
    Tea For God does not use redirected walking. It procedurally adopts game space to available room space, and uses clever mechanisms like non-euclidian geometry and various elevators to allow for huge worlds. Still, movement is 1:1 mapped between room and game. Redirected walking means distorting the mapping when moving or rotating, to fit any game world into limited playing space. In research it's always applied in larger spaces, x5 times bigger than living rooms. If you distort moving or turning too much, users lose balance or become nauseous. Here's a decent intro paper. 15 Years of Research on Redirected Walking in Immersive Virtual Environments https://illusioneering.cs.umn.edu/papers/nilsson-cga2018.pdf https://illusioneering.cs.umn.edu/papers/nilsson-cga2018.pdf
- polycaster 6y ago
  (2m × 2m if you're curious)
- 6y ago

kierenj 6y ago

Would love to see a newsletter signup form. Sounds great but I'm not sure I'll remember it. And I can't trust The Great Algorithms to plop this at the top of any feed..

mrfusion 6y ago

Redirected walking is what I’m most excited about. You get another whole level of realism when you can just walk endlessly through VR. I tried tea for god on the quest and I was sold on it. It’s the future of VR IMO.

mrfusion 6y ago

The developer posted more information on Reddit and goes into details in redirected walking. https://pay.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/hlyp0o/walking_dream_an_rpg_for_the_oculus_quest_with/ https://pay.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/hlyp0o/walking...

matty22 6y ago

I don't see anywhere where it says _where_ it will be released. I assume SideQuest?

RBURBURXEIVG3KO 6y ago

When I load the page with Javascript it shows a blogpost about a hack for the Clojure REPL and nothing about the game.

mark_l_watson 6y ago

I can’t wait. Conrad is into so many interesting things. A few years ago he gave a video talk to my local blockchain meetup. The Quest is my favorite toy/leisure activity device. Can’t wait!

stephen_cagle 6y ago

Not directly related, but I just finished "Half Life: Alyx" yesterday. It is exceptional. I can't believe it is running on the same Rift hardware I bought years ago. They have just figured out how to do so many things correctly in that game. Sorry about the tangent, just can't recommend it enough.