Un voyage dans le temps nostalgique

Sit down, put on your VR headset, and get ready to travel back to 1989. Look around: you’re back in high school, kid, and your goal is to complete levels on your handheld game console without getting caught by your nagging teacher.

“I grew up playing games like Mega Man, Super Mario, and Tetris, and I wanted to see if I could use the possibilities of VR technology to let people travel back in time and get that same warm feeling I have for those games,” says Ribeiro. “I wanted people to laugh and feel good and have fun by being transported to the 80s, to the spirit of playing games in the past, the way I remember it.”

Ana meets Unity, and it’s love at first sight

Pixel Ripped started as Ribeiro's final-year game design project at the National Film and Television School in London, where she was first introduced to Unity. In the beginning of her studies, though, she didn’t have the benefit of the game engine.

“When I started learning how to make games, it was from scratch. I had to build everything. I had to build the engine, the camera, everything from scratch. It felt like if you wanted to bake a cake, you had to build the whole kitchen. But I didn’t want to build the oven, build the pumps, the kitchen and the walls just to bake one cake; I just wanted to get to my favorite part. I wanted to make the game.”

So when Ribeiro was introduced to Unity, she says she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Some of my fellow students were complaining: ‘Oh my God, we have to write a line of code.’ But I was so excited. I was like: ‘Wow, everything’s ready; I can just put the camera there. I can just grab the physics and add it. It was love at first sight,” she says.

Quand elle a commencé à travailler sur Pixel Ripped, Ribeiro avait cette idée de base d'un voyage dans le temps nostalgique vers le monde du jeu de sa jeunesse. Pour identifier les éléments pertinents et sur quoi se concentrer, elle a testé les premières versions de démonstration sur ses camarades.

« Unity m'a été d'une aide précieuse. J'ai pu assembler rapidement mes démos. J'ai ensuite identifié les erreurs et les passages que les autres n'aimaient pas, et j'ai modifié le jeu. Unity est parfait pour le prototypage. Il m'a permis de créer une nouvelle version en une semaine seulement. »

Ne tirez pas sur le petit-ami

Pendant les phases de test, Ana Ribeiro a eu deux révélations sur les meilleurs et les pires éléments de son jeu. La première était que les joueurs détestaient littéralement un certain personnage. Elle pensait que ce serait amusant de voir le petit-ami du personnage principal danser devant la télévision.

« Je pensais que ce serait amusant, parce que c'est comme dans la vraie vie, quand vous êtes en pleine partie et que les gens qui passent devant la télé vous dérangent. Mais ce garçon a vraiment énervé les joueurs. Ils ne le supportaient pas. Les 40 testeurs voulaient le tuer », indique-t-elle.

Elle s'est alors débarrassée de ce personnage et s'est concentrée sur la partie de la démo qui plaisait à tous.

« Au départ, le moment du jeu que tout le monde préférait n'était pas censé être important. C'est lorsque vous suivez le personnage principal en vision à la première personne, quand elle sort de la console et saute dans une autre console », dit-elle.

« Cela dure cinq secondes maximum, avant d'entrer dans l'autre jeu. C’était un passage bref, mais absolument tout le monde a dit : "c'est le meilleur moment, et de loin, quand le personnage sort du jeu." »

Ribeiro now had the key to producing the right atmosphere that she was looking for . She now knew how to give people that happy, old-school gaming feeling mixed with modern technology. At least in terms of the narrative and gameplay. But there were still technical challenges to overcome.

“The biggest challenge has always been having two games within one,” Ribeiro says. “You have a 2D game, which is a jumping platform, like Mega Mario. And this game has separate scenes, separate graphics, separate music, sound, code, everything. And then you have the 3D world of the 80s classroom. So the programming behind these two game universes, plus the VR, has meant that it’s always been a challenge to increase the fps and keep it on a doable quality for releasing the game and not making people sick.”

The solution was to go through the game and polish everything in order to make it as light as possible. But that requires time, resources, and the right tools. With that in mind, Ribeiro says that the Unity Asset Store has been invaluable enabling her to increase fps by 20.

A lesson learned the hard way: Look on the Unity Asset Store first!

Ribeiro learned the hard way that it made sense to browse the Unity Asset Store for the right tools before building something on her own. She recalls one particular incident that really drove this lesson home when still at school working on the project with one of her fellow students.

“We were trying to model this Christmas tree, and we saw one for five dollars on the Asset Store. But we really wanted to make everything in the whole 3D part of the game ourselves, including all the modeling. If we had just bought the tree on the store, it would’ve saved us a month of work and stress, and a little bit of disappointment, trying to get it right. I’ll never forget that,” Ribeiro says.

“Now I just always go to the Asset Store straightaway first. If I find it, and I think it will save me time, something I need in the game, I just buy it, and it’s done. That’s that. Sometimes you can even find something for free. I’d say the Asset Store saved me around three months of work at the very least.”

She has used a number of Asset Store tools for effects to create the unique mix of 80’s nostalgia and futuristic time-travel feel of Pixel Ripped. For example, she used Shader Forge to produce the pixelation at the start of the game when you travel back in time. She has also used Skybox for around 300 image effects. Ribeiro even found an asset specifically for the nostalgic feel of her game, which creates an 80s-style blue-camera effect.

La prise en charge multiplateforme est une autre fonctionnalité Unity qui a évité de nombreuses prises de tête à la créatrice et à ses collaborateurs.

« Nous voulons cibler toutes les plateformes majeures, alors c'est vraiment formidable de pouvoir sélectionner simplement : PlayStation, Oculus, PC... Ça nous facilite vraiment la vie. »

Ana Ribeiro a travaillé en RV dès le début de son projet, et elle a suivi à la fois l'évolution des technologies et la prise en charge par Unity.

« Pendant le développement du jeu, tous les casques ont changé. Et c'est vraiment génial que tous soient pris en charge maintenant. Au début, lorsque la RV commençait à émerger, il fallait tout télécharger, ajouter tous les plugins. Je me souviens que j'ai du changer toutes les caméras du jeu une par une. Aujourd’hui, tout est intégré. Il suffit de cocher la case "Virtual reality support" et de se concentrer sur la conception. »