Been playing on and off since I seen it posted on Reddit. Just tried today after getting a 3rd Oculus sensor for 360 tracking - Wow! No shake in the back corners, just a seamless experience.
Is there anywhere where we can see if you’ve posted a new version/update? A version number/release date/etc?
I will be posting info here and at the main blog (and probably via tweeter). The reason there is no udpate yet is that I have pretty busy time right now with other things. Good news is that in few weeks I should move full time to work on Tea For God.
Awesome :) I do like tracker music . I still haven't decided on style of the music for Tea For God, though. One of the ideas is to go into synths (I love what's going on in Prelude!)
Just rambling, but I've always had this idea to have dynamic tracker-driven music in a game where the music is rendered live and the in-game action can affect the music, like jumping patterns, mute/unmute channels, change instruments, etc, to give a truly dynamic music experience rather than using layered pre-recorded tracks. It would probably be a huge undertaking to link the music and the programming that tightly, but it would be soooo cool, haha! Definitely an idea unique to live-rendered formats like tracker music.
I had a similiar idea. But to do it in opposite manner. To synchronise visuals to the music. Of course music would be generated on the fly, tracker way, this would give the most control over particular sounds. And when you posted this message, I started to think, how it would fit into elevators. Imagine all (at least all empty) elevators moving in sync with music.
Very cool idea, like many games that sync to the music but a step further. There are definitely a LOT of interesting doors that can open using tracker-based music. For the record, the video above was running OpenMPT with a bunch of VST plugins, while recording in OBS, and still hitting 90fps on my 6-year-old Core i7... trust me, it struggles with a lot of games, so the fact that it could do all that without a hitch is a testament to your design... very efficient! I could easily rework the music to ditch the VST plugins for compatibility with general IT playback plugins, which would even further reduce CPU overhead to negligible.
Now there's an idea. A section with platforms, so you can see a lot where enemies dance in sync and they shoot in sync with the beat. I have no idea if I will have time to do that, but I will have to try it out. For time being I plan to work on pure gameplay features alone to get to proper vertical slice. Then I might work on music system a bit.
The game is using multithreading a lot. Because of that it can hit 90fps. The bigger the level, the more workload there is - all NPCs moving around, etc, but there is a lot of cheap optimisations, ticking some stuff every second or third frame etc. With 90 fps some enemies have logic running at 30fps. Which is what is happening for some of the normal games ;)
Hi Void Room, I've very much enjoyed the game and am excited to see future updates! Additionally I want to help/say thanks, please change the page settings to "Name your own price" I intend to donate. I'm a student/ VR dev myself so no big sum, however if you would allow me to give some of what others have given me on this platform I would be very happy :)
If you happen to be after a hand with any modeling / animation let me know, I'm more frequently a soft edge kindof guy can show you some of my recent hard edge though if you ever get curious.
I read your rating and I really like the idea of running from the doom. Recently I was thinking about adding hunter robots that would be impossible/very hard to kill but maybe something different would feel better. A ticking bomb is too simple but something between these two could work nicely (very small robots that alter/rearrange the environment foot by foot going after the player and then disassembling your body? stuff like that). And sound desing will be changed. While some of the sounds I plan to keep (robots, turrets etc), some will be thrown out and everything will have to be modified to set proper sound levels because that's just messed up.
Modeling/animation is something I plan to keep doing myself. The biggest reason is that all models and animations are procedurally generated and I develop systems for that all the time. For sure I am planning to release source files for the assets eventually and add some documentation - because I am sure, that if enough people would be playing this game, there will be modders that will add new characters and environments - and whole game is created around that thought - to allow to add stuff easily.
For time being I am arranging my stuff to start working full time on this.
Interesting, yeah I like your attitude for modding / customisability, the system has scope for adaption to so many game types I think so that will be great!
How complicated would it be to implement local multiplayer with someone on the pc? I've found this is something easy to set up in unity but near impossible in Unreal so curious about how this would be in your engine? Since the magority of the time I spend with vr is socially with friends any vr game that integrates multiplayer is often my automatic favourite, 'Carly and the Reaperman' for example. I can imagine this working in the context of this game with the pc player either being a small assistant like the electro dogs, after you've poked their watsit haha, or maybe multiple pc players in splitscrean playing as different robots competing to be the one to kill you so they can take your place in vr. Final idea being that they play it like some kind of RTS/tower defence, placing the hazards you face etc. - probibally all a bit of a side track from your vision, if it happened to be something not too complex to implement with the way your engine works though maybe that's something I try do mod in myself one day haha.
