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:
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.
