Irate Pirates

Inspiration

As children, we would all spend hours setting up castles with characters placed around them, then launching disks at them to see who could knock down all of each other’s figures first. We always wished there was a quicker way to set up a battlefield and jump right into the action. Now we can, thanks to the tools we have at Horizon Worlds. When we saw all of the new VFX animations released, we got inspired with all of the possibilities (explosions, water splashes!)

How we built it

We built our game in headset and using the desktop editor for Horizon Worlds. Original artwork, music, and sound effects were also created for Irate Pirates, using Adobe Photoshop, Premiere and other tools. The game can be played on VR or mobile devices, with code that optimizes the experience for both. This is a team world: Puzzleroo did design, scripting, graphics, and music. marc_linn did design, world building, and music. Mr_Stevo is the main world builder, and also contributed music.

Challenges

Building for mobile and not just VR required extra planning, and came with some unique challenges to create a smooth experience for both. We found that we needed to create completely different interfaces for each device. Being newly accepted into the MHCP, becoming familiar with all of the new tools was initially daunting. One thing we have always appreciated is how intuitive all of the builder tools are within Horizon Worlds, so we were able to utilize many of the new tools quickly.

Accomplishments

We’re extremely proud of the unique mobile interface we created! It seamlessly takes the 3rd person character and places them into 1st person, and the thumb stick converts from moving their avatar, to moving their cannon! New buttons appear on the user’s screen that allows them to fire their cannon, or exit. This experience taught us a lot about creating asynchronous games for both VR and mobile, and we look forward to adopting this approach for all future games. We plan on going back and adding features to our existing Horizon Worlds games, making them compatible for mobile players.

Next Steps

We are currently building new crews and playfields that will be released in the upcoming weeks and months, to keep play fresh and entice players to return for more battles! If we had more time, we would continue to work on play testing and optimization. Moving forward, we are also working with our filmmaking partner, Indigenous producer and director Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals, Dark Winds) to create more cinematic VR experiences that tell fantastic, creative stories, while focusing on diversity and inclusion.