Totally Realistic Space Combat Simulator for Oculus Quest
A downloadable game for Android
I always wondered why there is no X-Wing vs. TIE-Fighter alike simulation for the Oculus GO, GearVR, Daydream or even Cardboard. After all, 3dof tracking should be sufficient for these kind of games. Totally Realistic Space Combat Simulator is my first attempt to fulfill my dream. It has pyhsics based spacecraft mechanics, dogfights, and intuitive controls. A version for Go and GearVR can be found here.
But what 3DOF lacks is intractable cockpit elements and a some more controller-buttons and analog sticks by default. So I experimented with some mechanics to interact with the touch controllers and present you this game on itch.io! Obviously this has to do with the fact that this game would never make it into the official Quest store but I still think this can be an interesting experiment for anyone who plays space games in VR and owns a Oculus Quest, Rift, GO.
I am actually aiming for a bigger, more complete game, but for that I need to switch over to Entity Component System on Unity3d, as well as the new Universal Rendering Pipeline. New, assets and a completely new Approach, with that I might get trough the Oculus-Quest submission process. But until then you can support me by buying this game here.
I plotted this game with House of the Dying Sun and my dream game in one of those famous radar charts. It should portray how the game feels compared to others, and also give you a sense for what you are buying:
- Homeworld: The overview and control over a bigger fleet of vessels is intense in that game. With proper hand tracking/ tracked controllers, the control over aircraft could be so much more immediate.
- X-Wing: Its relatively simplistic flight mechanics without real momentum, drag or an insane amount of depth to the flight mechanics. But it gets the job done, there is skill you need to acquire to master this game -> thus it can be quite entertaining. It's a bit of the opposite of what I put under "NASA".
- FTL: Yes, it would be cool to have a ship you can run around or command crewmen to fix stuff. A game machanic where you redistribute energy between systems and utilise some thermal management to not overheat your systems, would be a weaker form of it.
- NASA: Good old physics. Everything behaves like real physical objects where thrusters, explosions, impacts etc. need to apply forces to change the inertia of an object. This can be boring, especially since combat as we know it from Star Wars or WW2 simulations would be made impossible. I wouldn't want to lean too much towards that.
- DCS: I put this here to represent any game where you want to control your craft by interacting with cockpit elements:
You want your missiles to lock onto some specific enemy? Go ahead press the touch screen!
Disable active radar so you won't be visible in their long range scanners? Flip the switch!
So what would my next game be if I would have the resources (thanks if you are still reading)?
Combat stays mostly like it is in House Of the Dying Sun since I like the way how you can drift with your space craft but also have behaviour similar to WW2 aircraft. Small hyperjumps would give combat some more speed and allow you to be where you need to be.
Management of thermals, energy and sensors/stealth would occupy you as player and gives depth to combat.
Since small craft can't possibly bring down big capital ships you would have more control over your fleet. In the end you should more be like the commander, that can choose to stay on the bridge of a bigger ship or go in with his fighter to clear a path for a squadron of bombers.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $1 USD. You will get access to the following files:
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Comments
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Bougth the game but sidequest is blocking the instalation saying that the game is not safe. I'm not sure if it is a problem with the downloaded file or something of sidequest.
Thats weird. I tried it just now and it worked. I know the naming of the download file is (android.apk) suboptimal, but it should work nonetheless. Have you tried installing it via ADB? Or redownloading the file?
Hello , I would like to thank you for making this game i really enjoyed it .
keep up the good work
Hello. Purchased your game. Was going to pay $1 but made a mistake and paid $3. lol It is fine. The game seems fun with a wing commander vibe. Only played tutorial yet. Do you have a discord? Or something for communication?
Hi! That was greedy of me. I set the price to $1 but so that it defaults to $3 when actually buying it. Sorry for that, its changed now.
I am using discord, but I won't start a server for any of my future games just now. If you really want to know when I will finally get serious about developing again and about any gameplay element then follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/BaronBoese.
But be warned, I don't have any twitter discipline, there is no regular update or anything like that. But maybe that changes if and when stuff solidifies.
Fun.
[Sorry for wasting your time! Had a thought stuck in my head and needed to rant!]
I was wondering what you think about VR space fighter control schemes?
Just a thought I had playing indie VR flight games as , while fun, They got dull rather fast. Not enough stimulation. Physical! And They don't have the visuals to compensate for just sitting around moving a few fingers. It is not like you can actually feel the Gs too. There was not too much gained from these games being in VR.
At the present, there is basically only 2 control schemes.
1) Just distribute common gamepad control buttons to VR controllers.
2) OR try to emulate real hands using controls for real life earth bound planes.
All basically not made for VR but for conventional games. You used both. There are other VR flight games on itch that do the same thing.
To be honest, this approach do come off lacking. Mapping gamepad onto VR controllers works on a bare bones level but does not really do anything with 6DOF. Emulating real hands do not work. It does not really work with your game or any other game as it is way too sensitive and lacks grounding point. The only way to solve it is to have a joystick socket for you VR controllers. Some gamers have those I think.
Not trying to be critical as you do a great job with these limited approach.
