Patrick Harris is the lead game designer at Minority Media where they’re developing a sci-fi adventure game called Time Machine VR. The premise of Time Machine VR is that humanity is facing a deadly plague from ancient times, and that best way to eradicate this disease it is to travel back in time to find the cure within the DNA of underwater dinosaurs.
Time Machine VR takes place within a submarine probe, and part of the reason for this is that Minority Media discovered that this a great way to move around within a VR space that isn’t as nauseating as moving around on the ground. Part of it could be our expectations of what it feels like to move underwater from the perspective of our vestibular system. Or it could be that there are less objects on the ground that are moving by you quickly, and so floating around in the water tends to not have as much motion that you’re detecting while moving.
Patrick talks about the how they’re prioritizing Time Machine VR as a game experience, but also trying to be as accurate as they can be with the dinosaurs by consulting with a paleontologist. He also discusses the different game mechanics available to interact with the dinosaurs including baiting, scoping, tagging, and a fun time freeze that allows you to swim inside of creatures for a closer look.
They also have an interesting approach where there will be two ways to experience amy given level. The first will be in the more linear and story-driven narrative mode. But then after gaining more tools, then you can revisit levels in a more exploratory context to gather more clues from the environment in order to solve the higher-level puzzles.
Overall, there are some pretty stunning graphics and the underwater movement was fairly comfortable but it wasn’t 100% free of motion sickness for me. I’m fairly sensitive to sim sickness, and so the yaw rotation was still a bit nauseating and it varied with how far away I was from the sides of the ocean walls.
Time Machine VR is available via Steam as early access, and so it’s worth checking out what they have so far if you’re into the idea of interacting with underwater dinosaurs, especially big ones with really sharp and pointy teeth.
Be sure to check out Patrick at Oculus Connect 2, where he’ll be talking about “Game Design Un-Rules: Examining Design Failures in Time Machine VR”
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:12.035] Patrick Harris: I'm Patrick Harris. I'm the lead game designer at Minority Media. And right now we're working on Time Machine VR, which is an early access game available on Steam right now for anybody who owns a Oculus Rift DK2.
[00:00:23.733] Kent Bye: Okay, and so tell me a bit about what is the intention behind, what type of experience do you want to give people in this Time Machine VR?
[00:00:30.659] Patrick Harris: So, the setting of the game is that humanity is being struck by a deadly plague. People are dying out and it's an ancient disease from millions of years ago. So time machines have been invented to go back in time because we believe that there's the secret to a cure lying in ancient creatures and seeing how they dealed with the same disease back when it sort of originally showed up. So this is, you know, it's making a comeback and humans aren't so big on that. So the idea is we're going back in time. You're in a little pod and specifically taking a look at aquatic prehistoric creatures. So lizards, fish, you know, invertebrates, all that kind of stuff that lived in prehistoric oceans.
[00:01:08.998] Kent Bye: And so is there an element of kind of an educational accuracy here in terms of bringing back actual dinosaur specimens and having a chance for people to interact with them?
[00:01:19.145] Patrick Harris: The creatures in the game, we do strive to have them be scientifically accurate, but this is a video game and it's a video game about time travel. So, you know, we're going to have some fun with it. I'm a science fiction nerd, you know, we've got lots of sci-fi nerds on the team. Time travel is a fun place to go. You know, I grew up watching Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, right? Stuff like that. Huge fan. I like having creatures be scientifically accurate. We work with a paleontologist to ensure that they are as accurate as we can make them. But in terms of it being educational, this is a game, right? I want to make a game and I want it to be fun. So that's priority number one on the team.
[00:01:53.610] Kent Bye: And so, yeah, tell me a bit about the game mechanics. Like, you're floating around in a pod, what can you do?
[00:01:58.194] Patrick Harris: So, yeah, you're floating around in a pod, 3D navigation, which is super fun underwater. We've got one of our key mechanics is time freeze. So it slows all the creatures, everything in the environment down to a total crawl. Lets you get up right close, you know, things open their jaws, they're about to eat you. You can freeze time and take a closer look at them. We've got a variety of other sort of mechanics that are like your scientific instruments where you shoot probes to hit creatures to collect, like, DNA and get initial samples of them. You can do more detailed scans of their bodies. We've even got an ecography mechanic where you can go up and scan internal organs of the creatures and it does cool x-ray cut through of like their stomachs and stuff like that. We've also got a bait mechanic where you throw bits of bait to attract them to specific locations and we're going to be adding more and more as early access goes on.
