Hi all,

It's been far too long since I've posted here but I can't really hold off not talking about this any longer.

Basically work on this for the past couple of years has ceased entirely. My reasons being are the follows:

1. Lack of overall interest in terms of those that downloaded usable VR binaries. Admittedly due to a lack of VR headsets in the wild at the time and the fact that Knightmare itself appears to have very little interest overseas in places like the United States where other than one episode that IIRC got broadcast from Rhode Island, it appears to be completely unknown outside of UK which in my belief has resulted in hardly any downloads of the binaries. With the exception of France and Spain that had their own versions of Knightmare based around Series 1-3.

2. The sheer amount of time it'd take to refit it to work with modern motion controller implementations. (further complicated by point 1). IIRC, I tried refitting it with motion controllers and the ragdoll system just wouldn't get on with it. The fact that I'm extremely inexperienced as a programmer doesn't really help matters as I was mainly dependent on studying code snippets online and modifying them where applicable.

3. The main one: Burnout. It was getting to the point where I was getting home from work and then starting up on this immediately upon getting home. Not a good mix in retrospect considering how much my workload was going up in my job. This in turn started adversely affecting my ability to sleep. I had no choice but to walk away. The amount of stress I was getting from being frustrated with my limitations in programming wasn't helping matters either.

4. My overall inexperience with programming was severely holding me back from making a proper usable game out of it. Even when making basic code in Javascript and C#, it'd take me hours possibly several days to get something basic working. Something a proper experienced programmer could get working in minutes or a matter of hours.

5. My inability to create advanced NPC animations and make proper scripted sequences with them was severely holding me back in terms of making the game more advanced and faithful to its source material.

I love the work I did on KnightmareVR. I really do think the absolute world of the effort I went through to present to you all what I believed at the time to be the next step in Knightmares evolution and the ability to experience it in the very medium that Tim Child at one point sought after doing but was unable to due to the technological limitations at the time.

Although my work on this has ceased, I hope my work has bought inspiration to others here who may be able to iterate on where I've ultimately left off. As knightmare continued to evolve with the absolutely cutting edge of technologies that existed throughout its run on CITV, I know for a fact that Knightmare can live on through the advancements that current technology and the future technology that AI Neural Networks can bring once they've sufficiently evolved enough.

I cannot thank you all enough for the interest you've showed in this project for the past couple of years. The download link will stay up for the time being but due to the fact that it's an old version of Unity and was made during a time where the Oculus Rift didn't even have motion controllers, I can't guarantee how it'll run. If it'll even run at all.

Thanks for the feedback

Look at Episode 1 of Series 8. About 5 minutes in, you'll see there's a hole in the ceiling hence why I put it in there.

As for the earlier rooms, due to the highly detailed hand painted nature of them, it's highly unlikely at this point that I'll try to recreate them in 3D. I'd love to put them in though.

Thanks for all the feedback so far. Just a quick post to let you know that I am still here. I really should do a bit more work on this at somepoint.

Seeing the videos is one thing but to actually put the Rift on and see the rooms around you in true to life 1:1 scale is completely different

Time for another update. I've implemented the first variant of the Blocker as seen in Series 5/6. I had to animate a morph in 3DS Max in order to make the face seamlessly come out of the wall. Naturally, all the sound effects are intact. The disappearing effect was done by creating a wall with 3D blocks and then making every couple of blocks move back and to the side by 1 or 2 frames to try and emulate the quick zipping effect. Kinda tricky at first as the frame timings had to be specific.

Room perspective

Give the Blocker the wrong password and your going down the hatch

Arrgggg!

Looks like the remains of Chris are still here after all these years.

The ragdoll effect here looks quite a bit better than the original animated 2D cardboard cutout getting sucked into the mouth

High resolution images:

http://imgur.com/a/EAJLu

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpaFz8yu2pI

Updated demo:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/s56yoamea42bsw6/KnightmareVRPrototype.rar

Second Blocker variant hopefully to come once I can figure out an optimal way of recreating the wall morph (gulp as it's significantly more complex than this one geometry/structure wise).

On a slightly unrelated note, was it Tim Child that said password? The Orc in the Knightmare VR pilot who was voiced by Tim Child IIRC just sounds quite similar.