For now I only plan allowing to mod content, add new stuff, modify existing, not game types or creating completely different mechanics. Although reading recently, how some developers work with limitations (Earthworm Jim's flying washing machines due to lack of scripting, etc) I still could get surprised.
As for local multiplayer - I was thinking about it, as in general, it seems to be easy thing to add (at least for prototyping). But with impossible spaces it gets trickier. I was thinking more about being out of the action, seeing map, hacking things, releasing enemies etc. I don't know why I haven't thought about direct control of other characters (sidekicks! and imagine that I play Kirby StarAllies with my kids). For sure it won't be top down as it is in other games and what allows for multiple players to compete or help. If it would be added, it more likely will be FPP.
It's not on the main list of things to do but I do consider it as something that may happen later. For sure I'd like to explore this in future.
Same goes for normal multiplayer. Both coop and pvp could work pretty well.
I see cool! Glad to hear that about local, and Gosh I had discounted the idea of normal multiplayer as sheer madness, randomly walking round a corner into someone else with equally startled flailing arms would be quite an experience if you didn't know it was coming!
I absolutely see what people mean by having an adjustable buffer within the guardian boundaries... I just redid my room for better size and coverage and walked into a wall! Here's a video explaining and showing the issue:
Adjustable buffer and calibration are going to happen but that should only be used to add that extra buffer if you don't want to get closer to wall in case you have mirrors, windows, displays, tv, china there.
But this is a bug. This should never happen, corridor should never, I mean NEVER, be this far and make player hit the wall. There is a narrow buffer that allows a corridor or a room to violate this rule, but only up to 1cm. And what you encountered is a dangerous bug.
I assume that it happened to you once? If so and you remember when, could you send me a log file (they are in _logs). I store info about seed, play space etc to allow me to reproduce such bugs and fix them.
From your previous video I noticed that you have Oculus, right? Other person also repeated similair bug with Oculus and I might have something not correct when reading play space size. When I looked into it, it was just using single method to get the size, but maybe it gets the maximum size. Luckily I have Oculus as well, so I'm going to do some weirdly shaped play spaces to test it.
Awesome! Glad to hear you'll be addressing this with some options. As far as this happening, it's been consistently close to the edges, but I had just rearranged my living room to increase my play area (specifically for your game, haha!), and I guess I pushed the boundaries really right up to the edge.
For Oculus, there seems to be two play areas; one is the actual area you map out, irregularities and all, and the other is the largest rectangular area that the system can fit inside the irregular shape. The floor inside your main menu maps to the rectangular "sub-area" it seems. I made manual adjustments using Guardian Boundary Editor, and I may have moved the rectangular area too close to the actual guardian boundary. So I wouldn't blame your game entirely for the mishap as I may need to make more adjustments, but you can definitely see the overlap in the video is a bit too much regardless.
Even if you pushed the boundaries right to the wall, the game should not make a corridor embedded this far. As I said, it should be max 1cm. I'll be adding some automatic tests to validate room generation to make sure that all accessible areas are placed within play area.
If it is possible to send a log for when it happened, it would make it easier to fix it.
Thanks for confirming it is actual safe area being used, I was getting a little bit paranoid that it may sometimes read larger one.
Just a stupid idea: Could it be that it has something to do with the Guardian Boundary Editor? We both use that tool and have the same problems. I have often had it that the field surface went beyond the blue borders, mostly with the elevators.
I will try it out but it sould not matter. In the Richard's video you can see how far beyond guardian boundaries does the corridor reach. And he said that the area in menu is the same as safe area (which is also guardian boundary).
That said, manipulating guardian boundary with GBE may still make it easier to repro.
It was the most important reason why I decided on my own engine. Fast portals rendering, sounds, navigation, AI, object interaction, physics (although physics is most problematic as I decided to do it quite experimentally with soft collisions).
