My first assignment at E2i Creative Studio was an assessment test. I was asked to make a VR chess game with Unity, either in 3D or using Canvas. I decided to go the 3D route, because I didn’t think that playing chess on a flat UI would be very exciting in VR. I had never worked with VR before this, and I only had three weeks to do it. (I also didn’t quite remember how chess worked…)

My biggest challenge was not always having a VR headset of my own to work with. I was able to work around this by downloading a VR simulator – that’s how I tested the logic for the chess movement. However, object interactivity with the simulator I was using and with the actual Vive required the pieces to be set up totally differently. Since this project, I have been experimenting with different ways to work around that.

Gameplay:

• The player stands on top of a giant chessboard.
• Since it is technically a single-player game, the player controls both sides, taking turns as either pink or blue respectively.
• Pink goes first, so the laser pointer that comes from the controller is pink.
• When the player points at a pink piece, it highlights, and the squares that represent that piece’s legal moves are outlined in pink on the board.
• Squares that hold captureable pieces are outlined in purple.
• If the player tries to point at a blue piece while it’s pink’s turn, the pointer turns red, and that piece does not get highlighted (nor does its legal moves).
• After pink makes a move, the controls switch over to blue.

Please note that the chess piece models were downloaded from the Unity Asset Store.

Below is a screenshot of the game being played using the VRTK simulator.

ForE2i Creative Studio, January 2018 RoleSolo Project Players1 EngineUnity