If you're referring to a first person ragdoll view through the Oculus Rift, it would cause instant motion sickness. One of the main rules with VR development is to strictly avoid moving the players view too much otherwise it will cause discomfort. Even when I was playing Luckys Tale a couple of weeks ago, it took me a while to get used to that due to how the camera moves around.

The Causeway Update

As I explained previously, one of the problems I originally had due to inexperience was how I made my causeways. I basically animated each block individually which is all fine and good but it meant that I had to keep reanimating them if I wanted to do another Causeway which is more than a bit time consuming and monotonous. I've now written a script for myself which enables me to create new Causeways much more quickly as I'm now dependent on Unitys physics system instead of being tied to pre-made animations.

The Path of Defence Causeway

The Red, Blue, Green & Grey Causeway

The Rock Paper Scissors Causeway

The Great Causeway from Series 6 has been restructured to use the new sytem. Using my new knowledge of scripting, the F-I-N-D puzzle is now fully functional with the same sound effects and the blocks actually change to yellow like in the original program. The background I originally used in my 3DS Max recreation from 2012 has now been added and is visible in the room camera view which gives it a more faithful look inline with the program for the watchers. The background sounds here have been enhanced with crossfades. You'll notice this during the FIND puzzle.

Ragdoll deaths have now been added for all the Causeways which look much more realistic than the original program The ragdolls are still a tad inconsistent for some reason...

Forgot to mention this in the previous update. I started revising the lighting/texturing in some of the CGI rooms using high resolution PBR materials which made them much more visually pleasing to look at. I may consider giving the coridoor of blades/Block and Tackle HD textures at somepoint but I will provide an option to play with the original textures if you wish.

Other changes (some previously forgot to mention):

1. Fixed the cylinder bug in the Moving Blocks room (thanks Beefybeef).

2. The Great Causeway block bug was fixed duing the restructure (thanks Beefybeef).

3. Choosing the wrong card in the Play Your Cards Right room now uses the correct sound.

4. Skull death animation added to room view of Block and Tackle to make it more inline with original program.

HD Images:

http://imgur.com/a/5efQf

Videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2EM5p6mANY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awES-k3o9LU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63dhYvBO7Jk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX2i_zZ1Pz8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbqQo9gV2RQ

Updated demo with new revisions available here:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/95diooe4mtd02iy/KnightmareVRPrototype.rar

Thanks for the feedback. I think the Great Causeway got broke with one of the updates to Unity a while back. It was one of the earlier rooms I made so have'nt put back a lot of the programming code in that I've since learnt. At somepoint, I am intending to rewrite my causeway system as it's currently tied too closely to premade animations which doesn't give me much control over how it runs. That and it'll allow me to make new causeways much more quickly. Plus when I re-write it, I'll have an opportunity to add in an anti-cheat system to stop the dungeoneer running across the causeway causing Tim Child to scream blue murder

The Death of Spears like the Causeways will again need to be refactored in someway as it's currently a pre-set animation which doesn't give me much control of how it runs.

Could you show me the dungeoneer sprite on the moving block puzzle please. I don't recall adding a dungeoneer in as a sprite. Is it a white cylinder? If so, that was an early placeholder dungeoneer model that I may have overlooked

Thanks again for all your feedback .

Having been relegated to being in a stable for Series 8, Smirkenorf once again takes to the skies to give Dungeoneers lifts to Level 2. \O/

Welcome back 1993 SGI terrain

I've since been learning Unity3D's terrain/foliage system so expect some more terrains to be in line with the original flight sequences at somepoint in the future, maybe Wolfingdon and the castles and Eyeshield sequences in woods.

Along with this, I've made the beginnings of an inventory system that follows the original two item rule. Smirkenorf will say something different depending on wether you give him the Dragon Mint or the Firestone. Taking the key here is required to make the door in the next room open. If you don't take it, you'll technically be in losing status and will have to take the alternative exit as the door will not open otherwise. As seen in the video, the items persist between the clue room and Smirkenorfs flight area which is quite a major step forward with regards to eventually implementing somekind of quest progression. (still need to implement NPCs at somepoint Gulp ) At somepoint, I'd really like to try implement the status bar used in Series 4 onwards to show the items in the players possession and to make it just that extra bit more authentic.

Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UjB3f7bZsc

High-res images : http://imgur.com/a/bzHPu

With the release of CV1, I have now updated KnightmareVR to use the final Rift SDK. I now feel ready to release a beta version of this for you to play around with as long as you have a DK2/CV1 Rift.