I've seen people doing portals with both Unity and Unreal but I heard that it slows down significantly. Not mentioning about other things. I think that it might be possible to do it with existing engines although you would have to heavily modify bits of it. This of course means that every bigger update could induce chaos.
For what is the switch on the terraces good (output / status). Turn off the satellite antenna? What for? BTW: I have about 30 long sessions behind me now. Very often I do not get any further and move in a circle (come back to the same place after 5 minutes). Am I in a dead end and have previously gone somewhere wrong?And sometimes I walk through a snow-white labyrinth and find a very small blue square room without an exit. On the left is a kind of shutter/blinds. Once I saw how it had closed before I could enter the room.
One more question: If I had a playspace of 4.5 x 4.5 m, would the corridors be wider and longer? I'm just about to expand my cellar and that would be quite a motivation, i am sometimes a little lazy :-) Oh, and still no crashes experienced. Everything is running smoothly. Congratulations to your engine!
That switch is used to turn off solar panels (that's what they are). It was rather proof of concept but that will be used in a modified form in final game. With explanation. In demo it is only useful in challenge mode - it is required to turn off at least one panel to open the door. During night door is open but flying robots are more aggressive.
In case you'rd lost, there are arrows on hand displays that help to navigate.
Yes, corridors will be longer and probably wider. I have to tune tile size automatically adjusted and expose few options.
Thanks for the info about the crashes :) there are few and I have some logs to go through and to fix bugs :)
I'm seriously impressed with what you've done here. As it is I'll probably get several hours of gameplay, and it's going to the top of my list for games to show off to friends on my Rift.
Things I love:
Well-modeled arms help immensely with immersion
Automatically detecting my playspace from the Guardian System
Super smooth performance
Doesn't feel like I'm playing in my little office space
Possible improvements I noticed, many of which you're likely already aware of:
Oculus Touch controllers let you model much more complex hand motions, like pointing and sticking your thumb out. Implementing that hand modeling to the fullest really helps with immersion
There needs to be a pause menu of some kind. The first time I opened challenge mode something never loaded and I couldn't press the button to open the door. The only way to fix this was to quit the game completely, since I couldn't pause and restart or quit to the main menu
As others have mentioned, explaining the way the HUD elements and holsters work would go a long way to improving the initial experience. Also explaining the different types of enemies
I don't think the default guns should automatically retreat, or not so fast. It's really annoying trying to shoot someone as the gun slides away. Maybe detecting when the index finger is still on the trigger could work when using Touch Controllers if you want it to be automatic
A graphics menu would be nice, if only to turn on supersampling. Without a menu in-game I'll have to use Oculus Tray Tool to adjust it manually.
Don't drop guns behind bars, or not so far that I can't reach through. It pulled me out of the game when I leaned forward to grab a gun just out of reach and had the guardian system pop up to warn me I was at the edge of my playspace
1. Oculus touch controllers and hand gestures - that is definitely going to happen. Both for immersion and for pushing buttons and stuff.
2. Pause/menu is going to be added, I will only have to get controls for that properly. The thing with not being able to open doors might be related to bugs in level generation. If you could send me logs you have (if you encountered it, stop the game and send me a log) I could check what's going on.
3. I will add tutorial :) but at this point of development, lots of things may still change and lots will be added. I will have to find a way to simply explain what is there already though. To be able to get proper feedback.
4. ATM guns won't retract if you hold grip button. That might be not clear BUUUUT I am still going to test few things with controls so this may change and if I won't be sure which one is better, I will choose the most liked solution as default and other will be available through options. System to auto detect prefered approach would be great - if I get time and idea how to do it properly, this is going to be added.
5. There are some options in xml file, super sampling is not there, yet. But yes, graphics menu will be there. When menu is added :)
6. Guns behind bars is bug/feature-not-yet-final. I have no system yet to handle loot properly and that's why items that could be picked up are spawned in unreachable places. This will be addressed properly. In general, you should not try to reach places that you can't move to. There is other problem with that, bars I mean. When I was showcasing my game, few people moved their head beyond bars and one kid, when he saw long empty corridor, he started to run. I stopped him when I noticed what he is planning to do. I will be adding something that prevents going through walls/bars.
Thanks for the detailed reply! I hadn't realized I could use the grip to hold the default gun in place. I'll definitely be using that. The level failing to load has only happened once so far, but if it happens again where are the logs being stored so I can grab them?
