Four motion inputs – ROBOCOGNITO

Foot tracking at Global Game Jam

Wave Bot is a giant robot VR experience with four motion inputs, tracking hands and feet. The player robot defends Smashville, U.S.A., from enemy robots by stomping and punching the invading menaces. The experience was created as part of the Global Game Jam – Seattle Indies Workshop Jan. 20-22, 2017.

Read more about our submission.

The HTC Vive usually only recognizes two hand-held controllers, but our team has added a pair from a devkit Vive using their USB/Bluetooth dongles to also track foot motion. Each controller is then addressable in Unity. We created a custom holster prototype by strapping a devkit Vive controller to each leg. This allowed players to stomp and kick attacking vehicles, in addition to grabbing and throwing with the arm controllers

Like most game development projects, the more you learn the more you realize there is to figure out, especially when it comes to inverse kinematics. We were able to successfully track hands and feet, and it really adds to the experience. We had a fantastic team this time, and everyone figured out how to work together quickly.

What a great learning experience!