DWVR
1.0 Update: Out of Early Access!
In this update, we bring all the improvements added to the PSVR version into the PC version of the game. This updates bring:
Smooth locomotion support.
In the options menu, there is now a toggle for smooth locomotion. This mode will change the inputs on Vive (not so much on Oculus), and change some settings on the enemies to keep balance. The movement slide along the ground, but you can still teleport around as you want.
Mission system with unlocks.
The game is now played with a mission list. Finishing some missions will award one of the 3 categories (bronze,silver,gold), and will unlock more missions and new weapons.
More Weapons, customized loadout.
The game now has a lot more weapons, and you can customize wich ones you bring to battle. Take a weapon from the stands in the main menu, and equip it to the magic inventory. If you play any mission that its above "easy" difficulty, you will be able to use your custom loadout. Easy and Demo missions use a simplified inventory where you have a locked down loadout.
Many graphical tweaks/changes.
Cyborgs now have upgraded textures (glowing eyes!), and skeletons now have shadows. The mages now have upgraded animations and their magic FX are massively improved. The fireball FX have been completely redone, now using a very cool 3d fire effect.
Many bugfixes/general improvements.
Fixed a considerable amount of crashes, Balanced the enemies better, and improved the performance enough to even be able to publish on PSVR, without lowering the graphical quality.
0.34 Beta Update: New main menu. Custom loadouts. New Scoring.
Release Candidate.
The "Release Candidate" update. This update is the last big update until we add unlockables and progression.
The amount of changes in this update is considerable. We have improved performance of the enemies quite a bit, did fixes all across the board,added a new combo system for the scoring, and even allow you to customize the loadout you bring into battle.
Main Menu
We have completely overhauled the main menu. Now its a much bigger place, with interactuable objects you can grab and throw, and even a small shooting gallery. There is even an armory to grab and equip weapons (currently all unlocked, they will be buyable later). To grab anything, just point at it and press the Trigger. You will grab that object and be able to throw it around.
To the back of the spaceship, there is a small shooting gallery that lets you test the weapons.
Custom Loadouts and new inventory
In this update, we have finally implemented the loadout system, that lets you customize your inventory with the weapons you want. Easy mode and the challenges will still have a "forced" inventory, but Medium and Hard modes will let you equip what you want.
The inventory is now a flying glyph, wich makes it a lot cooler. To equip a weapon, you just have to grab it from a stand, and then drop it into one of the 6 slots in the glyph. To drop it, you need to press the inventory button.
Grab a weapon with trigger on the right. Press inventory on the left to open the glyph, and then drop the weapon to that glyph with the right hand, by pressing inventory button on it.
Scoring and combos.
We have added a new combo system, to implement more interesting scoring.
The combo system is based on trying to keep the score multiplier as high as possible. This multiplier will grow when chaining kills, but will drop with time or if you get hit. Alongside the new scoring, there is now a new "post game" level, that lets you see your damage/kills/score stats.
New Healthbar
Given the needs for the scoring multiplier, we now have a new healthbar. This healthbar is a lot more complex, and it includes your multiplier and current score.
Autosaving config and progress
The game will autosave your mission progress and scores automatically. When you finish a mission, it will add a green tick to that mission in the list.
Missions will also keep your highest score.
The game will also keep your settings saved, so if you configure your movement type, it will keep that movement type even if you restart the game.
It will also save your current weapon loadout.
Future and full release.
At the end of August, we will release DWVR for PSVR. This version will be the final non-early-access version, and all of its features will go to the PC version too.
The main difference beetween this "release candidate" version and the final release version is that everything will not be unlocked by default.
Missions will unlock other missions when finished, and you will receive money depending on your score. You will then be able to buy the weapons you want in the main menu.
There will also be a few more missions that you will be able to unlock.
Achievements will also be fully implemented in that version, alongside of twice the weapons. We will have a lot more weapons now that you can just equip the ones you like or not, essentially different variations of the weapons, like a rifle with a bayonet, or a shotgun that has bouncing projectiles.
0.30 Beta Update: Added traditional locomotion.
As our probably last "important" update before "release candidate" update, we have added traditional locomotion for both Vive and Oculus.
Smooth Locomotion
In both the headsets, to enable it you need to go to the configuration in the main menu, and select "Smooth" as your selected locomotion. This will instantly enable the new locomotion mode and you will be able to try it in the main menu itself. This smooth locomotion lets you slide at not very fast speed, but it can be combined with the usual fast paced teleport. Enabling it also enables some other gameplay changes for balance. If you have smooth locomotion enabled, you wont be able to shoot enemy bullets out of the air, and teleport no longer slows time. Enemies are also a bit faster and more aggresive to balance how OP the smooth locomotion is.
