Tavern Tales is being built to solve one of the biggest problems in tabletop role playing games… getting players around the table. Implementing and expanding upon Unity’s new XR Toolkit I have created a cross platform input system that lets all VR headset owners get in on the fun. The Tavern Tales team and I are constantly adding more gameplay features and systems to the open beta game. Available for Quest here and through the open beta discord channel.

Implementation Highlights

My Cross Platform VR Input System for Oculus Rift, Quest, Vive, and Index hardware

• Unity XR Toolkit used as the basis for locomotion, laser pointer, teleport, and physical grab based VR interactions

• Hardware signature detection built to remap controller bindings and graphical settings for Vive, Oculus, Index VR and 2D desktop platforms on application startup. This allows our team to maintain a single Unity project with platform agnostic build targeting.

• Custom Scriptable Object based input controller was extended off XR Toolkit to create feature rich and modular input schemes depending on platforms and player state.

Core Feature Contributions

• Built a seven control point ‘Fog of War’ map building tool allowing world builders to conceal and reveal regions of their constructed maps from other players but not themselves.

• Added a VR omnidirectional scaling tool for building highly customizable maps and worlds

• Prototyped rendering solutions for decal projection and glowing material shader effects

• Rendering quality adjusted for PC driven Vive, Index, and Oculus Rift experience vs. mobile Oculus Quest headsets

Team Collaboration

• The lead developer and I devised and tested git source control procedures to steamline co-development and limit merge conflicts.

• Use of Kanban style Trello board for task and ticket creation and assignment between developers

Challenges

Creating Feature Parity Between Oculus OVR and Unity XR Toolkit

• Transitioned Tavern Tales from the Oculus only OVR plugin to it’s current Unity XR Toolkit based interaction implementation

• Game object interaction features for grabbing objects from a distance, laser pointer selecting objects without grabbing them, and switching objects between hands

• Input schemes created for each VR hardware controller motif including custom inputs for Vive wand limited button count

Development for a live product in use by an active playerbase

• Introducing a published open Alpha testing branch has helped facilitate a smoother transition towards major feature updates