Played a couple times - very impressed! I'm not usually one to comment, but you need to know, this is so unique and has *something* 80% of other VR games don't have. You've got something really great in progress here - keep going! (I know it's very early, so I'm sure you know, but players could use some tutorial/explanation for the ammo/energy and control stations/levers.)
Watching a video while writing this that said you wrote the engine from scratch, or didn't use Unity/etc. 100+ more impressed points for you!
Really, really cool! Thanks for putting it out there - and again, keep going!
The tutorial will be there for sure as there is quite few things to explain. I want to keep systems simple but having them all at once thrown at you is quite overwhelming. Introducing them one by one would help to understand. ATM with experience mode players should not worry about these but in challenge (which hints how "normal" difficulty level), it might be crucial to use them.
It's currently more of a prototype / proof of concept. I plan to put it on Steam as early access but when there will be more content and more gameplay systems. For a while I plan to keep it free.
Just played it 40 minutes, one of my best VR experiences so far in 2 years Oculus. Despite my little playspace, it worked almost 100%. The game is really fun and actually playable. No crashes or similar. Have already paid a lot of money for VR games that were worse in the development stage.
I have two improvements there:
- My playspace is not completely square (and small). Would be cool if you have a calibration function.
- Make the demo endless, it is always sad when I'm done :-)
That calibration function sounds good. What would you prefer to have? Game handles rectangular spaces but may handle them not efficently and calibration function would be useful there. I will think about it.
The next update will add option to make it endless :) Or it will be endless with a possibility to exit/stop.
The problem with the playspace is that you use the blue walls as a base and not the green playspace. The blue walls are exactly on the real walls, which makes it easy to run against the walls which is very uncomfortable. For this the Guardiansystem is not thought or suitable. It is also the first game where I turn off the Guardian system, because you are always so close to the walls and that bothers a lot when it is displayed. Incidentally, i have had games that temporarily disable or fade in the Guardiansystem permanently. I can think of several options for calibrating: 1. A slider which reduces the entire playspace by xx percent (easy to implement) 2. Run through the playspace with a controller as in the oculus setup or press the trigger once in each corner. 3. You blend in the playspace on the ground and you change the size with the help of some points as in an image editing program when inserting a graphic.
Do not make the game endless, but more difficult with each level. With permadeath and a high score at the end which is stored in a highscorelist. That should give enough motivation to continue playing. How about incidentally with selectable settings? For example, the current sci-fi setting with robots and laser weapons and a second setting with swords or knives in a dungeon. A space station would also be possible, since you only have to change the background with stars. Just an idea for the future... If there is interest, I could translate the English texts into German, if at some point there is a bit more text or a tutorial (necessary, I still have not understood many things).
I will have to check how I get play area size. What you said means that I get it using min and max of Guardian Boundary corners which makes it bigger than it should.
1. Sliding is easy.
2. That would be doubling what there already is for both Oculus and SteamVR.
3. This one is interesting. To display boundary, play area that is read from settings and play area calibrated by the player. Slider from point 1 could be here as one of the tools. I added that to my list.
I am thinking about at least two endless modes. One would be purely endless, to explore and travel through the world. But still it would be possible to end it (that's related to the story and I don't want to get too much into details right now). The second one would either force player to move towards the end (think of FTL where it pushes you to the last level) but you can just make it longer if you want. Or as you said, to push the difficulty level.
The settings for sci-fi, medieval etc. would kill me ;) I like the idea but I won't be able to handle it. Not yet. What I'd like to do is to focus on this game, create few other ones that happen in different settings and then work on a Inception-like game reusing stuff from other games - then I could use all that settings.
I have localisation system in place and I will be grateful for your help with translation :) but that should come when there will be more game in this game :) Thanks :)
I would love to be able to fine tune the play space the way you can in Beat Saber. My play space is set up so you can face the back wall without a problem, but if you try to put your back to it you'll be pulling against the cable, so I'd want to be able to shrink the playspace so it doesn't extend so far in that direction for this game.
I plan to add a way to calibrate play area :) I haven't thought about such cases and wanted just really simple "grow/shrink" but few people already suggested that, so it is on my todo list :)
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Been playing on and off since I seen it posted on Reddit. Just tried today after getting a 3rd Oculus sensor for 360 tracking - Wow! No shake in the back corners, just a seamless experience.