For Oculus Rift it works with the left joystick. You just move the left joystick to glide around the ground. It combines with the usual teleport to reach ledges or go farther. The rest of controls are the same.
For Vive we had issues with the controls, due to the lack of face buttons. The smooth locomotion mode will completely change the control mapping.
The new controls are as such: With the "grab" buttons, you enter the inventory and switch weapons. With the left trackpad, you just touch it to move. If you press the left trackpad, you teleport. If you press the right trackpad at the edges, you rotate left/right.
Other Changes
- Skeletons now have a new sword, it glows red and it contrasts better with the environment to see the skeletons from afar.
- Bullet hit FX have been toned down to improve the performance if the player was also using MSAA
- Default settings have been lowered due to performance complains. If it still goes slow, go to settings and change the antialiasing to anything other than MSAA.
- Plasma rifle sight has been improved.
- Game now has a post-game screen. This screen shows your stats on the match. Select "next" to go to the main menu from it.
- Minor animation tweaks on several enemy characters.
Future of the game
We have fully ported the game to PSVR, and we want to release it this summer. The final version of the game will come with it, and will include this extra features that are halfway done
- Visible scoring system while ingame, with multipliers and combos.
- Improved starting level.
- Weapon store where you can improve/buy new weapons using ingame money.
- Fully realized mission system, with missions that unlock others and different rewards like new weapons or money.
- Challenge modes remaked.
- Tutorial.
- Full Achievements.
- More weapons.
All the features that are being done for the PSVR version will go back to PC, we have no exclusivity deal of any kind and the game will launch its "full version" around the same time as the PSVR version.
On PSVR, the game will play exactly the same as in PC, with similar graphic settings, and at 90 FPS on a ps4Pro. The game will work with the PSMove controllers in the same way as it does in PC with oculus/vive hand controllers, and offer gun controller support. (This "gun" mode will be a special mode in PC, with 1 big gun instead of 2 weapons).
0.30.1 hotfix. It solves some issues on Vive with the normal locomotion. Adds the missing healthbar back, and solves the bug where you could get stuck at the final score screen.
As allways, if you have any problem just post it on the forums and we will look at it.
0.29 Beta Update: General bugfix update.
Gameplay updates.
We have improved the look and the animation of the cyborg enemies a lot. They now move in a much better way and are less glitchy. Shotgun enemies are now yellow to diferentiate them from the rifle cyborgs wich are blue.
We have a new jumping system wich should decrease the amount of times the enemies do a wrong jump and get stuck.
All skeleton enemies now have a new sword model, wich is a red plasma sword similar to the one the player has. This makes the enemies much easier to see.
Mage enemies have improved animations.
Tech updates.
We have improved the look of the Temporal antialiasing (TAA) a very considerable amount. It will still default to MSAA antialiasing, wich is sharper and has no artifacts, but can sparkle a bit. To select TAA antialiasing just select it on the options menu under Graphics.
Vive has received a bunch of upgrades, improving performance a bit, and changed the window so its a better fullscreen view.
A considerable amount of bugs have been fixed in this update too. Mostly related to enemy glitches.
This 0.29 update is a small "fix" update becouse we are going to add progression to the game soon and wanted to do a bugfix update before the game changes quite a lot. We aim to release this Progression update before the Steam Summer sale begins.
The Progression update bumps the game to "release candidate" version by being almost the final version of the game. This update will bring unlockable missions wich will give you in-game money that you will then use to buy upgrades and new weapons. Then you can select wich weapons you want to bring into a mission. Missions are unlocked by finishing other missions.
We are also going to bring the game to PSVR this summer. Announcement trailer coming soon. The definitive PC version will release out of early access before the PSVR release, as the PSVR not release "early access".
As allways, have fun. If you find any regression in this update or more bugs, please report it to us and we will fix it.
0.28 Beta Update: New Enemy, Achievements, Various Gameplay Improvements.
Plasma rifle Sights
The plasma rifle now has a sight. This sight fully works stereo, and its highly accurate. If you can see that sight, the shot will go there.
HEADSHOTS
Enemies now receive 50% more damage if you headshot them. This is for all the basic enemies, but not bosses.
Mage Enemy
We have a new enemy type. The "mage". This enemy will appear on the harder difficulty modes, and he glides around the map, teleporting around too. Be very careful, because he can throw magic at you and that magic will follow you even after you dash. Shoot it to explode it mid-air. He has a lot more HP than normal enemies. Some of his animations might be buggy, If you find him doing weird stuff please report it on the forums.
Achievements
Basic achievement support is now here. This first stage only has "completion" achievements. One for easy, one for medium, one for hard, and one for Extreme. More achievements are on the way.