[00:02:44.987] Kent Bye: And so, in this demo, I didn't try to die, but how would be an example of how you might fail or die in this experience?
[00:02:52.010] Patrick Harris: So, in this game, there's some large creatures with many pointy sharp teeth, and you look very appetizing to them. In the event that they do, you know, decide to have a little snack on the time machine, your AI companion does an emergency time stoppage. rewinds time just a little bit, pops you back, and you can continue on from a safe location to return back to gameplay. So, you know, we're not gonna, no Gibbs, no blood and guts everywhere, you know, safety first, right? This is a family experience, right? I want my kid to be able to play it, but I'm a hardcore gamer myself, you know, I've got like 1,500 hours logged playing Dota 2. I want guys like me to have a good time playing the game, and I want my kid, 13 years old, to have a good time playing, and there's gonna be no compromises made to make both of that happen.
[00:03:37.003] Kent Bye: And so since you are doing a lot of the game design, what are some of the other things in the future that you're going to be implementing into this game to kind of keep people engaged and interested in playing?
[00:03:45.729] Patrick Harris: So, it's going to sound like I'm not answering, but I promise I am. The game has sort of two modes for all of the levels. The first one is a narrative mode where we've got the AI companion, Rob, talking to you, kind of leading you through, showing you what to do and delivering a lot of the story. As you proceed through those levels, we're going to unlock new tools and new mechanics for you, and you can go back and return to the previous levels, now in an exploration mode. And when you're in exploration mode, you get to use the new tools you've unlocked to learn even more about these creatures, do even more research. discover secrets all that kind of stuff and so as the game progresses on we want to give more mechanics that support that so going back and seeing the same creatures that you saw before but in a different light and being able to manipulate them and do things I talked about the bait mechanic of drawing creatures in a specific locations things like that are really fun when you start looking at the creatures not like just a painting that you're taking a photograph of but rather a living breathing entity that you're You're manipulating, you're steering, you're interacting with, you're trying to go, oh, I want to see what the inside of this guy's mouth looks like, but he hasn't opened it. How can I get him to open his mouth so I can take a look in there, that kind of thing.
[00:04:54.186] Kent Bye: Yeah, so there seems to be a combination of exploration and these puzzles that you have, and I'm wondering if you created a puzzle and there's not a lot of direction, then how... if people get stuck, for example, then what type of things have you had to do in the VR design in order to kind of help guide and direct them to be able to do the right thing, like freeze time and go into the whale's mouth or something like that?
[00:05:14.870] Patrick Harris: Well, I mean, VR is really interesting to design for, especially when it comes to making sort of tutorials, teaching people how to play. It's funny, when you watch people playing the game, especially old school guys who've been playing, you know, Call of Duty and hardcore games for a long time, they'll sit down and they won't move their head. They don't look. We're trained to sit down and stare at a screen that doesn't move, that fills up our field of view. And in VR, you can turn. You can turn your head 360 degrees and see what's behind you, right? So even at the beginning of the game, we have a sequence, you know, showing you how the sausage is made here, right? Have a little sequence where we say, hey, look right and look left. I'm not doing that because it's really important that you, you know, calibrate your sensors. It's a video game. I want to let you know that you can look around, that that's a thing that you can do. And so that's one of the challenges we've had is just getting people to remember that their necks can move, that they're not sitting completely stationary. Beyond that, VR, there's lots of mechanics that don't work in traditional two-dimensional games that suddenly play really well in VR and vice versa. There's stuff that works amazing in 2D games that is terrible when you play it in VR. So it's actually a constant learning experience. We're constantly learning new ways to redo the game and what we need to do to make it better.
[00:06:30.542] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the things that I've noticed in a game where you're running around on the ground is that when you use the yaw rotation, so when you're turning, that causes me a lot of motion sickness. And I noticed a little bit underwater, but it wasn't as severe. So I'm curious if you've run into that in terms of locomoting around underwater and turning. You know, there's VR comfort mode where you're kind of turning at different increments. If you found that that is causing either some motion sickness or not as much because you're underwater.
