Dark Radiance will be about energy powered weapons / lasers and will make use of the Razer Hydra and the Oculus Rift.
I don’t know if this will turn into a full fledged game one day. Right now it’s just for fun.
And let’s be honest… who doesn’t want to swing a “light sword” in first person
This is the very first prototype ( for now without the Rift ):
I’m still trying to get the glow / lighting right and improve the swing. Although the Hydra is a great device, it still has a noticeable lag.
Maybe some kind of motion prediction like in the Oculus will help.
The hilt design includes some buttons and shape elements from the Hydra controller to get a better feel for it. So when you press a button on the controller, it lights up on the sword. I don’t know if I want to keep the trigger though. It’s shape makes it tricky to get a consistent look. The grip part needs to be more curvy like the Hydra - without getting thinner at the end. I may even include that little cable stud, because it’s very noticeable when you hold it.
The right side ( end of the hilt ) is still very temp.
Cool project! I really like how you’re thinking about the hydra’s design when you’re modelling the hilt. It reminds me of the care they took in Steel Battalion (the original, not the Kinect thing) to match the physical interface to the virtual one
Thx! Yeah I remember that one… very expensive and rare gear at that time though…
I think it’s much more immersive when you have something that connects both worlds,
especially when you are “inside” the Oculus Rift and you want to touch everything!! … but you can’t :-?
I basically ditched the old one completely ^^
The middle part is almost 1:1 like the hydra now. The front will open up on activation and reveal the nozzle
Anyone remember StarCom toys from the 80s ? They had this amazing spring-loaded mechanism when you push a button.
Although the samples from Saberfont.com are great, I thought I could go one step further. Since I already have the virtual representation of the real thing, why not try to mimic the sound and “simulate” it ingame? Samples are great but they lack controllability and variations.
Right now it works like this:
idle → play “hum” sound.
swing → play random “swing” sound
collision → play random “clash” sound
The problems :
it doesn’t take into account how long I swing it.
you start to recognize the samples after a while.
the swing sound plays only when a certain velocity is exceeded.
Subtle idle moves are ignored.
Sure, I could vary the pitch a bit to get more randomness but that doesn’t solve the problem with long swings and idle moves.
The solution (?) :
Procedurally generated sound based on sword movement.
I used MonoBehaviour.OnAudioFilterRead() for that purpose.
But instead of adding a filter to the audio DSP chain I create my own waveform procedurally.
Trent Reznor used it in the soundtrack to “The Social Network”. It create it’s eerie sound by spreading the pitch of eight oscillators apart until they finally create a chord over several octaves. Kind of like the THX logo intro in the cinema.
I added a customizable waveform and a “dissonance” level, that randomizes the pitch every time a phase is completed. That plus some filters and reverb and you have a pretty evil sounding “hum”.
No samples were harmed during this process
You can play around with it here:
( beware the cracking sound when switching presets - it’s all WIP )