Is there anywhere where we can see if you’ve posted a new version/update? A version number/release date/etc?
I will be posting info here and at the main blog (and probably via tweeter). The reason there is no udpate yet is that I have pretty busy time right now with other things. Good news is that in few weeks I should move full time to work on Tea For God.
This game really needs music....
So I made some...
https://soundcloud.com/rchrdcrg/tea-for-god
Seriously, I'd be glad to rework this into a game soundtrack!
Very cool track! :>
Awesome :) I do like tracker music . I still haven't decided on style of the music for Tea For God, though. One of the ideas is to go into synths (I love what's going on in Prelude!)
Well if you care to check it out, I've done some more work on the music... got a main theme, lead-in/waiting room, and gameplay theme!
You can see I'm pretty serious about the idea, lmao! But regardless, I'm just having fun making new music... thanks for the inspiration!Just rambling, but I've always had this idea to have dynamic tracker-driven music in a game where the music is rendered live and the in-game action can affect the music, like jumping patterns, mute/unmute channels, change instruments, etc, to give a truly dynamic music experience rather than using layered pre-recorded tracks. It would probably be a huge undertaking to link the music and the programming that tightly, but it would be soooo cool, haha! Definitely an idea unique to live-rendered formats like tracker music.
I had a similiar idea. But to do it in opposite manner. To synchronise visuals to the music. Of course music would be generated on the fly, tracker way, this would give the most control over particular sounds. And when you posted this message, I started to think, how it would fit into elevators. Imagine all (at least all empty) elevators moving in sync with music.
Very cool idea, like many games that sync to the music but a step further. There are definitely a LOT of interesting doors that can open using tracker-based music. For the record, the video above was running OpenMPT with a bunch of VST plugins, while recording in OBS, and still hitting 90fps on my 6-year-old Core i7... trust me, it struggles with a lot of games, so the fact that it could do all that without a hitch is a testament to your design... very efficient! I could easily rework the music to ditch the VST plugins for compatibility with general IT playback plugins, which would even further reduce CPU overhead to negligible.
Now there's an idea. A section with platforms, so you can see a lot where enemies dance in sync and they shoot in sync with the beat. I have no idea if I will have time to do that, but I will have to try it out. For time being I plan to work on pure gameplay features alone to get to proper vertical slice. Then I might work on music system a bit.
The game is using multithreading a lot. Because of that it can hit 90fps. The bigger the level, the more workload there is - all NPCs moving around, etc, but there is a lot of cheap optimisations, ticking some stuff every second or third frame etc. With 90 fps some enemies have logic running at 30fps. Which is what is happening for some of the normal games ;)
Hi Void Room, I've very much enjoyed the game and am excited to see future updates! Additionally I want to help/say thanks, please change the page settings to "Name your own price" I intend to donate. I'm a student/ VR dev myself so no big sum, however if you would allow me to give some of what others have given me on this platform I would be very happy :)
If you happen to be after a hand with any modeling / animation let me know, I'm more frequently a soft edge kindof guy can show you some of my recent hard edge though if you ever get curious.
Good luck!
Hi Jazz Cousins and thanks :)
I read your rating and I really like the idea of running from the doom. Recently I was thinking about adding hunter robots that would be impossible/very hard to kill but maybe something different would feel better. A ticking bomb is too simple but something between these two could work nicely (very small robots that alter/rearrange the environment foot by foot going after the player and then disassembling your body? stuff like that). And sound desing will be changed. While some of the sounds I plan to keep (robots, turrets etc), some will be thrown out and everything will have to be modified to set proper sound levels because that's just messed up.
Modeling/animation is something I plan to keep doing myself. The biggest reason is that all models and animations are procedurally generated and I develop systems for that all the time. For sure I am planning to release source files for the assets eventually and add some documentation - because I am sure, that if enough people would be playing this game, there will be modders that will add new characters and environments - and whole game is created around that thought - to allow to add stuff easily.
For time being I am arranging my stuff to start working full time on this.
Interesting, yeah I like your attitude for modding / customisability, the system has scope for adaption to so many game types I think so that will be great!
