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Eye of the Temple

Explore an vast and treacherous temple in room-scale VR · By runevision

New Build April 2

A topic by runevision created Apr 01, 2017 Views: 504 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 3
Developer (1 edit)

New build available April 2. (Read here how to sign up to get access.) Same download link you already got works for new build.

New additions:

  • Fire! One challenge tunnel now has fire hazards.
  • Blades! One challenge tunnel now has swinging blades.
  • Speedrun mode! A more challenging way to play the game. More notes below.
  • Hat! You're now wearing a hat. Hope you like hat.
  • Experimental spectator camera. 3rd person view. More notes below.
  • Field of view is now restricted when close to falling and when falling in order to further reduce risk of motion sickness.
  • Placeholder ambient soundscape taken out of the game for now since it had confusing footstep sounds.

Instructions:

  • Play area of 2.2 by 2.2 meters needed.
  • Only one controller needed for now. Turn the other controller off for best results.

Speedrun mode

For those of you who wanted more challenge in the game, there is a new speedrun mode. This mode times your play-through but also speeds up the platform movements as long as you can keep up.

This mode is has a higher risk of being uncomfortable, causing motion sickness, and falling over, so engage on your own risk.

  • Each time you take a perfectly timed step onto a new platform, the game will speed things up a little bit.
  • Each time you miss an opportunity to step onto a new platform, the game will slow things down a little bit. (This can occasionally happen through no fault of your own.)
  • When you die, the speed is reset, so it's recommended to keep to a speed you can handle in order to not lose momentum in your speedrun. You can avoid speeding thing further up by taking steps in a slightly slower way.

I do not recommend this mode to people who haven't already played through the game at least once, so in the final game I'll probably only unlock the speedrun mode by completing the game.

How to use: For now though, you start a speed run by first starting a new game, and then press Shift+R on the keyboard.

Let me know what you think of the speedrun mode (in case you try it out) and post your speedrun times here! Ideally as screenshots. :)

Experimental spectator camera

The gameplay in Eye of the Temple can be hard to get an impression of for others by looking out in first person. I've experimented with an alternative camera angle shown on the monitor that shows the action from 3rd person perspective.

How to use: Activate/toggle 3rd person spectator camera by pressing X on the keyboard.

This view requires extra resources from your computer, so if you get performance problems, turn it off.

What do you think of 3rd person spectator camera? Is it something you might use for streaming, videos, or for people watching you play? It's still a bit buggy and has room for improvement, but I'm curious what you think of the overall idea.

Reply to share your thoughts. All feedback welcome!

(+1)

The game is good fun so far, I like the wobbly feeling when I barely make my step to the next block. Dodging the traps and evading the temple guardians keeps me on my toes as well. The possible issues I noticed are pretty minor, here goes:

Maybe this is still being tweaked, but it seems like the player has a lot of leeway about how far they can stand from the blocks before falling. Perhaps it would be too frustrating if it was more strict though, I'm not sure.

The ride along the temple rooftop is a nice relaxation period after escaping outside but it seems just a bit long. Could the player have more to look at? (maybe their current stats or just some scenery) Or the ride could just be faster.

I'm noticing bright pixels where the walls and floors meet. It's noticeable in darker areas, perhaps they are seams where the sky is getting through or just a lighting or shader artifact? They resemble aliasing edges but are a bit more like scattered dots.

The torch light cuts out here and there, it's particularly visible in some of the side paths with spikes. It seems to just turn off for a split second leaving the environment pitch black. Maybe its not the torch light itself causing the issue but I remember a few points where everything went black.

Great job on the game so far, I can't wait to see what else you add!

Developer

Thanks for trying it out thetrakynia! Glad to hear you liked it overall. :)

I'm curious if you have any feedback on any of the new features in this build described above? For example, in case you ever stream or record videos, or just have other people watch along when you play VR, does the spectator mode seem like a feature you might use?

The leeway for not falling down is a tricky issue, since I can't reliably know where the player's feet are. The estimation that's used works well enough for stepping from platform to platform, but not well enough to know if the player is standing on air next to a platform, or standing on the platform and bending forward, looking down. So in order to not be unfair, I have to veer on the side of forgiveness. I'd say the challenge of the game is not mainly about not falling down from the platform on your own; it's more about the various challenges you have to dodge and duck. I hope that makes sense!

I agree the ride along the temple rooftop is a bit overly long; I'll think about what to do about that.

The bright pixels and the torch occasionally cutting out are known issues that I've unfortunately had a hard time with so far. The light cutting out is caused by Unity's occlusion culling system not working right in certain cases, and the bright pixels I have no idea, though I have one idea I want to try out.

(+1)

I've never got into streaming myself but I do think the spectator mode would be appreciated for making player actions clearer. Will you add a 'best guess' of the player's torso position/rotation? I thought that worked well in Fantastic Contraption and Sword Master VR, maybe a floating vest would be appropriate for Eye of the Temple.

I get what you mean about not being able to figure out exactly where the player is standing. It's probably best to keep the safe-zone lenient to prevent irritating edge cases. As you said, there's more to worry about than staying on the current block.

It occurs to me I haven't tried the speed run mode, I should give that a go and try not to trip and hurt myself. :D