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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