How complicated would it be to implement local multiplayer with someone on the pc? I've found this is something easy to set up in unity but near impossible in Unreal so curious about how this would be in your engine? Since the magority of the time I spend with vr is socially with friends any vr game that integrates multiplayer is often my automatic favourite, 'Carly and the Reaperman' for example. I can imagine this working in the context of this game with the pc player either being a small assistant like the electro dogs, after you've poked their watsit haha, or maybe multiple pc players in splitscrean playing as different robots competing to be the one to kill you so they can take your place in vr. Final idea being that they play it like some kind of RTS/tower defence, placing the hazards you face etc. - probibally all a bit of a side track from your vision, if it happened to be something not too complex to implement with the way your engine works though maybe that's something I try do mod in myself one day haha.
For now I only plan allowing to mod content, add new stuff, modify existing, not game types or creating completely different mechanics. Although reading recently, how some developers work with limitations (Earthworm Jim's flying washing machines due to lack of scripting, etc) I still could get surprised.
As for local multiplayer - I was thinking about it, as in general, it seems to be easy thing to add (at least for prototyping). But with impossible spaces it gets trickier. I was thinking more about being out of the action, seeing map, hacking things, releasing enemies etc. I don't know why I haven't thought about direct control of other characters (sidekicks! and imagine that I play Kirby StarAllies with my kids). For sure it won't be top down as it is in other games and what allows for multiple players to compete or help. If it would be added, it more likely will be FPP.
It's not on the main list of things to do but I do consider it as something that may happen later. For sure I'd like to explore this in future.
Same goes for normal multiplayer. Both coop and pvp could work pretty well.
I see cool! Glad to hear that about local, and Gosh I had discounted the idea of normal multiplayer as sheer madness, randomly walking round a corner into someone else with equally startled flailing arms would be quite an experience if you didn't know it was coming!
I absolutely see what people mean by having an adjustable buffer within the guardian boundaries... I just redid my room for better size and coverage and walked into a wall! Here's a video explaining and showing the issue:
Adjustable buffer and calibration are going to happen but that should only be used to add that extra buffer if you don't want to get closer to wall in case you have mirrors, windows, displays, tv, china there.
But this is a bug. This should never happen, corridor should never, I mean NEVER, be this far and make player hit the wall. There is a narrow buffer that allows a corridor or a room to violate this rule, but only up to 1cm. And what you encountered is a dangerous bug.
I assume that it happened to you once? If so and you remember when, could you send me a log file (they are in _logs). I store info about seed, play space etc to allow me to reproduce such bugs and fix them.
From your previous video I noticed that you have Oculus, right? Other person also repeated similair bug with Oculus and I might have something not correct when reading play space size. When I looked into it, it was just using single method to get the size, but maybe it gets the maximum size. Luckily I have Oculus as well, so I'm going to do some weirdly shaped play spaces to test it.
Awesome! Glad to hear you'll be addressing this with some options. As far as this happening, it's been consistently close to the edges, but I had just rearranged my living room to increase my play area (specifically for your game, haha!), and I guess I pushed the boundaries really right up to the edge.
For Oculus, there seems to be two play areas; one is the actual area you map out, irregularities and all, and the other is the largest rectangular area that the system can fit inside the irregular shape. The floor inside your main menu maps to the rectangular "sub-area" it seems. I made manual adjustments using Guardian Boundary Editor, and I may have moved the rectangular area too close to the actual guardian boundary. So I wouldn't blame your game entirely for the mishap as I may need to make more adjustments, but you can definitely see the overlap in the video is a bit too much regardless.
Even if you pushed the boundaries right to the wall, the game should not make a corridor embedded this far. As I said, it should be max 1cm. I'll be adding some automatic tests to validate room generation to make sure that all accessible areas are placed within play area.
If it is possible to send a log for when it happened, it would make it easier to fix it.
Thanks for confirming it is actual safe area being used, I was getting a little bit paranoid that it may sometimes read larger one.
Just a stupid idea: Could it be that it has something to do with the Guardian Boundary Editor? We both use that tool and have the same problems. I have often had it that the field surface went beyond the blue borders, mostly with the elevators.
I will try it out but it sould not matter. In the Richard's video you can see how far beyond guardian boundaries does the corridor reach. And he said that the area in menu is the same as safe area (which is also guardian boundary).
