parimak

[Vacuulus Dev Log 02] Fullbody Awareness

Added 2020-03-16 00:31:04 +0000 UTC

There's a game related term called FBA or "Fullbody Awareness" that I have ALWAYS loved. And right up top, I knew that if we were gonna make Vacuulus a first person experience, having FBA was an absolute must!

My initial inspiration for this was one of my top 5 childhood games, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, which I'm fairly certain was the first to have FBA of this kind. Unlike 99% of other FPSs coming out at the time in 2004, you weren't just a hovering set of severed hands carrying a gun. As a kid this struck a huge chord with me. The developers of the game, Starbreeze Studios, said in a commentary track that they wanted you to FEEL like Riddick, the main character of the game, and in my honest opinion, they absolutely nailed that.

You not only see your legs when you look down, you see your entire body as it moves naturally and follows your actions. You see in the shadows that your body casts you turning your own head as you look around. I've always loved that effect and thought it was such a crazy cool attention to detail. I've always known that in any FPS game I'll ever make, I wanted to give players of my game that same feeling, of not only controlling the character, but BEING the character.

And upon thinking about it in Vacuulus' conception, what better way to intensify any fear that this game illicits, the more immersion you have in this world, the better. So in Vacuulus, with some help from Cheru, I spent a month coding that experience from scratch and fine-tuning it, the result of which is what you see in the video above after the inspirational footage from Riddick. You ARE Pajama Boy.