Caliban Below
1.3.8 is live - master thespians, faster framerates - future tales??
This build also should have a dramatically improved framerate down in the catacombs, and also has a little bit of extra interactivity and a couple new bits of backstory to be found.
Caliban continues to get some exciting press - and we continue to brainstorm about how to tell more of the story of The Abbot's Book. With any luck, we'll have more news on that topic soon. In the meantime, please let us know if you have any difficulties with this build - or if you just want to share a thought. Thanks as always, dear visitor. We hope you like the work!
1.3.8 is in beta! New narrator (same old Caliban tho ;) and smoother framerate
This version at last brings in new narration for the introductory scenes. JB Blanc is a brilliant voice actor, and has recorded a new opening. Thanks JB. That opening is also a little more streamlined.
There's likewise a little bit of new interactivity in scene 2.
We've also added new subtitles available in French, mon dieu! With any luck we'll be able to show the work over there in the near future.
There are also some substantial efficiency improvements in the catacombs, so with any luck, we'll stick to a solid 90fps for most/all of you.
Our little story has continued to get some attention at film festivals, and the occasional mention in the press. Enough to encourage us to make an iOS version of the project, too. Look for it on the App Store, if you want Caliban in your pocket.
All of this continues to be with an eye on getting the larger project made. With every festival, or article, or (quite literally) every good review, I think we take meaningful steps to getting The Abbot's Book brought to life someday. It's a long, slow, grass roots process, but it remains rewarding. Anyway, I hope you like the new work. I think it's a meaningful step towards the full vision. As always, please let us know if you have any problems, thoughts, or suggestions.
Thanks
Mike
Launch DLC by hitting "Play" from Steam
If you've purchased the DLC for Caliban Below, first of all, thanks! It's the first thing we've offered up for sale in the world of "The Abbot's Book," and we hope you like it! (Please let us know.)
Second, if you're puzzling over how to access the book, just go to "Caliban Below" in your Steam library, then select "Play" as if you were going to launch the story in VR. You'll get an option there to launch the VR experience, ...or to launch the book.
Please let us know if you have any trouble!
Thanks!
Mike
1.2 is live: DLC, Subtitles (Chinese & English), Options Screen, Quality Settings
We've gone live with our 1.2 release, which includes:
- Subtitles (Chinese and English to start)
Subtitles should be on by default for Chinese language regions. Please let us know if you have any difficulties.
- Use the new Options Screen to
- Turn subtitles on or off manually & select language
- Set graphics quality level (We know there are still performance issues with draw speed on the Mac. Thanks for bearing with us on that - we hope to implement a fix soon.)
- We've also re-oriented a couple of interact-able items to better show what the turnable wheels do.
- DLC! We're re-releasing the original short story "The Abbot's Book," as a beautifully illustrated digital book. For those of you who are interested to learn how Caliban came to be locked in his realm below, or those just interested to count the references to Edgar Allen Poe and HP Lovecraft ;) Spoiler alert: There is no happy ending. Please note, this is a pdf which you can launch from Steam - - it's not more VR (yet), unless you count your own imagination as a sort of virtual reality... some do. Anyway, it's an illustrated pdf, which we like so much that we're charging a few bucks for it.
Thanks for your continued interest in Caliban Below, and the world of The Abbot's Book. I'm awfully happy to say we've been getting some great attention from film festivals, blogs, and various interested interlocutors. It's exciting! As I've mentioned elsewhere, the whole point of this project has been to raise awareness for VR as a narrative medium. It feels like maybe - just maybe - that idea is starting to catch on. Hopefully we'll have much more to come soon.
MEANWHILE, our 1.3 release has been a bit delayed as a critical member of our team broke their leg :( ...Well, that too shall pass. With any luck, we'll have a really splendid 1.3 for you around the end of the year.
Until then, Happy Halloween - and may Ovando's specter scare the daylights out of all your VR guests.
DLC coming on Halloween
We're adding a little DLC to Caliban Below: The original short story of "The Abbot's Book." It's a richly illustrated digital book (pdf format) that tells the tale of Caliban's father, Tithonus, and his effort to shield his family from the darkness that has troubled his forebears for generations. Years before the events of "Caliban Below," an abbot discovers a mysterious realm underground, and returns with a strange book. The abbot soon dies under grim circumstances, and the book falls into the hands of the DiVelasquez family... So begins the tale that will explain how Caliban came to be in his cold prison. Told from a very different point of view.
Coming on Halloween!