Extreme mode
A new tier of difficulty has been added. This is the Extreme mode. Extreme mode takes the difficulty of the hardest of waves on the Hard mode, and makes it even more. In Extreme mode you only have 1 extra life, so if you die twice its over. Enemies are faster and deal more damage, and there are lots of them. It uses the same weapons as the Hard mode.
Misc gameplay enhancements and bugfixes
- Balance has been touched around a bit, to work better with the headshots.
- New flasher and sparkly impact effects.
- Improved some sounds.
- Skeletons have blob shadows in their feet.
- Shotgun cyborg is now yellow.
- Cyborgs have redone animation, now they dont have glitched hands and can animate when moving sideways properly.
- Bullets in the game have been changed, now they are more red than orange and they glow.
- Archmage boss now disintegrates when killed, mage has the same death animation.
- All enemies can now sprint, and run faster when they are far from you. They still have similar speed as before when they are near.
- Enemy jumping code has been redone. Now their system is much more robust and will cause less instances of enemies falling from the map.
- Spawn system has been improved to fix some cases of glitched enemy spawns.
- Oculus rift now uses "adaptive resolution" wich dynamically changes the resolution to mantain 90 fps. This is not working for Vive due to not being implemented in OpenVR(We are looking a way to implement it manually)
- Lifebar no longer shows on the main menu.
- Lifebar now longer glitches beetween deaths.
- Fixed inventory glitches.
The Oculus Store version of the game also gets this update, but they dont allow path notes there.
0.24.1 Hotfix.
- Vive window is now fullscreen. No black borders and vertical image. Much better for recording videos, similar to the Oculus Rift window wich is also fullscreen.
- Fixed Z-fighting on Anorhem ground objects.
- Minor balancing changes.
0.24 Beta Update: Updated engine, new weapons, new improvements.
Engine Upgrade
The update upgrades the game engine to Unreal Engine 4.15, using the new Forward renderer. The new features in that engine alongside the improvements we have done mean that the game now has MUCH higher image quality. We are using the forward renderer using MSAA as default antialiasing, alongside a considerable amount of performance improvements wich allow us to up the default settings to higher quality. This engine version is the same Robo Recall uses.
Better Graphics
The graphical improvements are a much more clear and stable image thanks to the new antialiasing, new lightmapping that improves the look of the game overall and the removal of “hierarchical level of detail” for the environment means that distant meshes now have higher detail than ever before. The optimization of meshes and light makes the game use HALF the HDD space than the older version.
Mission system
On the gameplay side, we have the first iteration of the new “missions” system. The game doesnt have select level and difficulty, or separated training and survival system. There is now 1 central mission list and it has all the possible playable levels and challenges.
This system is not completely finished, so all the missions in the game are unlocked by default. On a later update, we will add new progression to unlock the missions in a mission tree with loot.
New Weapons
Talking about loot, we have remade the weapon system to be easily extensible and use a new inventory. We have added new weapons, and changed older ones. As the progression and unlock system isnt there yet, each mission has its own set of weapons. The Survival Easy missions only have sword, magic, and a pistol, while a Hard mission will have a full arsenal (to simulate what the progression will be).
We have a new magic system, with new spells. You will be able to see the new “magic wand” 3d model, of a higher quality. Currently spell switching is disabled due to some last minute bugs, but it will be here in a hotfix in less than 3 days. After progression is implemented, you will be able to unlock and equip the spells you want.
Improvements to 3d models
Some of the 3d models have been fixed or improved, check the new plasma sword. Enemy AI has been improved a bit, and the Necromancer and Archmage bosses had several bugs fixed for them. Due to those 2 bosses working well, we have added a mission where you can fight the boss itself without any other waves.
There are a few issues with this build. We have tested the new graphics on a Nvidia 970 GPU, but we arent sure about AMD cards. If you have issues with an AMD card, please report it to us. Scoring is disabled right now, and the challenges havent been fully ported yet. The new Gladiator challenge has issues with skeletons clipping through the floor in the map, and leaderboards are disabled. The new and improved Drone Assault isnt in this build due to not making the deadline.
Better CPU performance
Alongside the graphics improvements, we have improved the game code to be more stable and more performant. Higher number of enemies will now lag much less, and most stutters have been fixed.
Roadmap
In general, this update brings us much closer to the final version of the game. The next thing to arrive is the progression system, wich will let you unlock new missions and new gear or spells as you pass the different missions. The new missions and weapons systems will allow us to create new content without any issue, including joke or weekly missions and lots of weapons with different stats.
All the screenshots are taken ingame
2016-02-01 Update: General gameplay improvements. Better Sword. Bugfixes
This update does change the general gameplay, specially as now the sword is a lot more accurate and stronger, and enemies are now more agile (they jump and run better, they get less stuck).
There is also a few miscellaneus fixes that improve the performance of the game in some specific cases where it could stutter.