That said, manipulating guardian boundary with GBE may still make it easier to repro.
I was wondering how you did the portals so seamlessly and perfectly even with sound and stuff working... Building your own engine explains it.
It was the most important reason why I decided on my own engine. Fast portals rendering, sounds, navigation, AI, object interaction, physics (although physics is most problematic as I decided to do it quite experimentally with soft collisions).
I've seen people doing portals with both Unity and Unreal but I heard that it slows down significantly. Not mentioning about other things. I think that it might be possible to do it with existing engines although you would have to heavily modify bits of it. This of course means that every bigger update could induce chaos.
For what is the switch on the terraces good (output / status). Turn off the satellite antenna? What for?
BTW: I have about 30 long sessions behind me now. Very often I do not get any further and move in a circle (come back to the same place after 5 minutes). Am I in a dead end and have previously gone somewhere wrong?
And sometimes I walk through a snow-white labyrinth and find a very small blue square room without an exit. On the left is a kind of shutter/blinds. Once I saw how it had closed before I could enter the room.One more question: If I had a playspace of 4.5 x 4.5 m, would the corridors be wider and longer? I'm just about to expand my cellar and that would be quite a motivation, i am sometimes a little lazy :-)
Oh, and still no crashes experienced. Everything is running smoothly. Congratulations to your engine!
Thanks and regards!
That switch is used to turn off solar panels (that's what they are). It was rather proof of concept but that will be used in a modified form in final game. With explanation. In demo it is only useful in challenge mode - it is required to turn off at least one panel to open the door. During night door is open but flying robots are more aggressive.
In case you'rd lost, there are arrows on hand displays that help to navigate.
Yes, corridors will be longer and probably wider. I have to tune tile size automatically adjusted and expose few options.
Thanks for the info about the crashes :) there are few and I have some logs to go through and to fix bugs :)
I'm seriously impressed with what you've done here. As it is I'll probably get several hours of gameplay, and it's going to the top of my list for games to show off to friends on my Rift.
Things I love:
Possible improvements I noticed, many of which you're likely already aware of:
Thanks :)
1. Oculus touch controllers and hand gestures - that is definitely going to happen. Both for immersion and for pushing buttons and stuff.
2. Pause/menu is going to be added, I will only have to get controls for that properly. The thing with not being able to open doors might be related to bugs in level generation. If you could send me logs you have (if you encountered it, stop the game and send me a log) I could check what's going on.
3. I will add tutorial :) but at this point of development, lots of things may still change and lots will be added. I will have to find a way to simply explain what is there already though. To be able to get proper feedback.
4. ATM guns won't retract if you hold grip button. That might be not clear BUUUUT I am still going to test few things with controls so this may change and if I won't be sure which one is better, I will choose the most liked solution as default and other will be available through options. System to auto detect prefered approach would be great - if I get time and idea how to do it properly, this is going to be added.
5. There are some options in xml file, super sampling is not there, yet. But yes, graphics menu will be there. When menu is added :)
6. Guns behind bars is bug/feature-not-yet-final. I have no system yet to handle loot properly and that's why items that could be picked up are spawned in unreachable places. This will be addressed properly. In general, you should not try to reach places that you can't move to. There is other problem with that, bars I mean. When I was showcasing my game, few people moved their head beyond bars and one kid, when he saw long empty corridor, he started to run. I stopped him when I noticed what he is planning to do. I will be adding something that prevents going through walls/bars.
Thanks for the detailed reply! I hadn't realized I could use the grip to hold the default gun in place. I'll definitely be using that. The level failing to load has only happened once so far, but if it happens again where are the logs being stored so I can grab them?
They're in _logs sub directory :)
I suspect one thing but having log file from you I'd have a good repro to fix the bug.
I think these are the logs you're looking for
https://gist.github.com/smiller171/00e0991f658effa8ecea904aefe8ecd7
These are the logs I'm looking for.
Thanks :) I will be sorting crashes soon and then onto new stuff :)
Played a couple times - very impressed! I'm not usually one to comment, but you need to know, this is so unique and has *something* 80% of other VR games don't have. You've got something really great in progress here - keep going! (I know it's very early, so I'm sure you know, but players could use some tutorial/explanation for the ammo/energy and control stations/levers.)
