Breakout VR

By Michael Lederer, Mansur Shawabkeh, and Brent Yurek

Description:

For our project, we would like to make a VR game in the style of Breakout. Breakout is an arcade game originally developed and published by Atari. In it, a layer of bricks lines the top section of the screen and the goal is to destroy them all. A ball is bounced between the user-controlled paddle on the bottom of the screen and the bricks at the top. When a brick is hit, it is destroyed and the ball bounces back downward. The player is penalized when the ball touches the bottom of the screen; so the player must be vigilant in his/her movement of the paddle so as to not let the ball get passed it. The Breakout concept has been rehashed countless times since its release but few have been done in VR. Therefore, we see this as an opportunity to make our own version for this project. We feel that this style of game lends itself to a fine level of control unique sense of immersion when done properly in VR, which is why this would make a great project.

Hardware/Software

The platform we will be using is the HTC Vive on Windows
Software we will be using is Unity, Blender, VRTK 4, Maya.
All premade models and animation and sound plan to be from Sketchfab, Unity assets store, 3dwearhouse, freesound.org.

Project Completion Pages

Specifications

We plan to use the popular VR game Beat Saber as our creative guide for this project.

The game will open to a main menu where the player will be able to select the difficulty level as well as potentially selecting different style paddles and balls

Each game will begin with the player standing a couple yards away from a wall filled with bricks. A ball will automatically launch from behind the player towards the wall. The player will have a paddle in each hand and must hit the ball back towards the wall to destroy the bricks. If the ball hits the wall behind the player, the player loses a life

There will be different types of bricks and other objects to break, including:
- A standard brick that floats in the air
- Bricks that will fall in one of four directions indicated by an arrow on the brick
- Bricks that move up and down or left and right
- Explosives that destroy adjacent bricks when hit
- Bricks that require multiple hits to break
- Pairs of “portals” that cannot be broken but will swallow up the ball which will be spit out by the paired portal
- Possibly more, should it add to the experience

There will be numerous sounds that will play upon the breaking of different types of bricks

During the game, there will also be a side menu accessible through a pause button where the player can alter settings and select different levels, change songs, and more

The game will have a “neon” aesthetic. The surroundings will be dark but the bricks, ball, and paddle will glow in bright colors

Team and Roles

Team:

This project will be worked on by Michael Lederer, Mansur Shawabkeh, and Brent Yurek.

Roles:

Michael Lederer will be in charge of physics system design, scripting, testing, and documentation

Mansur Shawabkeh will be in charge of Asset curation.

Brent Yurek will be in charge of scripting and level design.

These roles are not set in stone, as all members will periodically support other members if specific position is lacking as well as easing the burden of workload

Links to archives/databases/images we plan to use

- VRTK - https://github.com/ExtendRealityLtd/VRTK
- Unity 3D engine - https://unity3d.com/unity
- Professor Andy Johnson's Project 2 (office space) for user controls and movement- https://github.com/uic-cs428-arvr-master/Project2
- 3D models - https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/

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