[00:06:59.454] Patrick Harris: Our navigation is something that we're actually really proud of in the studio. We jokingly call ourselves like the least nausea inducing game out there. And I think there's something to that. We've spent a lot of time tuning our locomotion and we still are. I think a week before we came here I was talking to the guys and I said you know what I think I want to reduce the turn speed by like you know four or five percent because I was getting a little bit sick playing so we're constantly doing tiny little tweaks it's amazing the tiny percentages of how fast you move forward how fast you move backward changing those tweaking them all to be just right the underwater setting is really great for that though because your brain goes yeah I'm underwater we all know that resistance that water gives you And I understand what you're saying, when you're walking on the ground in games, you know, you can get motion sick really fast, because your inner ear disagrees with what your eyeballs are seeing. The nice thing about Time Machine, being underwater, you're kind of away from surfaces, generally speaking, you're moving quite slowly, you're feeling that, and the game is still fun, it doesn't feel like you're moving slow, it feels like you're immersed, it feels realistic, it's what you would expect when you're underwater. So it actually plays to the strength of reducing motion sickness from the game. Yeah, sometimes people feel a little nauseous, and it's something we take incredibly seriously. And it's one of the advantages of taking the game into early access right now, is we want to send it out to a greater market of people who are really cool people who bought a DK2, who are going to give us that kind of feedback. And so when somebody says, yeah, I played the game and I got a little sick, I'm going to hop on the forums and go, hey, I'm the lead designer. You felt sick? What were you doing? How did you do this? And try to decode the problem to make it an even better experience for them.
[00:08:37.573] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so what were some of the things that you did in terms of minimizing the motion sickness? Is it just a matter of slowing it down? How would you describe what you're doing to minimize that motion sickness?
[00:08:48.798] Patrick Harris: There's, like I said, there's a lot of little things. Like I said earlier, tweaking the turn speed by like three or four percent makes a huge difference. Like you said, turning, rotation, is one of those things that can cause a lot of motion sickness. In our experience, especially because of the underwater setting, we found adding acceleration curves to things rather than just straight velocity has been super useful. So, you know, you press forward on the joystick and it takes a little bit for you to get up to full speed and that slow transition has done wonders in terms of making people not feel ill. And the same thing for when they let go of the stick. You're underwater, you've got some momentum, it continues on, and then it slows down. And even what those acceleration and deceleration values are, something we're constantly tuning. And I mean like, again, 5% and less doing tuning values, and that can be the difference that it makes.
[00:09:37.438] Kent Bye: And so is the entire experience going to be set underwater then?
[00:09:41.279] Patrick Harris: Time Machine VR, right now we're planning on the whole thing to be underwater, yes.
[00:09:44.523] Kent Bye: Okay. And what other kind of things are you excited to start putting into the experience?
[00:09:49.465] Patrick Harris: So like I said, it's early access right now. We've got two levels and sort of the two modes that I was discussing, sort of the narrative mode and the exploration mode. I'm really excited not just to add new levels to the game, because of course new levels are cool and new creatures are cool and you're going to get to see all sorts of crazy stuff that used to live in prehistoric times. But it's about adding those new mechanics so when you go back to exploration mode, there's so much more for you to do, right? That's a real sandbox research lab kind of feeling where I want a player to go back and look at a creature and go, gee, I wonder how that thing ate, I wonder how it did this, and go, you know what? I have a tool for that. I could make it do that right now and really build off of that. So I want players to be the scientists. I want you to have the question and then be able to answer it yourself. It's not about the game just handing that over to you. It's about you experimenting and figuring it out.
[00:10:40.426] Kent Bye: You mentioned the goal of the game is to go back in time and try to find a cure to a plague, and so you're getting this information. I guess I'm wondering, how is that puzzle put together? Is there some sort of data visualization for looking at DNA samples? What is that mechanic in terms of actually curing the plague?