Download link:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/2ssr7kzp6fg8qm7/KnightmareVRPrototype.zip

Controls (X-Box 360 pad)

B - Use (Only used in Sewers of Goth slime version and for sitting on Smirkenorfs Saddle)

A - Jump

Left Stick - Move Forwards/Backwards/Strafe

Right Stick - Turn Left/Right

D Pad - Navigate Menus

Keyboard Controls

R - Reset camera position

M - Show room camera on monitor (only on certain rooms right now)

Escape - Quit to desktop

Known bugs:

1. You can fall off the Dragon in the test flight area if your not careful. Just stay squarely on his back for now.

2. After playing through the smirkenorf item test area, sometimes it still thinks you have the items on a 2nd playthrough. Restart the game to work around this.

3. Start Quest button in main menu is a placeholder right now. Pressing it just takes you back to the main menu.

4. Before you sit in the boat/saddle, you have to look straight ahead otherwise the camera will go out of alignment.

Bare in mind that a Leap Motion is required for the Play Your Cards Right puzzle room, The Runes Puzzle Room and the Smirkenorf Flight Test areas. When an industry standard can be established in terms of motion controls wether it be the Vives Motion Controls or the Oculus Touch ect ect, I'll update it to utilise them. It's not clear what the universal standard is right now but given how young VR is, it's difficult to support all the standards in one go along with cost limitations of being able to access the hardware itself to test with. Some of the rooms like the Causeways will be undergoing internal restructuring at somepoint as since I made those, I have learnt more about scripting and want to implement a system for myself to make the creation of new causeways much quicker as they're currently tied too closely to the animation.

Having been working on this for the past 10 months, this has progressed well beyond what I originally envisioned. Starting life as a basic room viewer, the foundations/rules of the original program are beginning to manifest themselves through programming/scripting which I never thought I'd be capable of. I once again thank you all for your support for giving me the motivation I need to work on this.

The two pictures below are of the Smirkenorf test area in its earliest form before I started adding all the geometry and voice triggers.

Thanks all so much for your continued support with this.

Apologies in advance for the big wall of pictures that's about to follow but I had another big breakthrough yesterday with my understanding scripting. I now understand "static variables" which are basically variables in a script that can be modified from any script. Such a thing will now eventually pave the way for a functioning inventory system amongst other more complex things. The Great Causeways F-I-N-D puzzle for example could now be replicated in this manner in the future along with Keys and other critical quest items that are required to progress through the dungeon.

Onwards to the update:

The rune puzzle from Series 8 is now fully implemented and functional. You have to touch the runes in order otherwise nothing happens.

The Reach Wand from Series 8 has now been implemented which allows you to interact with the runes from a distance. A laser pointer has been included with it to make aiming it easier.

Before you do all this, you have to give Brother Strange his proverb so he'll give you the combination to the rune puzzle (remember it or write it down!). If you don't give him the proverb, you'll effectively be put in losing status like the original program.

I've included a check in the rune room to see if you've given him the proverb. If you haven't, then the puzzle goes into lockdown and you won't be able to progress any further.

This is to basically prevent cheating and to stop Tim Child foaming at the mouth when the dungeoneer wildly waves the Reach Wand around to try guess the combination. Using my new understanding of static variables, I was able to replicate the behaviour of this puzzle to match the original program which would've been practically impossible before. Naturally, all the original sound effects are intact.

Take too long solving the puzzle or if you don't have the combination............

**BHAL-SHEBAH LIVES AGAIN!! **

He enters the room like the original program with the original voice and sound effects before frying you! It really is a surreal feeling to watch him emerge from the shadows when you're in the room in VR. The watchers get a nice view of the action from the monitor which closely mirrors the original program. Once he enters the room, control is taken away from the player so the player can't run away. The room camera in this room is deliberately off center. The reasoning for this is where Bhal-Shebah is a physical 3D entity in the room geometry instead of a 2D video superimposed over the 2D dungeon graphics, there was initially a problem where he would get in the way of the camera. Regardless though, it really does closely mirror the program

Uh-oh..........

AAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!