This update does not clear any leaderboard.
Here you can see a video recorded directly from the game, showing the improved sword gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Iehg7lHvNg
Notes:
- New collision detection for the sword, sword is now a LOT more accurate, and it can detect even if you move it at high speed.
- Sword now deflects bullets back to the enemy
- Sword now adds force to the hits. If you hit an skeleton well enough, he will go flying.
- Fixed performance degradation when dual wielding fireballs
- Fixed performance degradation when slashing enemies from up close.
- Fixed performance degradation when dual shotgunning an enemy from up close.
- Bullet deflection in general works better, for both the sword and the enemy shield skeletons.
- Improved pathfinding for the enemies.
- Increased the agility of the enemies when jumping around. Combined with the improvements on the pathfinding, enemies now get stuck much less and can jump places to reach you better. Specially noticieable on the Argendnor map.
- Drones now are lighter on the performance. Will enable bigger amounts of drones in the general survival mode.
- Fixed an animation bug when playing a stagger animation
- Skeleton headtracking is now more accurate and works better.
- Improved projectile code to avoid memory stalls.
2016-01-21 Update: Big performance improvements, Bugfixes.
The main focus of this update has been optimization and background work. The code of the game has been improved to prepare new features such as a much more involved scoring system.
This update has no big changes to gameplay, but it improves performance a lot.
Users should expect a 20-30% improvement to framerates on PCs that were CPU bound. If you have a strong GPU, you will be able to push the resolution multiplier higher. Right now, the game holds a steady 90 fps in the developers machine, wich is a i7 2600k at 4 ghz and a GTX970. If you have a stronger system that that you will be able to push the resolution more.
The update has also solved a lot of bugs, including one that made the Drone Assault easily cheated, wich is what the top people in the leaderboard have done. Alongside this update, we will reset the Drone Assault leaderboard completely. Sorry for your scores, but given the changes to the scoring system, we had to reset it. The shooting gallery mode keeps its older leaderboard.
Notes:
- Reworked projectile system, now it will avoid stuttering when you fire your both weapons at once, no matter how you fire them.
- Improved performance on all the levels, specially on Anorhem, where we got to 1/3 the CPU use for the rendering.
- Fixed bug where the read healthbar wouldnt decrease as you get damaged.
- Reworked the score system, now the score display in your right hand will allways be relevant, no matter the mode. It also prepares the system for individual scores in multiplayer.
- Fixed some pathfinding bugs on the enemies
- Drones now use less CPU for the same behavior, now there will be more of them.
- Added sounds for damage and weapon change.
- Added more background sounds.
- Improved weapon haptics.
- Skeletons glowing eyes reworked, now they use less performance and they will allways be on (before, the eyes could dissapear)
- Skeletons will now look at you directly.
- Added another damage animation for enemies.
- Lots of internal reworkings of the weapon and enemy systems, in preparation for the next multiplayer test, wich will have all the basic enemy types that are in the normal survival modes.
- Small change to the configuration files. It should be higher resolution by default. If you dont like that resolution, you can change it in the settings menu at your right on the main menu.
- Small score/damage tweaks to the survival mode.
Multiplayer Test IS UP!!
At the end we had to disable a couple things from the things said last update, but the test is up.
EDIT: We have recorded a video of a match https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKd-mbBSWcs You can see here what the current MP mode has.
Instructions
To start, click on the "Multiplayer" panel of the main menu. You will get a empty server list, and options to refresh it, join a game, or create coop game.
Press Refresh to update the server list. This will add all the servers and their data. The name of the server is the Steam name of the host, also shows how many players there are.
To join a server, just click into one server of the list (gets a different color when selected) and then press the Join button. This Join button asks for confirmation to the host, so it can take a couple seconds, dont spam it, it wont work if you press the join button several times.
To create a server, just click the "Create COOP" button. This will create a server on YOUR PC, and add it to the global server list. The name of the server will be your steam name. As the host, you will be less buggy and have 0 lag. Its umbalanced.
Games start as a simple PvP Deathmatch, wich acts as the wait mode. The game has PvP damage enabled, and you can kill each other. The score on your hand will increase with that,
To start spawning enemies, press the "Menu" button. This will trigger spawning of skeletons, stronger than usual. Each of the 4 rounds will increase the power of the skeletons, giving them damage and speed buffs alongside health buffs.
There is no "ingame" way of exiting a match, to exit a match you have to close the game or press Spacebar.
Player avatars are not customizable. and they are only a flying head with flying hands. Fullbody avatars are done, but we have had problems making them line up perfectly with the players like in Raw Data or Dead and Buried.
The developer of the game will be connected for a while, in the steam chat for the Steam Group DWVR.
There is no ingame communication of any kind.