[00:11:00.213] Patrick Harris: You know, we don't have too much of it in the game right now. The plot is something that we're constantly working on and revising to make it fun and interesting. You know, we've got some great writers working on the project at the studio who I have the utmost of faith in. You know, and like I said before, we're science fiction nerds. We've got some of us there who want to make sure that the time travel feels grounded and believable. And the same thing is true with sort of the plot as it spells out. But I got to be honest, I don't want to spoil everything. I want people to jump in the game and check it out for themselves because I think they're going to be surprised and have a good time with it.
[00:11:31.152] Kent Bye: Nice. And so what kind of experiences do you want to have in VR then?
[00:11:35.255] Patrick Harris: I've been playing lots of different VR products. We've got an HTC Vive at the studio that we're trying out and taking a look at how VR technology is moving forward. I love it. I love having a room and playing around in there with motion control on the hands. In terms of VR experiences, I really view VR as being a complement to current gaming technology. And I think that it's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger as time moves forward, as people put it on. Because if you've never tried VR, if you haven't put a headset on, you might be like I was before I put a headset on and go, you know it's okay it looks like a thing that people might do sometimes I don't know if I want to and then you put the headset on and you experience it you experience that immersion you see what it can do and you come out a convert you know you're preaching the good word of VR after you put the headset on and I just think that's super cool. And I think the more and more people, guys like you, the fans that we have here at PAX coming out playing the game, we've had lots of people come in line and go, I want to try VR, I want to check this out, and then they come out afterwards and they're like, wow, this is amazing, I have to get one of these. And, you know, Minority as a studio, we're all in on VR. Like, we are drinking this Kool-Aid. We are ready for VR. Time Machine VR, it's in the name, right? It is a VR mandatory experience. There's no 2D version. You have to have, right now, a DK2 if you want to be playing the game. So I think that really shows our commitment to virtual reality.
[00:12:59.347] Kent Bye: And so the game is designed as a sit-down experience. You're in a probe, and you have an Xbox controller. And I'm curious if you are thinking about how would you start to implement something like a room-scale version of this, or implementing the hand controllers. As you're kind of designing these VR experiences, you kind of have to look at the market and see, well, this is going to be a certain percentage of people that are going to be buying this game. And then if they don't have all this gear and equipment, then they're not going to be able to play it. Since you do have a HTC Vive, how has that changed how you're thinking about developing Time Machine VR?
[00:13:33.021] Patrick Harris: Well, to be clear, I just want to be clear that Time Machine VR right now, with the early access, requires a DK2, right? Like, Vives aren't out yet. We're always going to be looking at the new technology coming out and assessing and talking whether or not we think it plays to our strengths, stuff like that. Motion control, again, is something that, you know, We're talking about, we're investigating, seeing if it's a good fit for the game. But right now, we do require an Xbox 360 or Xbox One controller. Reason behind that being, you know, Oculus has said that the Rift will be shipping with an Xbox One controller, and from a design standpoint, the decision for that is it's a heck of a lot easier to use an Xbox controller when you've got something blocking your view of your hands, right? Mouse and keyboard is something that we're looking into, that we're talking about. You'd have to be crazy to release a PC game without mouse and keyboard support. That said, it's optimized for a controller, right? You should be using a controller when you play this game. And I don't think that's unreasonable. Controllers are in now. Most PCs, if you're a gamer, you've got a controller attached. It doesn't mean that you have to. We're going to give you support otherwise. But we're optimized for a DK2 and an Xbox One controller right now.
[00:14:38.080] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you see as the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:14:45.782] Patrick Harris: I don't know how to answer that. I don't know what it's going to be. I'm really excited to find out. I am so excited to see where it's going to go because it's completely different than gaming and media that we've been used to. That level of immersion is just crazy. Being able to turn your head around and look at things is super, super cool. Is it going to be games? Is it going to be movies? Stereoscopic film? Right? That kind of thing. I don't know what the best is going to be. I'm hoping I get to discover it. I think the Time Machine VR is one of the best experiences somebody can have out there. And, you know, if you're listening to me talk right now and you've got a DK2, you should really go and check out Time Machine VR because I guarantee that you're going to have a good time. Awesome. Well, thank you. Thanks, man.
[00:15:26.284] Kent Bye: And thank you for listening! If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash voicesofvr.
