Way Of The Warrior

Prepare alone or as a team to travel to distant worlds and defeat the forces of Darkness!

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Inspiration

For almost three years, I have been creating worlds, assets, and experiences in Horizon Worlds, along with networking to achieve the goal of monetization. This work is my passion, and it allows me to financially support my family. When my two best friends, ShayArtsz and DaUndaBoss, and I became monetized, the announcement of this competition felt like the perfect opportunity. We decided to combine our diverse skills to create our first-ever game world. Not only did we aim to win one of the prizes, which could significantly impact our lives, but we also wanted to build something that could grow and support our monetization goals over time.

The world symbolizes our collective personalities: we are hardworking, positive people who persist through challenges. We also share a love for zombie shooters, role-playing, and strategy games. Inspiration came from some of our favorite VR games, such as Zombie Shoot in VRChat and Citadel in Horizon Worlds. Our goal was to craft something familiar yet distinct, with gameplay and a story foundation that could expand into a multi-choice adventure.

What it does

How we built it

The Way of the Warrior theme was conceptualized by ShayArtsz, who envisioned a gameplay experience centered on being a "warrior of light" fighting against darkness. We chose tools we were most comfortable with, including Blender image import, Horizon Visual Scripting, and primitive shape building. Additional design elements were created using Canva and AI generation.

Each team member contributed unique skills to the project:

  • Me: Creature creation, wearable fashion, and event venue design.
  • DaUndaBoss: Audio imports, 3D Model Imports, graphic design, and scripting.
  • ShayArtsz: Animated art creation and immersive experience scripting.

I designed the temple structure and decorated it with Shay’s design guidance, while DaUndaboss contributed imported images and sounds. Shay scripted the weapons, gameplay, and travel areas, and designed the Portal Boss. Together, we brought the concept to life using a blend of creativity and technical skills.

Challenges we ran into

Learning Blender was a significant challenge for me—it is quite different from the methods I was accustomed to. While Shay and DaUndaBoss had some experience with Blender, we didn’t have the time to fully master it. Instead, we focused on Horizon’s Visual Scripts and community resources.

During the first week, we struggled with the learning curve but quickly regrouped and adapted to our strengths. Shay and DaUndaBoss scoured the Discord for resources to assist with importing and building assets. We relied on community primitive trimesh assets (e.g., those by EvilSmirk and 8bitVaper), Horizon Library tools, and example game scripts to create our gameplay and interactions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Qutie: I’m most proud of the aesthetic design of the world and the immersive travel scenes.
  • DaUndaBoss: I’m most proud of the visuals and the Portal Boss animation.
  • ShayArtsz: I’m incredibly proud that I managed to figure out and script the multiplayer gameplay within the time allotted.

What we learned

  • Qutie: I learned that to accomplish a goal that seems impossible, rely on your friends for support and assistance. I thought my lack of knowledge in Blender and Typescript would make it very difficult to create this game but my friends found resources and brought in assets for me to do build in the style most comfortable to me.
  • DaUndaBoss: I learned that even if we don't have the same skills and tools proficiency, as a team with a variety of talents, we could create a world we're proud of and take time to learn those skills and tools to upgrade our game in the future. I also gained valuable Blender tips from the Discord community.
  • ShayArtsz: I learned that if there's a will, there's a way. Trying to cram with the thought of creating a trimesh world that could compete visually was stressful based off our individual schedule and sticking to our skillset was best and creating the world was very fun.

What's next for Way Of The Warrior

We plan to expand the world with additional level-based Portal areas and Darkness creatures with unique abilities tied to their environments. New achievements and IWP gear upgrades will be added to enhance the gameplay and provide tools to counter these challenges. Long-term, we envision creating a tri-world series under each of our names, with cross-world interactions and upgrades to attract RPG and casual gamers to our monetized worlds.

If we had more time with the competition, we would have developed a second level and introduced more IWP options. However, as a mom of two who balances creating and selling assets daily, Shay managing her IRL business while raising four kids, and DaUndaBoss working full-time, our time online was limited. Despite these challenges, we’re proud of what we accomplished together.

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