SPELLS

I had originally devised a document that outlined how spells would interact with enemies in a combat scenario. After figuring out how the gesture input system worked and how simple the gestures had to be in order to be consistently responsive, I had to completely redo the design for spells.

Before I continue, I want to mention that at this time I had decided to make this game to be made for the Oculus Rift Consumer version. Which means that the controls have to match the new motion controls that Oculus unveiled earlier this year. I was ecstatic that the consumer version had it’s own motion controls because that means that my game idea is now feasible under just one hardware package. Yes, I need to redo certain control systems to take advantage of their setup as opposed to my own, but I was glad that I can unify controls under one concrete setup.

Anyways, the original idea for spells doesn’t work well with how the system recognizes spells. So I couldn’t have the spell link to another spell in order to create a more advanced spell and slight deviations of one spell couldn’t be relied upon since the system won’t be able to pick up those slight variations as a separate spell. So I decided to leave it as it was during my initial testing of recognizing three separate spells. The player will currently have three starting spells and in order to learn new, more powerful spells, the player will have venture forth in the world and find magical skills that they can learn (basically learn new gestures). I think this is the most simple and efficient use of my current technology. This leaves spells in it’s most basic form and won’t confuse players on how to create the appropriate gestures for the game to recognize. Having more complex gestures will mean that the magic spell is more powerful than the current simple gestures. And in order for the weaker magic skills to scale with the player, they will also grow in strength depending on the player’s level and stat growth.

Thinking on the control system that the Oculus will present, I also decided that instead of forcing the player to cast spells with their right motion controller, they should be allowed to cast it with their left motion controller as well. This way, players are not restricted on how they want to perform their gestures (there will also be a menu option to swap left and right hand control setups). Another awesome idea popped up when I was thinking about the whole left and right gesture inputting hands; what if the player could perform gestures simultaneously in order to perform the highest spell class, a summoning!

I haven’t been able to test this and I won’t be able to unless I get access to an Oculus Rift Consumer edition development kit, but I think it would be an amazing way to summon forth creatures using both hands. Perhaps, by combining two different but compatible skills together that the player can perform ‘secret’ or ‘lost’ magic that can be either stronger or have new and interesting effects on enemies and possibly the environment.