jaxswat/bioshock-infinite-steam-vr

BioShock: Infinite for SteamVR Home

BioShock: Infinite for SteamVR Home

I like BioShock: Infinite so I wanted to make an experience around it in SteamVR Home. This repository contains the code and other custom tools I wrote to make it.

Subscribe on Steam Workshop

Assets

For an overview on how I made the map and extracted assets, read my Steam guide.

Code

SteamVR allows you to write scripts in Lua. I don't like Lua. It's fine for small scripts, but I wanted to create advanced game-engine like systems, and Lua was not going to scale for me. TypeScript is a great solution to this because it has types while still maintaining a script-like runtime, so for this I use TypeScriptToLua.

Thankfully the DotA2 modding community has already done a lot of the effort of writing type declaration files. Most of them have been heavily modified to fit my style and the differences in the SteamVR Scripting API.

This paired with some postprocessing scripts has made for an incredibly powerful scripting environment. Writing complex AI logic for Elizabeth's behavior has been incredibly easy in comparison to when I was prototyping in plain Lua. While the SteamVR Scripting API isn't thoroughly documented, I've been able to solve most of my needs through trial and error.

All of the scripts at the moment use bun.

VScript

These are the game scripts that run in the SteamVR environment.

Directory: vscript

Scripts:

• bun run clean - deletes build/
• bun run build - builds the code into build/
• bun run copy - copies build/ into the SteamVR environment's vscripts directory
• bun run build-and-copy does all of the above steps

VSND Generator

SteamVR Home requires all sound files to be defined in soundevents_addon.vsndevts. I also require these clips to be cataloged for Elizabeth's AI code.

This script does code generation for the .vsndevts file as well as my TypeScript code. Sounds are configured in the code of this file, and then I paste in the generated code into the respective files.

Directory: vsnd_generator

Scripts:

• bun run generate - Creates code snippets for .vsndevts and TypeScript speech config.

VoiceDB

Elizabeth has about 1600 lines of dialogue. To help catalog these, I transcribed them with OpenAI's Whisper, and then made a simple Express server to tag them by sentiment and intensity.

I also transcribed the other characters' lines, but I haven't tagged them yet. Whisper isn't completely accurate, but these files are good for simple CTRL+F searching.

The JSON files are stored in data/.

Directory: voicedb

The scripts have some hardcoded configuration, but they work:

• bun run transcribe - runs whisper command on all audio files
• bun run dupecheck - Verifies that there are no duplicate files. (I don't think the game would pack duplicated but I was suspicous at some point)
• bun run tag - runs express server on localhost:3000 for a simple tagging interface

bsi_anim (Morpheme Animation to Source SMD)

This tool converts Morpheme animations (MorphemeAnimSet and .MorphemeAnimSequence) to Source SMD files (smd). It only supports a few specific types of animations, but it works for the animations I cared to extract.

The original executable was written in C# and published on August 29th, 2016 by id-dameon on the Zenhax forums. The Zenhax forum is no longer online, but id-dameon is still an active member on ResHax. Without any documentation or source code, he reverse engineered the animation data from the Morpheme files to create the tool.

In an effort to improve and preserve the tool, I have decompiled it and rewritten it in rust. The code is chaotic as it originates from decompiled/obfuscated C#, but it works. I have added a better CLI interface, as well as some logic that makes it work with Blender's SMD importer.

Directory: bsi_anim

Usage: bsi_anim.exe ./path/to/your/animation.MorphemeAnimSequence

Optional flag: -l / --legacy - Uses the original program output

Point it to a .MorphemeAnimSequence file and it will output a .smd file in that same directory. It does require the MorphemeAnimSet file to be in the parent directory, but it will find it automatically. If you've used the UModel exporter, they should already be unpacked in this folder structure.

VConsole Tunnel (VTunnel)

VTunnel is a rust program that enables bidirectional communication with the game's Lua scripts using the VConsole server. Data is encoded and sent from the game in print() statements, while the server sends them back through a custom vtunnel_receive command. VTunnel is also able to read/write some other parts of the VConsole protocol.

The goal of this tool is to enhance the speed of developing complex features with debugging and data extraction.

The message protocol looks something like this: $vt!69!my_message_name!s(5):example string!f:3.141592!i:8192!v3:3.14,5.92,0.314!s(0):!f:-3.14!i:-69!b:1!b:0! It is able to send strings, floats, integers, 3D vectors, and booleans. It is also operates as an RPC with request/reply functionality. It can draw debug spheres, run ray-traces, and pretty much anything else that can be done in the Lua code.

An example of a feature I would use this for is building a navigation mesh. I could build a set of events that help me draw walkable areas with my VR controller. I would have done this in the game scripts, but I needed to persist the data (which isn't possible in-game). The navmesh would be built in an external program and then baked into the Lua scripts for distribution.

Right now the program captures some game state (server time, Elizabeth state, player state). As a proof of concept, I have also implemented some basic RPC functionality for remotely running ray-traces. I have also added an interactable tool that lets me control the program from within the game with my controller.

It is incredibly convenient to be able to interact with the game from an external program.

In this demo screenshot, navigation points are being generated on the VTunnel application. When the VTunnel Tool is fired it triggers the server to run a line trace to find the floor and a box trace to see if Elizabeth fits. Red spheres are unwalkable, while green spheres are walkable. The logic is processed in VTunnel while the visualization is rendered in-game. This allows designing a custom navigation mesh and persisting it to disk externally. The nav mesh can then be baked into the Lua and distributed on in the workshop addon.

Note: This program also contains a parser for Source 2 (SteamVR Home) .NAV files, which use polygon nav areas instead of the old plane-based ones.

Questions / Suggestions

Scripting in Source 2 can be very hard due to the sparse documentation. If you have any questions, ideas, or suggestions let me know. Either open an issue on this repo, or ping me on Discord @jaxswat.