I was supposed to have shown the Coridoor of Blades room camera in the previous update but I overlooked it by accident

High res images here:

http://imgur.com/a/MsT8n

Video here: (Video seems brighter than what it should've been for some reason) Pictures above more closely reflect how it looks in the rift)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1deKsDAeN4

I once told myself a long time ago I'd never ever program. I never imagined I'd be making things as complex as this when I first started using Unity. Once again, I can't thank you all enough for giving me the motivation I need to continue onwards with this project. Motivation is so importent when things in the program start misbehaving leading to hours of debugging and learning new things to do things more efficiently within the progran. If any of you get an Oculus Rift CV1 can you let me know please and I'll start uploading playable binaries. It should be due out sometime in the coming week and I woudl be interested in knowing if SDK 0.8 is compatible with CV1.

Had a rather nice breakthrough earlier. Whilst looking through the Oculus Rift debug C# code, I came across a function that allows Oculus mirroring to be disabled with the press of a key. Having had trouble with mirroring normal cameras to the monitor in the past, I decided to try pressing the key and I suddenly gained the ability to show room cameras on the monitor instead of what's going in the Rift! The VR still functions like it normally does so you effectively get a nice representation of Knightmares Magic Mirror on the monitor.

Ragdoll deaths have now implemented which look vastly more realistic than the original TV program. There's no way these would've gotten past censors back in the way

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leD8ZjRLAbs

The death at 1:47 made me flinch so hard I was jointly looking at the side wall and checking the camera was outputting to the monitor and I failed to see how much of the floor fell away. Looking back at the footage, there are times where it feels like your watching an episode of Knightmare.

With a mocap suit such as Razer Stem or PrioVR and sufficient room space (inline with original blue screen sets), I do believe 1:1 recreations of Knightmare will eventually be possible with consumer level technology as long as the mocoap suits have sufficient range. It's easy enough to blindfold the player by obstructing their vision to truly make it like the original.

With the release of Leap Motions Orion driver which greatly improves the tracking quality, I thought I'd try integrating it into the Play Your Cards Right puzzle. Being able to see your hands in VR really goes a long way in increasing the sense of presence. With the Leap Motion in, you physically need to reach out and touch the cards After adding it in, I replaced the blocks with ones that have smooth edges to be more in line with the original and upgraded the scripts so I have greater control of the animations. The cards now progressively appear like the original, the previous block goes back in as you progress through the puzzle and unlike the previous version, touching the wrong card results in the block visibly going back in (used to disappear before).

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGwfqgt5khs

I had been pondering on the possibility of doing the Slice Me Dice Me room at some point. Jumping is definitely not a problem as it was a requirement for the play your cards right room. Animating it should be reasonably simple and putting down triggers on the wrong tiles to make them fall away should be pretty simple stuff.

Mills of Doom from Series 2 now finished. Featuring authentic sound effects and an animated bat that flies past occasionally .

Falling between the gaps of the cogs is naturally an insta-kill

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s6cCtXLAu8

High res screenshots:

http://imgur.com/a/LSHt1

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I wasn't aware that VRFocus had made an article on the project. Image below is a WIP of the Mills of Doom that I have been steadily working on recently. The cogs turn right now, the cog on the support rotates and moves up and down accordingly. Sound is pretty much done. Still need to implement the pendulum, floating object thing that moves back and forth? and make a bat fly past periodically. And yes, it's possible to fall between the teeth of the cogs and die

Full resolution image here:

http://imgur.com/vp1UC5P

And now we have the first recreation from Series 3. Dwarf Tunnels complete with animated Bats that swoop into your path!.

EEEEK!!!

High resolution images: http://imgur.com/a/neUK2

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEzwk3a_Ke4

Not much to say about these as they're essentially nothing more than point A to point B. I'll eventually be adding the different colour variations for completions sakes.

Thanks again for all your support with this . If you have any queries regarding the article, ask away and I'll try my best to answer the best I can.

Something special today. I give you a recreation of the un-used causeway from the credits of the final episode of Series 5 which is fully functional. Of all the rooms I've recreated, this one was easily the hardest yet as I had to create custom scripts that turn various room controlling script objects on and off as the player walks over the appropriate triggers. It was obviously made harder still as no dungeoneer ever set foot in this room which made it much more difficult to understand how it would flow. Still a minor animation bug in the far left door which I'm having trouble working out at the moment.

