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Jacob Lavender
Level Design
Adaptation of Rail Shooter Mechanics to the Virtual Reality Medium
My thesis was about recreating the gameplay of arcade rail shooters in Virtual Reality . After deconstructing arcade rail shooters from the 1990s , I determined the core mechanics that a VR adaptation must include in order to have similar gameplay to the arcade classics . I prototyped methods of implementing the mechanics , but several of the implementations were clunky in VR . When a mechanic did not adapt appropriately to VR , I prototyped other implementations to preserve the rail shooter gameplay in the 3D space .
I chose this thesis because I believe that new technologies allow for the revival of older game genres . Adapting dated
mechanics to new mediums accelerates the discovery of best practices and techniques . Developers can use the techniques from these projects to further create new and innovative games .
In developing the artifact , I overcame challenges in porting arcade mechanics from 2D into VR . One challenge in particular was that arcade machines used a reticle overlay to aim . In VR , I iterated on aiming by adding a 3D reticle that appeared on any surface or enemy . The final 3D implementation was drastically different from the original screen overlay but resulted in an aiming style that accurately represents aiming in classic rail shooters .
36 LEVEL DESIGN