Air Hockey
Air Hockey is my first independent Unity Project. After Completing the Udacity High Immersion VR course, I was looking for ideas on a game I could make for myself. Air hockey came to mind as a doable and enjoyable project. The intention for this project was to create a simple, polished experience that could be published to the Oculus platform. Air Hockey is a straightforward, jump right in and play, virtual reality air hockey experience. The player plays against AI of various difficulties, can customize the look and size of the mallets and puck, and can even switch to a glow in the dark experience of the game. From start to finish it took about a month of work. I also used it for my submission to get accepted into the Oculus Start program for new VR developers. This game has been the basis for much of my experimentation in virtual reality experiences, and is in ongoing development.
Main Focus
For this project, I found an air hockey game kit asset on the Unity Asset Store. My goal was to use this as the foundations of the game, and convert it over to a virtual reality experience. I used the Oculus Integration unity assets to add VR interaction with the mallets, found an apartment environment on the Asset store, and used a city skybox from the Udacity course for the view out of the window. My goal was to focus on the feel of the gameplay, audio, and lighting to make the game as immersive as possible.
Air Hockey
Air Hockey gives players an experience they are familiar with, showcasing the ease at which players can play existing games without the need to have an air hockey table set up at home.
The Process
Statement of Purpose: Air Hockey is a desktop vr game that challenges players to beat AI opponents in a virtual experience of a real world game.
User Testing:
This project utilized user testing throughout the lifespan of its development. I had many people try it while it was still in its infancy, and expanded to the Oculus platform when I published it in Early Access at $3 so I could get more feedback about the experience and to discover bugs.
Completed Project
When Playing Air Hockey, the player is placed in an apartment scene with the air hockey table placed in front of them with AI already playing, mallet and puck customization options placed on a shelf to their right, and an easy to navigate menu screen floating in space in front of them. In just a couple menu selections, the player can pick their difficulty and jump right into playing the game.
The experience is straightforward for players launching the game for the first time, and frictionless for players who want to jump in and play for a few minutes. It’s more convenient than the real thing.
Conclusion
Through the experience of developing this game, I constantly faced the fact that I had never been solely responsible for a project before. With no guidelines to follow, and a head full of ambitious ideas, I had to learn as I went. I continually cut out ideas and simplified my vision so that I could get the project to the best finished state I was capable of. I gained the experience of publishing my first app to the public, and working with people online to provide features and fix bugs as they requested them. My understanding of project design, development, and management has improved immensely throughout the development of Air Hockey, and I will be able to take all of that gained knowledge to the next app. Air Hockey is still in development, and big updates will come in the future.