Kaiju | Unreal | Multiplayer VR Experience

A collaberative effort between many students of both the design and art departments at the Academy of Art, Kaiju is a multiplayer VR project that utilizes the Meta Quest 3 headset and KAT Walk VR Treadmill. I was brought on to the project in a level design role, but soon started to implement mechanics and multiplayer.

In the first semester, Ryan Lee and I joined the design team which included Angela Liu, Rita Su, and Arlen DeJesus. After I was caught up with the state of the project, Ryan and I drew out designs for our respective levels, then started to block them out. It's important to check how the level looks in VR often, since the sense of scale and space is much different compared to traditional first person. It's also important to recognize that it's difficult to force the player to look at a specific point or area in VR, since they shouldn't have their camera restricted in any way. Fortunetly there are multiple solutions to this. You can use sound to get a player's attention, or use visual cues.

After I was done with the level, I wrote up documentation to explain the walk through and created an asset list to give to our lead, Angela. She then coordinated with the art leads on what models we needed. As that was happening, I started discussing what mechanics needed to be implemented with Arlen. It was stressed that multiplayer was a priority, so I worked on that for the rest of the semester. Unreal makes multiplayer a relatively easy process, but the inclusion of VR created many issues for both the host and client.

The next semester was over the summer so we had a smaller team. I returned to work on the project with Jordan Fridie and Marco Marcantonio joining. Jordan had worked on a few other projects in the same class, so was used to the development cycle. Marco is an impressive level designer who I knew would be a good fit. I acted as the lead, meeting and communicating with the art leads and giving feedback on assets their team created. Jordan got the multiplayer going again as Marco and I reconsidered the scope of the game, making cuts so that it would be feesable to have the minimum viable product out by the GDC in 2025. I redid my previous level and created a new one designed for a chase sequence. At the end of the semester, we had 4 of the 6 levels completed with multiplayer being close to working 100%.

During the last semester, I returned to the project with Jordan, Marco, Angela, and Rita. I finished my final level, the 5th one in the game, as Rita started work on the 6th. Marco did a pass of the old levels and worked on expanding the 4th level which included designing puzzles. Angela acted as a producer this semester, taking care of a lot of the documentation and communication between teams. Jordan continued to smooth out the multiplayer and started work on the combat.