Ryte : The Eye of Atlantis
A VR adventure game.
THE PROJECT
Welcome to Historia Time Travel, the number 1 time-travel
tourism agency ! You chose the Atlantis discovery pack, a
journey through time and ages.
Along with your smart and sarcastic bot assistant, the
faithful G.U.I.D.3, plunge into a dreamlike world where you
will witness the greatness of this ancient civilization.
Explore a lost city with striking landscapes and redouble ingenuity to solve the riddles that will come your way.
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This mystical city is full of mystical secrets that could affect you, so we advise you to pay attention to temporal paradoxes during your visit.
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Will you escape from the grip that Atlantis could have on you?
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- Platforms : Steam / Oculus Store
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
- 2017 : Pre-production & proof of concept.
- 2018 : Production of Episode 1.
- 2019 : Production of Episode 2.
- 2020 : Balancing, testing, polishing, shipping.
TEAM
- VR Connection : 4 members.
- 6 external providers.
KEY GOAL
Ship an immersive and innovative VR adventure game with VR Connection's production method.
MY ROLE
I was recruited by VR Connection to be the main producer on this project as they did not have a profile fit for the position. My responsibilities evolved gradually.
- Redacted a Game Concept Document.
- Created some of the game's puzzles and redacted the Game Design Document.
- Scheduled the milestones.
- Organized the internal and external workflow (with the 6 external providers).
- Prepared a funding file and applied to the CNC (successfully).
- Reported daily to the Game Director.
- Reported weekly to the Executive Producer.
- Organized and drove the motion capture sessions.
- Organized and drove the playtest sessions.
- Evaluated the builds.
- Prepared all the meetings and redacted full reports.
- Helped with the game writing.
- Done the lipsyncing after voice recordings.
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
The project was born from will to merge science-fiction, fantasy and historic elements, in a very immersive background and a challenging gameplay.
For this project, VR Connection, which is an economic interest group, wanted several of its member companies to be part of the project.
The design was made internally. Then, we chose the best member companies of the group for the task at hand.
At the production stage, every provider produced content in which they are specialized : graphics, sound design, code ...
Within VR Connection, my main task was consolidate the shipments, making sure that everyone had the right informations, that the plannings and milestones were met.
Initially, I used Ganter and Trello for project management. But the production evolved so much mid-development that it made sense to me to adapt and change the tools for more flexible and powerful ones. So I switched to Excel plannings for a while before switching to Jira, which was more suited to the scope of the project.
Visual and sound fidelity were one of the main goals.
It is the positive side of working only with external partners : they have quality craftsmanship in their field.
THESE WERE SOME MAJOR LEARNINGS
VR still has some technical issues.
Even though 1st parties like Oculus or Valve are trying their best to provide good hardware and SDKs, there are still some irrational / illogical bugs that have to be taken into account in the development process. It's the same with any new technology. Things are getting better though, but you still have to take this into consideration.
Make pre-production great again.
Several of the problems the teams met down the road were due to haste in the pre-production process. More pre-production time can lead to a safer production.
Feedback is key.
Everyone seems to know this but don't really realize how important it is to playtest the game with a new audience. The game is made for the players. After many months of working on the same project, team members might lose some of their hindsight (and/or motivation). Gathering feedback is the best thing at that stage.