Beat Saber example

[kanerogers]

Description

One of the most important things when releasing complex software is providing examples. Not only does it provide users with a transparent way to see "how" to do things with the software, it gives users confidence in "what" can be done with the software.

Since Hotham is first and foremost a VR game engine, we need to prove that we can make VR games with it. What better game to make than Beat Saber?

This will require careful planning - it'd be very easy to get derailed and stuck in the weeds here. Beat Saber is a big and complex game, but there should be a way to cut it down to its simplest elements and recreate them.

TODO

Research

• Play the game and break down all its elements systematically
• Look for other examples of people cloning the game - what did they leave in, what did they out?

Assets

• Create a "bill of materials" - what will need to be included in the game?
• Acquire/build assets

Programming

• Sketch out a rough shape of what the code would look like
• Identify missing engine features
• Invert control of app #94
• Implement Saber System
• Implement Game System
• First pass at implementation #105
• Implement Basic UI support #93
• Implement Implement first version of Hotham audio API #52

[kanerogers]

Programming

After a bit of thinking, the game loop will look something like this.

for_each(cube) {
  if cube.hit_correctly {
    score += 1
  }
  if cube.missed {
    score -= 1
  }
}
if score <= 0 {
  end_game()
}

That should probably do it. I see a couple challenges here:

• How do we correctly determine if the cube was hit? We'd need some way of knowing how the saber passed through the cube.
• We need music playing in the background that starts and stops with the game. This'll need Implement first version of Hotham audio API #52.
• As much as I've tried to avoid it, we'll absolutely need a UI. This will be a lot of work. Added Basic UI support #93 to track this

[kanerogers]

Assets

Let's keep the assets very, very simple. Ideally we could use something like KHR_materials_variants for our "red cube/blue cube" but glTF-rs doesn't support that.

Assets required

• Red / blue saber
• Red / blue cube
• "Bench" environment thing
• A music track

All of these and more are available in this asset. Awesome!

Found a reasonable HARDCORE song on YouTube to use: Spence - Right Here Beside You

[kanerogers]

Hooo hoo yeah.

[kanerogers]

Looking weird on the headset. RenderDoc time..

[kanerogers]

Well this is fun,

[kanerogers]

Okay, we've got some sabers going!

[kanerogers]

Looking good!

[kanerogers]

Main issue we're having now is that we're not seeing correct collision detection