I was just wondering if you put thought into VR specific control schemes. Those with actual more physical movement regarding the controls. It may be a bit blasphemous for traditional flight gamers like yourself but VR games tend to be more used to physical movement at least with your arms. And it is one of VR charms.
An idea that popped into my head was that there was no real reason to keep the traditional real life joystick controls in VR space fighter games. Those were designed for realistic flight on earth after all. In space, a space fighter would be closer to a submarine. Game wise, it is basically a floating transparent ball with the pilot at the center. It is a floating mobile turret basically.
In this case,the gamepad controls work. But how to add more physical movement to get more stimulation? "Minority Report"-ize it! (Movie reference)
Replace a button press with actual VR controller movement. You can have a floating handle inside the cockpit that you could grab and drag on the XZ axis with the right contoller . Rotate the handle on Y axis for fighter rotation. push for acceleration (Y axis), pull for deceleration (Y axis). You can also orientate the controls on the location of the VR controller whenever the gamer "lets it go and grabs it again" Rather than on the absolute position of the handle at anytime. This would solve some of the issues with the limitation of actual gamer movement. Weapons can be handled by the left controller.
A similar but not exact control scheme example would be in the movie "Lost in space" (1998)
Here is a link: 1:40 point!
Again sorry for the rant! Had to get the idea out of my head but had no one to rant to.
Haha, don't be sorry. And no, you are not wasting my time here. EDIT: Also your rant is totally justified. Since i obviously didn't put in the effort to explore more ways on how to control the player craft.
You are totally right, grabbing a Stick in VR only works when you simultaneously lock in your touch controller. In its current state, I myself prefer the the mapping to GamePa . Not because I am happy with it, but because the only 6dof scheme I could fit into that game is just not cutting it.
The game as it is, is not about 6dof movement. The goal of reaching a WW2 behavior was just more fitting for the initial target platform (Oculus GO). But even that WW2 feeling is lacking since a big element of WW2 dogfights was the management and shifting around of Potential Energy and Kinetic Energy. That potential energy part is absent with the lack of gravity and atmosphere.
But yes I thought about non stick based control schemes. Given RCS thrusters, reaction wheels and "classical" engines. You should be able to use one 6dof controller to fully control your ships motion. Translation of the controller off the center would result in a acceleration in that very direction, same for rotation.
I have a problem with using that scheme in high speed combat in open spaces since this would be like a FPS in one big open space but with another added dimension. Also: as long as it is too fast paced you are tempted to make ever growing motions because you want your craft to react faster and stronger. Whats lacking is feedback of when you are in neutral position/ hitting the edge of your valid input.
But when it comes to close combat in confined areas like inside a asteroid, spaceship or a debris field, I could image a said scheme with some vibrating feedback to be sufficient.
Now to your scheme:
I actually like the idea of being able to drag around virtual handles in the cockpit to control speed and orientation. Edit: If i restructure the player-craft and its cockpit this might actually be doable.
I still see a few issues with that though:
I think I am going to stay with classical control schemes for small fighters, but I might look into your proposed scheme for bigger slower ships.
From my current perspective there is more potential in 6dof to operate cockpit elements like buttons, switches and knobs or in commanding a Homeworld style fleet.
Thanks for reading my rant.
In regards to "Having a cockpit without reference points might become nauseating", yes but you don't actually need to make it a transparent ball in a practical sense. You could just implement it in your current cockpit setup without changing anything to the non-control aspect of the game. There is enough field of view to work with. In the practical sense, it is just you and your cockpit is still while the view through your viewport is changing.
"Dragging a virtual handle to rotate the craft will not result in an immediate reaction".. .This maybe true or not. Not sure without trying out implementation. But I think you maybe over thinking the movement.
Don't think "Aerobics" movement in terms of scale. Think "Gun play". Gun play games don't use a large scale of movement but do a lot and fast. Have you played some VR gun play games. Liked "Pistolwhip"?
Oh when I say "drag" , I don't mean (analogy) a car without power steering. More like moving around a virtual mouse upright on a 3D space. With really big lateral movements, you can use a swipe motion like on laptop trackpads but with your hand. Adding some rumble on the controllers would be nice though.
There have been attempts to map flight game controllers to a mouse but were lackluster. Think it would work better in VR.
"Freelancer" comes to mind...
Would it be difficult to get a barebones test using your current game? I just took a few classes in C+ and Java like a decade ago. I don't really know what is required. Was just wondering.
Funny thought: VR game play developers should take mime lessons. Might help with ideas.
Side question: There are 2 machine gun modes in your game. Is it just one is slower than the other?
I think i have a feeling of what you want. I might look into it for my next game but right now i grew tired of my old codebase. There would be so many things to fix that right now are only loosely hanging together.
The two gun modes were supposed to have different purposes. I did never explain it in the tutorial though. The one where the sets of barrels are linked have higher muzzle velocity and accuracy. The other one does high rate of fire and inflicts more damage but spreads a lot more.
As it is right now, it is a question of range, but what I actually wanted to have is a simulation of armor. Only when coupling the guns, you would be able to penetrate armored objects. In the next game maybe.
Also, No regrets with the $3. Worth the money.