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Deep Dive

Deep Dive is a VR escape room set in a sinking submarine, players must go through a series of puzzles to create a scuba outfit to escape. Another player assists with a companion app, playing as a hacker with information about the submarine,helping the VR player through the puzzles.
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I worked in collaboration with Dallin Higgins, who was in charge of the puzzle design and creating the app in Unity, along with Micheal Relleva who worked on modeling and lighting parts of the environment. I was in charge of the entire VR experience, all done in Unity with C#. I modeled the Submarine's bedroom, engine room, hallway and captain room; and also managed sound implementation. 

Trailer

Interactions

I used Unity 2019 to create the game alongside an Oculus Plugin. The plugin allowed for basic interactions such as grabbing objects with the hands and moving, it also supplied the basic player character to allow such interactions and enable VR play. 

Aside from diving into the source code there are other custom interactions I created that can be triggered in the submarine. There are levers and buttons that can trigger leaks or lights and sounds; some of these actions could make the submarine sink slower or faster, so every action in the submarine has an impact on the experience.

One big issue I had with this plugin is that it did not allow the player to grab items that were constrained or parented without breaking the game entirely or disjointing the asset. I located the boolean that tells me when an item is grabbed in the plugins script and used it to create a custom script to freely move items that are constrained; such as levers, valves, and drawers etc. It was a very interesting task to learn and locate code I did not write in order to manipulate the environment and create a more immersive experience.

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Puzzles

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The first puzzle players will find are the levers in the captain room. In the beginning only the engine room and captain room can be accessed. In the captain room there are 10 levers with 5 dials above them; 2 of these dials are broken and can be ignored, but the other dials are functional and work like a clock. Each hand of these dials are linked to one handle, meaning each dial is controlled by 2 handles. The hacker with the app has information about the captain and his log; this reveals a clue containing a specific time of day. Once all the dials match the hours given by the hacker then a light will flash green; the door leading to the dining hall room will open, and the second puzzle begins.

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The green light repeats a Morse code that can be decrypted with the help of the hacker who has access to a page with the Morse code alphabet. Once the word is found it serves as a clue to find the right key for the next puzzle; which requires a specific floppy disc.

The submarine doors are locked with a password and require a proper floppy disc to be operated. There are locked doors the player will encounter. The one leading to the planning room, and the one that leads to the exit of the submarine, which triggers the ending. One of these doors will show strange drawings on the pad, these are symbols the hacker must use in order to find the proper 3 digit combination for the door lock. Once the player enters the proper combination the door automatically opens and the light turns green. These doors display an access granted or denied message depending on the floppy disc and number combination. There is also an eject floppy disc button.

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The flashlight is an item that can be grabbed, with a simple trigger on it so players can turn it on or off. The flashlight has three states: ON, black light, and OFF. When the player uses the black light special messages can be seen in each room of the submarine. The images revealed by the black light are symbols the VR player must describe to the hacker with the app. Once all the images are found, the hacker should be able to get the final code and exit the submarine through the last locked door.

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Environment

During the first half of production time on this project I also modeled a decent amount of the submarine as I was programming the VR interactions and puzzles.

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I created the initial bedroom the player starts in, the hallway attached to that room, the engine room and the captains room. I also modeled all the assets within the rooms which served as modular assets for the rest of the build. I did not do any lighting work for the final build and worked on a couple materials for some of the assets as well. In addition to this I also served as a particle artist.

engineRoom.png
captainRoom.png
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