Watching a video while writing this that said you wrote the engine from scratch, or didn't use Unity/etc. 100+ more impressed points for you!
Really, really cool! Thanks for putting it out there - and again, keep going!
Thanks :)
The tutorial will be there for sure as there is quite few things to explain. I want to keep systems simple but having them all at once thrown at you is quite overwhelming. Introducing them one by one would help to understand. ATM with experience mode players should not worry about these but in challenge (which hints how "normal" difficulty level), it might be crucial to use them.
Oh, and I shall write a blog post about decision behind writing my own engine.
This is a really great and immersive idea. Make early access and put it on Steam. I would pay something for it. Good luck!
Thanks :)
It's currently more of a prototype / proof of concept. I plan to put it on Steam as early access but when there will be more content and more gameplay systems. For a while I plan to keep it free.
Just played it 40 minutes, one of my best VR experiences so far in 2 years Oculus. Despite my little playspace, it worked almost 100%. The game is really fun and actually playable. No crashes or similar. Have already paid a lot of money for VR games that were worse in the development stage.
I have two improvements there:
- My playspace is not completely square (and small). Would be cool if you have a calibration function.
- Make the demo endless, it is always sad when I'm done :-)
That calibration function sounds good. What would you prefer to have? Game handles rectangular spaces but may handle them not efficently and calibration function would be useful there. I will think about it.
The next update will add option to make it endless :) Or it will be endless with a possibility to exit/stop.
Here is my Oculus playspace with the Guardian Boundary Editor:
https://imgur.com/a/Rsd74It
The problem with the playspace is that you use the blue walls as a base and not the green playspace. The blue walls are exactly on the real walls, which makes it easy to run against the walls which is very uncomfortable. For this the Guardiansystem is not thought or suitable. It is also the first game where I turn off the Guardian system, because you are always so close to the walls and that bothers a lot when it is displayed. Incidentally, i have had games that temporarily disable or fade in the Guardiansystem permanently.
I can think of several options for calibrating:
1. A slider which reduces the entire playspace by xx percent (easy to implement)
2. Run through the playspace with a controller as in the oculus setup or press the trigger once in each corner.
3. You blend in the playspace on the ground and you change the size with the help of some points as in an image editing program when inserting a graphic.
Do not make the game endless, but more difficult with each level. With permadeath and a high score at the end which is stored in a highscorelist. That should give enough motivation to continue playing.
How about incidentally with selectable settings? For example, the current sci-fi setting with robots and laser weapons and a second setting with swords or knives in a dungeon. A space station would also be possible, since you only have to change the background with stars. Just an idea for the future...
If there is interest, I could translate the English texts into German, if at some point there is a bit more text or a tutorial (necessary, I still have not understood many things).
I will have to check how I get play area size. What you said means that I get it using min and max of Guardian Boundary corners which makes it bigger than it should.
1. Sliding is easy.
2. That would be doubling what there already is for both Oculus and SteamVR.
3. This one is interesting. To display boundary, play area that is read from settings and play area calibrated by the player. Slider from point 1 could be here as one of the tools. I added that to my list.
I am thinking about at least two endless modes. One would be purely endless, to explore and travel through the world. But still it would be possible to end it (that's related to the story and I don't want to get too much into details right now). The second one would either force player to move towards the end (think of FTL where it pushes you to the last level) but you can just make it longer if you want. Or as you said, to push the difficulty level.
The settings for sci-fi, medieval etc. would kill me ;) I like the idea but I won't be able to handle it. Not yet. What I'd like to do is to focus on this game, create few other ones that happen in different settings and then work on a Inception-like game reusing stuff from other games - then I could use all that settings.
I have localisation system in place and I will be grateful for your help with translation :) but that should come when there will be more game in this game :) Thanks :)
I would love to be able to fine tune the play space the way you can in Beat Saber. My play space is set up so you can face the back wall without a problem, but if you try to put your back to it you'll be pulling against the cable, so I'd want to be able to shrink the playspace so it doesn't extend so far in that direction for this game.
I plan to add a way to calibrate play area :) I haven't thought about such cases and wanted just really simple "grow/shrink" but few people already suggested that, so it is on my todo list :)