Overview / Usage

The goal was to create a stress free environment, which was both enjoyable to be within and to create within.

"Get away from the stress of life and fuel your soul. Spend time in a beautiful world, perhaps sitting by the water, walking in the forest ... or tickle your creative impulses by building your dream house (or super-villain pad?)."

A primary goal then was that there should be no conflict, no combat. No pressures.

As such that implies there's no resource gathering either! Right now Be is an experiment in how a relaxing game might be both perceived by the public and developed further. This might change in the future.

An example direction could be: sailing.

Some great boats have been created in game. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to "detach" those, have them float, and be able to cruise around the island?

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Methodology / Approach

Although the title works on both desktop & VR, I wanted to consider Be as a "built for VR first" kind of game. i.e: VR wasn't tacked on at the end of development, but considered throughout.

This I hope shows in areas like the build item bar - which floats near you by default, but can easily be moved. This is nothing new of course, but it's also quite easy to create something that when you play it, is just ... grating.

The Build System:

I wanted to have items that had true width. Edges. Faces.

The problem then is, how do you stick all these things together, in 3d space?

I have built a dynamic snapping system that tries to choose the best snap points no matter what object you're trying to place. This works, "okish" right now. It need further tuning. It's advantages are that it can and does support any type of object. Its disadvantages, that a) you must be able to see the face of the thing you want to build against and b) it can become a bit janky when you're placing objects next to three or four existing objects.

Regarding: a) "you must be able to see the face of the thing you want to build against"

Imagine your building a flat floor. You place a piece on the ground in front of you. You then want to place another piece beyond that. Right now you cannot. You have to move forward, turn around so you can see the face of the floor, and build that way.

To aleiviate some of this, you can extrude. Simply put, you can place a number of blocks in a line easily, without having to place each one.

Technologies Used

• Unity Engine
• Various Assets including The Vegetation Engine, Map Magic, Enviro and Crest
• Rider IDE

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Other links

• Press Kit
• Steam Early Access Page