Tea For God
ui and options
Among things that people were mentioning was lack of any settings. I'd prefer addressing feedback as soon as possible to be on track with anything that people want to get in the game. Not everything is possible to do in a short term but if anything is, it is worth doing so. Especially if something has to be done anyway. Like menu or options.
I didn't want to have anything fancy, not at this point in the development. I wanted something functional and something that would be easy to extend. That's why I decided to spend a few hours on a system that would allow me to code new options in an as easy way as possible. And then I started to add options. Graphics settings, audio, play area adjustments (although this one doesn't have precise calibration, just extra boundary and few other options related to world generation), controls, gameplay settings, and comfort options. I think that I managed to address everything that I read. Except for already mention precise calibration of the play area. Oh and except for railings next to the ledges - I am still thinking about adding a comfort option for that.
UI that I use for the menu is the same that I plan to use for inventory/crafting. This way, by working on options, I added some things that I will be able to reuse when implementing gameplay stuff. Everything I do, I try to get to a level that I am fine with leaving in the final game. I know that I will have lots of other things to do and while I know that current UI is not the best looking, it gets the job done. It's clear and functional. And if I won't get time to change it, it shall be left as it is. The way it is done, it should be also easy just to bring windows' resolution up to allow for a nicer font - current one resembles 8-bit computers which was taken from a previous project that was put in a freezer and the resolution was so small to allow seeing scanlines. Although I have no idea right now why I wanted that. I guess that at some point, I will just change the resolution. This should happen rather earlier as I don't want to create lots of assets that then I would have to modify for a larger resolution. Unless of course that these assets would be done by hand and not procedurally, which is quite likely to happen. For sure I will be considering the procedural generation of icons for mods, weapon parts and so on.
One of the extra things that I had to add was a system that disallows a player to enter options while in the game, move somewhere else and exit the options. The game tracks where you were and where you should be when you want to get back to the game. At the moment there is a red cross on the floor where you should stand and there is also a window with information where you should move and turn to exit options.
Oh, entering menu while in the game is done by holding one of your hands close to the side of your head (touching headset or head).
At the moment I have one outstanding thing that I should test properly, but quite soon I am going to start publishing (more or less) weekly builds.
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Keep it up my family is cheering you on. Me and the boys are following closely. Can you imagine what this and games like it will be like without restrictions on "room size". As mobile wireless VR headset start rolling out I'm just waiting for the announcement of a fully outdoor capable unrestricted play area HMD that would work with this. I have a big field out back and I dream of wandering around it in VR running while dual wielding weapons and diving for cover. Fortunately it's out of public view otherwise I can only imagine the comments I'd get of a crazed adult wearing funky goggles, jogging, crawling and waving his arms like a crazy person. Better leave room on the menu screen for infinite play area ;)
The area will always be limited, unless you own a very flat planet ;)
Few years ago, before I got my vive, I was thinking about using any space available, so if there would be a narrow gap between a wall and a bed, it could be utilised. When I got vive, I realised that it requires rectangular play area anyway and I dropped that idea.
I talked to few devs who were able to test mobile VR devices and one of the problems they encountered is that when moving between rooms, it was getting a bit off. One dev said that they created their office but changed it to be a horror scene. And when they were testing, it sometimes was ok, but sometimes it was off by a few centimeters. I hope that it was a matter of an older prototype device or something random and that when Oculus Quest hits the market, you will be able to wander around the house but always have that 1:1 matching. It actually should be, even if it gets off in couple of places, it should get back on track eventually - it analyses the environment. But yeah, it should be possible, it would require a different level generators that would allow to use different rooms and that would create corridors between these rooms.
That big field sounds awesome :) At some point I was considering adding a multiplayer. And I know that I will want to try doing that. But that's a plan for a rather distant future. One of the things that are important then is to have a separate play areas. Otherwise players may realise that while the world is built using the impossible spaces concept, they, the players, still are bound to our reality in which two objects can't occupy same space.
I figured you'd already given that some thought :) I'm very curious to see what devs come out with for Quest on a grander play scale. I also like what I'm seeing from the Magic Leap AR headsets. Every-time I watch a demo I consider how I'd rearrange my living room for a tactical shooting game. It's definitely a different way of thinking... VR = clear your play-space as wide as possible. AR = move large furniture into you place-space to duck for cover.
Large enough play areas (I mean 25x25 meters) might be enough to allow for infinite movement. By rotating slowly world around you in the game, you should be able to go in circles in the real world, but in the game, you would be going in a straight line. At some point it could become a part of the headset API, so the game developers would not have to think about it and the player would have the same system in each game.
Abolutely cannot wait! This game gives me serious Compound vibes... the basic demo that everyone loves, the one-man dev team gradually adjusting their lives to focus on their game, and hopefully soon you'll have that same amazing breakout moment when the game goes live on Early Access and starts making that $$$. I dropped $20 on Compound literally the hour it went live, and I've already got another twenty bucks set aside for T4G ;)
Hey :) That's the most likely price at the moment. But before we get there, I'd rather focus on making the game fun :) Today I am finishing a new enemy. There are a few bugs to fix and a few things to test with other headsets (because there were quite important changes recently, most of them options related).