Jupiter Justice!
Jupiter Justice!
Kaiju Fury VR
General Overview
High Concept
Genre: Survival, RPG, Combat
The Kaiju Project is an immersive VR experience set on a remote island, where players take on the role of cleaners tasked with containing a catastrophic kaiju outbreak at Hayata Labs, a classified research facility. Armed with a basic pistol, players progressively unlock elemental powers to help them navigate the dangerous facility and eliminate kaiju threats.
Development Elements
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Meta Quest: The Kaiju Project is developed and played in Meta Quest headset and hand-tracking, eliminating the need for controllers. This approach enhances immersion, allowing players to interact naturally within the virtual environment.
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KATVR Treadmill: The treadmill allows players to physically walk, run, and crouch freely to explore the space around them. This feature offers a heightened sense of realism and physical engagement by synchronizing player movement with in-game actions.
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Haptic Feedback Vest : Players wear a haptic vest to experience environmental encounters throughout the game. This feature brings in-game events to life by simulating sensations such as enemy attacks or environmental interactions, to deepen player immersion and emotions to the experience.
Development Info
Team size: ≈ 25 /semester
Project Duration: 5 Semesters Total (Currently on 5th)
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Platform: VR
Controllers: Meta Quest, KatVR Treadmill, bHaptics TactSuit
**Development teams would only meet on Thursdays (6 hour class) for 14 weeks to check in with each other and to report back to leads. Additionally, every semester we have new designers/artists rotating in and other graduating.**
Check out the LIVE DEV LOG!
Role and Responsibilities
Main Role: Producer
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Setting up communications among multidisciplinary teams of designers, artists, and composers to make sure everyone knows the progress of where we are at.
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Organizing sprints by assigning specific tasks to individuals, ensuring each task contributes to the overall sprint goals and progress.
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Setting up a structured process for weekly standups to ensure clear communication, collaboration, and strengthen team alignment.
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Introducing teams to Trello as an effective tool for managing, planning, and assigning our work.
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Check in with team members who are less vocal in group discussions to ensure they’re doing well, address any concerns they may have, and make sure they feel supported in their roles.
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Coordinating with leads for potential outsourcing needs for future tasks and projects.
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Create weekly progress reports on status of the project and present the information to leads.
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Highlight project key selling points and preparing the game's showcase for GDC.
Secondary Role: Level Designer
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Define Visual Direction: To support the art team in achieving a cohesive style for the Kaiju Project, I created a targeted PowerPoint presentation that included:
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Creative Vision: A breakdown of the art elements we aimed to incorporate and avoid.
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Style Guidelines: A clear description of the intended visual aesthetic to align the team.
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File Management Standards: A structured naming convention for efficient organization and workflow.
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QA - Conducted testing and QA for products.
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2. Bug List:
Create and track a list of all bug types and notify leads of these issues so we can design around them.
3. Walkthroughs and Encounters:
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Document game walkthroughs, where events will happen, and determine what assets we need for certain levels.
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Monitor playtests to determine what other encounters we need to polish and clean up.
Analysis / Process
Semester 1 & 2
The first 5ish weeks of this project we started off as a team of 5 designers all cramped in a small storage room with a white board, one computer, one meta quest, and a KatVR treadmill. Not ideal, but we all took turns getting use to playing on the treadmill and working on pre-production process such as planning levels, encounters, and doing research on exactly how to use the KatVR since it was everyone's very first time ever using the treadmill.
A couple weeks in, this was when Unity announced their Runtime Fee so our lead decided that we were going to switch from Unity to Unreal - in which there was zero to no documentation on how to set up and use the equipment.
When we finally got an actual lab room designated to the VR team and everyone could sit comfortably at a computer, we got straight to level building and utilized Perforce for version control- enabling everyone to access and build the project simultaneously.
Semester 3 (Summer 2024)
I wasn't part of the team during the summer semester, but I did actively keep up with the development team. The main component we that was integrated during this semester was hand tracking and establishing a cohesive player path.
I was also informed by our lead that it took the art team literally the entire semester to complete a singe suit case asset- in which he wanted me to prioritize setting deadlines to ensure both teams are on track to meet milestones.
Semester 4
This semester is when I was actively assigned producer title for this project and began performing producer related tasks such as hosting standups with different teams and utilizing software such as Jira and Trello to keep the team on track.
Semester 5 (Current)
This semester we are solely focused on polishing all our existing encounter and adding in art to really bring out the storytelling. We also onboarded two new technical designer who will assist us in working around bug and any other problems.
Goal for GDC:
Every interaction up until the building colipase because we cannot finish everything for GDC. Our vertical slice will consist of a tutorial level and an introduction to combat:
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Tutorial level to get use to walking on the treadmill.
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Fire ability letting players shoot fireballs at enemies.
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ONLY anklebiter enemies (small)
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Kaiju roar -> swing arm towards building -> goes black.
SUCCESSFUL showcase at GDC (Monday 17th- Tuesday 18th) Check out blog.
12/5/24 - Week 14 Playthrough
GDC 2025 (3/17 - 3/18)
3/13/25 - Week 7 Playthrough
Documentation
Lesson Learned
Working in Teams
Problem: After the first couple weeks on starting this project- I already recognized an issues. There was no plan and people were pretty much doing random tasks because we were not setting goals and we had limited skill sets. This resulted in people taking 5 weeks to make a single level block out or simple art assets would take up to an entire semester to be models. We were lost and had no sense of direction.
Solution: At first, it was frustrating but after the second second semester, I developed a routine for our designers and artists. And the solution to this was standups and setting CLEAR DEADLINES! And yes, everyone hated it especially the artists. It's a studio ran by students so when one student tells another what to do- they become unhappy (I'm sure it's the same in real studios as well).
Working w/ Unmotivated Teams
After a while, people got sick of working on this project. They often complain about the project being too difficult or just "not fun" or wish they were on a different project. It's kind of sad but working closely with the lead, I didn't want to just leave the project unfinished a complete mess. What do I need to do as a producer to make my team excited to work on this?
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Let the team do what they are good at: For example, Marco was more interested in level design, so he was assigned to blockout levels, implement some environmental storytelling, etc.
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Keep the energy up: Being a producer is not all about milestones! Tell a bad jokes, share funny moments, and a bring lighthearted atmosphere to our studio! Keeping the morale high is essential especially while working with technology that we were NEVER taught to use and have little to no documentation of. We have each other to learn from and when onboarding new members, we keep the knowledge flowing!