In a few words
Development for Epyka, a VR adventure-puzzle game by the Italian company Singular Perception!
Context
During 2017 and part of 2018 I worked as a VR Developer at Singular Perception, when the development of Epyka started. I was really lucky to work with a team of young and passionate artists and developers, mixing their skills and ideas to create an original and intriguing game!
My role
At the beginning I closely collaborated on the first version of Jack’s AI, the player’s sidekick. We mainly worked with Unreal’s Behavior Trees. Then, given my interest in audio and visual aspects of interactive environments, my main duties at the company moved towards the creation of audio/visual content and tools for the studio artists.
Materials/shaders for VR experiences require a high level of detail, and performance is crucial in order to provide the user with a pleasant experience. Materials need to adapt to the totally free and unpredictable player’s point of view. The parts I enjoyed the most working on are probably the Sea, Terrain and environmental materials.
VR Audio needs special care as well, since 3D in VR is not realized with left/right, front/rear panning, but possibly as real 3D. Sound effects which traditionally might be coming from a single source in the environment, suddenly become 2, 3…10 or more different effects. New ideas need to be tested in order to add a nice lively touch to a virtual environment through moving sound sources surrounding the user/player. I really liked experimenting with different solutions and trying to give variety through a finite (yet significant) number of ambience sounds and effects.
This was my first real experience in Game Development: it has been an interesting journey, and a nice chance to explore the world of Unreal materials and the design of immersive audio for VR environments.
Can’t wait for the official release! Check the game and company website below:
Epyka: https://www.epyka.com/
Singular Perception: https://singularperception.com/