The Forest: An XR riddle maze.

Embracing cheat codes as a means to add excitement and narrative to a VR maze game.

SPOILER ALERT!

Before reading the article try and figure out the riddle!

The Assignment

We were tasked this week with creating a virtual reality world. Using the Unity Engine we would create immersive worlds from 3d models, lighting, and materials. Although a simple sounding task the endless potential proved to be daunting. I first wanted to create an underwater world, then a cartoon world, then maybe a mountainscape. After starting each of these concepts I realized that my 3d modeling skills were simply not up to the challenge. To create something interesting I would need add an act of thought. Enter the maze.

Enter the Maze

I landed on the idea of creating a maze. This would allow the focus to be on the thought behind the creation more then the raw skill needed to make a virtual reality mountain look real. The concept was to have a frozen wasteland. Users would need to navigate the maze in order to find fire, and stay alive. I downloaded a few premade bush assets and got to work. I added physics simulators to the bush models so a character could not walk through them.

Save. Save. Save.

After spending a few hours creating a maze it was time to add in the first person controller. This script allows creators to move around and test their created world without having to set up a VR headset. I opened a code editor to adjust the text file and my world collapsed…literally. My computer crashed and I had unfortunately not been as diligent as needed in saving my files. All this to say, save your projects frequently.

Maze 2.0 Even Mazier

If I was going to start all over again I wanted to take things up a notch. Maze 2.0 was made even harder to navigate then the first. I began testing it and realized that this raised difficulty may even be too much. I wanted to create a series of clues or guide to help people through without becoming overlay frustrating.

Riddle and The Cheat Code

In order to help people navigate the maze I used a video game cheat could that could be interpreted as directions. The riddle told people which way to orient themselves in the VR world, which game to look up, and which cheat code to see.

GTA V Flaming Bullets Cheat Code

L1, R1, SQUARE, R1, LEFT, R2, R1, LEFT, SQUARE, RIGHT, L1, L1