Hey Mac VR Users... please consider this build only for testing
Anyway, the PC & Mac builds are now at parity, and we can start digging into what exactly is hitting the performance so hard on Mac. It *should* run better than it does. (perhaps I'm doing something wrong on this end...) My best guess at this point is that there are a couple shaders I'm using for geometry instancing that aren't playing nice.
This note is just to mention - we want to tune the mac experience considerably. It should be nice and smooth. More news as it comes.
1.2 is available in beta for PC & Mac - includes Chinese & English subtitles
We've just released a beta for 1.2, which includes
- Chinese & English subtitles (hopefully more languages to come soon). Chinese subtitles should automatically be on if you're in a Chinese-speaking country. But if you want to invoke subtitles manually you can use the
- Options screen - Use this to set subtitles on/off and to pick language. You can also set the graphics quality level here. Note this screen is currently only available in the starting scene by the castello. We'll add it to every location shortly. You can access it with the small button above the thumb pad on Vive, or by pressing "A" on the oculus controller.
- A few refinements to layout, which should help tell the story a little more visually.
- We've also added a warning screen if you don't have a VR headset. Wish we had gotten to that sooner! Well, there it is. ;)
Let us know what you think! And thanks as always. We hope you like the work. And please send word if you have any difficulties - beta, after all.
Thanks
Mike
1.1 is live! Click turning, better performance, better UI
1.1 is live! Lots of improvements here:
- Click turning: Vive users swipe left/right on the thumb pad. Oculus users click left/right with the joystick
- Better blink UI: It's much harder to wind up inside a wall... ouch! Also much easier for new users unfamiliar with blinking
- Far better performance on a broad range of GPU's. And if you like, you can select higher or lower quality settings by launching from a folder with control/option double-click. We'll aim to add a quality setting in the in-app UI in the near future. Mac users, you should have a far better experience out of the box, with more options if you need 'em.
- Lots of little fixes in layout and character performance.
We're preparing some DLC now, for a new release in the very near term. Keep an eye out if you want more of the back-story.
We're also preparing a major update to the sound FX in a future release. More news on that soon.
Please drop word with any concerns/complaints/suggestions. We're thrilled that the project is well received, and look forward to continuing the story. We sincerely love sharing the work with you and hearing your thoughts.
1.1 is available in beta (click turning, and other goodies.) Plus future plans.
We've just posted a beta of 1.1, with a number of improvements. Right-click on Caliban Below in your steam library and select the 'betas' tab; then the pop-up to opt in.
- CLICK-TURNING. Vive: swipe left or right on the thumb pad. Oculus: click left/right on the joystick.
- Lots of tuning for a broader range of GPUs. The default state should run better on older hardware now, but we also have:
- Better support for user-selected quality level. Control-click to launch the app directly from Windows, or Option-click on Mac for direct launch from the finder. That will give you a dialogue box to select alternate quality levels.
- We have a new heuristic for managing the landing spot on a blink, which should be much friendlier for new users of VR
- Isabella now behaves slightly differently under certain circumstances.
- It should be much harder to wind up blinking inside a wall. Ouch.
- Lots of little fixes on layout.
Future plans:
- We have a BIG update coming on sound effects in a future release from my friend Paula, who also does the SFX for Game of Thrones. She's the bomb. Keep your headphones handy.
- Likewise we still want to get smooth locomotion working as an option for you with VR sea legs.
- DLC: The novella of The Abbot's Book; stacks of designs for the full project; character studies
- I'd like to open up a bit more of the catacombs one of these days - particularly in the Temple Deep.
- Achievements are coming. A couple should be quite funny ;)
- Easter eggs:
- A torch to carry around (yes, with volumetric fire, unlike the original demo. It's purty.)
- A god mode to teleport all over the place inside the catacombs. (Careful what you wish for ;)
...My personal goal is to make Caliban good enough to become one of your go-to demos for your friends who are new to VR. Feel free to drop word with suggestions, gripes, bugs, etc. It's all sincerely appreciated. As I so often say, we hope to be able to make the MUCH larger, full project of "The Abbot's Book" one of these days. We are the very definition of grass-roots with this project, so your reviews and feedback are mighty appreciated. We're humbled that folks seem to like it (short tho it is!), and I want more than anything to share the whole vision in time. May the dream be without end. ;)
More to come.
-Mike
1.1 is coming... seeking a few beta testers
We're getting close to shipping an update on Caliban. We're adding click-turning (most requested feature), lots of performance enhancements, better support for different classes of machines, a more sophisticated heuristic for blinking which should prevent new users from getting stuck, and a handful of other goodies.
We're looking for a handful of beta testers who might want to take a gander at the build, and let us know of any problems we haven't foreseen.
If you're interested, please drop word!
Thanks very much.