TARDIS - Bigger on the Inside

PLATFORM

Oculus Quest 2

ROLE

Independent

DESCRIPTION

Around this time, I had been looking at games that use or imitate non-Euclidean geometry such as Superliminal and also producing and scripting my Launch Title game, Sciophobia. We had spoken about messing with the player in the second act, so that they would end up in different areas of the map than they should be via teleporting.

When coming up with the mechanic to do this, I made a small test using the TARDIS from the TV show Doctor Who, and imitated what a box that was 'bigger on the inside' might look like. I repurposed this same script for Sciophobia, but setup a second camera and used it for hallways instead of the doors.

Click here for link to video

YEAR

2022

GENRE

Science Fiction

PLATFORM

PC

'BIGGER ON THE INSIDE'

At the beginning of the project, we decided that I would be one of the the main 3D modellers for the group. Throughout the next month or so, we quickly realised that having three modellers and one programmer was a bad idea, so this quickly changed. Being one of the more skilled programmer out of the three of us, I decided to move over to programming, while still helping the modellers if they needed it.

First of all, I needed to work out a way to actually achieve this illusion. I set up a separate room away from the play area that would house the TARDIS main console, and I would teleport the player to this.

Next, I needed to create a view of the inside that looked as if it was really there. I started off by creating a simple plane with a material that had screen aligned UVs, then placed a camera inside the TARDIS door looking at the main console. In the blueprint for the plane, I was able to setup a small calculation that would work out where the camera should be in relation to the player's location, and also kept track of the player's rotation, and applied that to the camera.

TELEPORTING THE PLAYER

I now needed to get the player inside the TARDIS and make it look like they are really walking in.

I used a teleporting system that would trigger as soon as they overlapped with the plane. This would make it so that as they were walking through, there should be a seamless transition between looking at what was on the plane, and what is in front of the camera. I also set it on a small cooldown so that there would be no looping, leading to a probable crash.