DCC Capstone: Operation Cyberspace

Overview

Operation Cyberspace was created as a Capstone Project for the Design Cultures & Creativity (DCC) Honors College at University of Maryland, College Park.

Operation Cyberspace is a unique cooperative puzzle game, focused on communication between a player in Virtual Reality and a player outside of it. Framed as a mission undertaken by two secret agents, the players must work together to infiltrate an evil corporation through cyberspace. While one agent tries to navigate a simulation in cyberspace meant to evaluate whether the user is an evil mastermind, the other player takes on the role of the one in the earpiece, helping the agent by using recovered documents and props that hold vital information.

The asymmetrical gameplay between the real world and the virtual world creates two separate experiences for the players, each of which focus on the interactions, tactility, and visuals that are only possible within their respective spaces. The escape-room-like puzzles require the players to work as a team to connect those interactions and stitch together their disjoint pieces of information to find a solution. By requiring players to draw connections between their separate parts of the puzzle, the game naturally encourages teamwork and communication, and creates extremely enjoyable “aha!” moments for both players.

The Virtual Reality experience was created using the Unity Real-Time Development Platform and their built-in Unity XR Interaction Toolkit. The game also used 3D models built in Blender and was scripted in C#. The document for the player outside of Virtual Reality was written and formatted using Microsoft Word, with illustrations created using Adobe Photoshop.

Game

The game is played by two people; One that is playing the VR portion of the game using an Oculus VR headset, and another that is sat at a desk with the accompanying document. The player that is sat at the desk must also have a chess set fully set up and ready to use on their desk at the start of the game.

The VR portion of the game can be downloaded here: (LINK AVAILABLE SOON)

Click here to download the accompanying document for the second player.

Images

Early prototype development of the game. The board originally included both white pieces and black pieces, with the pieces represented by blocks of varying heights.
An in-progress screenshot of creating the knight piece model for the game, using Blender.
A development screenshot where I am setting the animations for the player’s in-game hands. Later on, the hands were given colliders to allow for physical interaction with objects in the game, where the hands can be pushed against objects.
Any true evil mastermind enjoys pressing buttons. Especially large, red ones.
Break down the walls of society, both figuratively and literally.
The game being played by a fellow DCC student (left) and DCC Director Jason Farman (right) at the DCC Capstone Fair.

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