High resolution images (contains HD renders in 3DS Max): http://imgur.com/a/3RrFd

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6a_DzJP6KQ

It's not entirely clear how this room would've worked although I vaguely remember reading somewhere in the youtube comments that you would follow multiples of 7. Even with that in mind, it still doesn't explain why the doors seemingly open and close with no rhyme or reason. With this in mind, I've created a causeway sequence that falls in line with the original progression of the animation like this -> 14-21-42-56-42-14-21-63-21. I'll probably add an extra trigger to close the door if the player tries to exit the room too soon. Standing on one of the wrong blocks for too long results in death. AFAIK, there was never an official explanation on how this room would've worked so I can't say for sure if this is 100% accurate.

Found some time to work a bit more on this.

We now have the Block and Tackle from Series 4 complete with original sound effects! . Along with the sound effects, I have also recreated the unique death sound that they only seemed to use for this room. You'll know it when you hear it.

Like the original, contact with the blocks results in instant death as does falling down into the abyss.

High res images: http://imgur.com/a/PfquW

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tun5feqKtX8

I've coded it so as your about to walk past one of the blocks on the right, there's a 1 in 4 chance that the block will move across your path. As a result, the somewhat unpredictable nature of this room is nicely preserved. The latest version of Unity has also fixed a bug with trails in the mirror window so videos/screenshots should be higher quality in the future.

I've finally fixed a bug with the menus where the mouse cursor would interfere with the buttons.

Fixed the issues I had with the wall decals appearing in front of the slime in Sewers of Goth so the slime version of Sewers of Goth is now implemented. Only issue with the slime right now is that it doesn't seem to react to lighting changes so it has a rather healthy radioactive glow

High resolution images: http://imgur.com/a/tpD3J

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZUy353M7BY

The boat actually works so you press B button when your standing near it and it takes you across to the other side like the original. With what I've learnt with disabling/enabling multiple player entities/cameras via scripting, the addition of this should now eventually pave the way for flights on smirkenorff. Just need to make terrain, figure out how to seamlessly make the transition from realistic terrain to the 1993 SGI CGI terrain, figure out a quick way of customizing flight paths/animations and getting them all to sync and talk to each other gulp

And we now have a basic menu system implemented featuing a 3D antechamber as the background. The start quest button is a place holder for now. The room selection screen brings up options to list all the available rooms by season which can be played individually. Will eventually put thumbnails beside the rooms to allow for quick identification.

Look towards the back area near the dungeon entrance and you can see the magic mirror and the stools from series 1-3 all packed away

Thank you all for your continued support with this. Starting off with just the one room months ago, I never imagined it'd get this far . Meanwhile....

The Fireball/Moving Block room from Series 7 complete with authentic sound effects

High resolution images - http://imgur.com/a/W37wD

Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhdK_HYq4mM

For those of you that want them, I have uploaded reconstructions of some of the ambient tracks from Series 6-7-8 onto my youtube channel which I have since implemented into the project replacing the previous placeholders. Please feel free to use them for any of your recreations/games/audio dramas ect ect.

A couple of other items that I've been working on this week. We now have the room where the Dungeoneer would usually meet Stiletto or a Combination Lock puzzle. Not much to say here. Was mirrored in some cases so that'll be the case in the future here.

And now we have Smirkenorffs holding area from Series 8 with interactive Smirkenorff that speaks to you Really hoping I can get him back up into the skies in the future.

High resolution images: http://imgur.com/a/UFIM5

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kWggRtOCpE

I now have an instant death system implemented! Complete with classic skull animation and sound effects. I have reanimated it from scratch to take advantage of the 3D stereoscopic effects. Will need to adjust the animation of this in the future as I accidentally animated this in a 4:3 ratio and make the jaw/skull top double sided so they don't disappear.

The Coridoor of Blades can now claim more victims! For the blades, I'll most likely be implementing the blood splat from Daniels (Series 8 ) death in the future.

The Snap Dragons killed our poor dungeoneer right at the beginning of the quest.

High resolution images: http://imgur.com/a/3qRxY

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NESk7ajtUfg

Along with the death system, I also now have a basic gameover screen implemented which give the player the option to restart the room and quit the game. The "Go back to Antechamber" option is a placeholder for now. Will probably revisit the look of the gameover screen at somepoint. I'll eventually make a main menu which'll likely feature an option to play single rooms. Ideally, the backdrop of the main menu would be a 3D version of the Antechamber.

Exiting the game causes Tregard to spell cast DISMISS which then makes the game exit to the desktop . The letters appear individually as Treguard says them out which is a nice touch. The blurry text has since been fixed (oversight in how the system worked due to inexperience)