I am pleased to announce that we are officially launching Hypatia: Grand Opening tomorrow!
For those of you just tuning in for the first time, a quick recap:
First and foremost, Hypatia is going to be free to play for everyone. This happens tomorrow with Hypatia: Grand Opening.
Oculus will be our offical platform for the Oculus Rift, while Steam remains our platform for the Vive.
Both platforms will play together on the same servers and have the same experience. At launch, if for any reason you want to transfer your Steam account to Oculus, you will be able to do so - simply send us your username from both platforms to support@timefirevr.com
We also feature limited mouse and keyboard support for those interested but who do not have a VR headset just yet. Keep in mind, this is a VR-First experience and we do not officially support mouse and keyboard at this time. As such the controls may not always be ideal when not using VR.
Now that all the technical stuff is out of the way, lets talk updates!
[List]
<*>Commerce - Gather Bits & Coins to buy hundreds of new items!
<*>Explore the world to gain experience and level up, unlocking new items!
<*>New areas and updates to all existing levels
<*>Enhanced photography development!
<*>New painting features (metallic + emmisive)
<*>Unlock new pieces and heavily customize your avatar
<*>Enter your paintings or photos into the new Art contests to win prizes!
<*>And much, much more!
[/List]
We will be announcing upcoming events and update plans soon. Stay tuned.
Until next time, see you in Hypatia!
Launch info, new platform, and more!
Hello Hypatians!
I know many of you are waiting anxiously for our free to play launch, and unfortunately I must ask you to wait just a little longer. Organizing the launch with our partners is taking a little longer than expected and has pushed our launch date back. We will be launching the Hypatia: Grand Opening update as soon as we can finalize all the details, and that should take no more than a few weeks.
I didn't come here just to share bad news though...
Hypatia will be on the Oculus platform!
Oculus will be our offical platform for the Oculus Rift, while Steam remains our platform for the Vive.
Both platforms will play together on the same servers and have the same experience. At launch, if for any reason you want to transfer your account, you will be able to do so - simply send us your username from both platforms to support@timefirevr.com
We've also uploaded a new trailer to the store page, so be sure to check it out and let us know what you think!
Finally, here are some more screen shots for your viewing pleasure!
Hypatia: Photos developed!
As promised in the last post, we'll be detailing our photo development process this week!
Players can take photos with a variety of different cameras in Hypatia, each camera with their own effects and qualities. Once you've taken the photo, what do you do with it?
Take your camera to the photography museum!
Thats a lot of buttons and dials! We wanted to create an in depth and satisfying process of developing photos.
The simpliest instructions
Insert camera
Select photo
Load your blank print
Open the lamp
Open the blocker
After a few seconds close the blocker, add chemicals and watch it develop right before your eyes!
But thats just the beginning. You can zoom, pan, and even color your photos. Try multiple exposures, or explosing different photos onto the same print!
Combine all of that with the various photography stations that help you setup nice shots for custom photos and you end up with such a variety of shots!
This duck is not blue, and its eyes are not gems, but they are in this expertly developed photograph!
This photo is out of this world good!
An interesting view of the skydome.
Underwater dinosaurs? Why not!
Come back next week for our biggest announcement yet, and the final release date revealed!
Art contests!
As part of the Grand Opening update, we've made a focus on making user art more persistant and sharable!
You can now submit your painted canvases to an NPC in the Art Studio area.
You can either use the free canvases provided in the art studio, or use one that you purchased from the shop. If you use a purchased canvas, you'll receive a print of your painting to show off later!
Submitted paintings will be put on display for users to vote on.
The top performing paintings will be put on display for everyone to see.
Every Sunday the creators of the three paintings in the "Best Of The Week" display will earn bits based on the number of votes they got! The more people who vote, the more you will earn, so be sure to invite your friends!
The photo museum will also feature a weekly contest for photos submitted using our new photo development process, which we will detail in our next post!
New Avatar Parts & Paintville v2!
We're constantly expanding our selection of available avatar parts, and wanted to share a few of the upcoming parts with you!
These are just a few of the new new parts - we're adding over 10 new sets, as well as several new stand alone pieces in the Grand Opening update. As always you can mix and match whichever pieces you like, and customize all the colors!
Remember, you automatically unlock new parts when you level up, but if you're really craving a certain part, you can always buy it with either Bits or Coins from one of our many in game stores!
As promised in our last post, we also wanted to showcase some changes to one of our current levels - Paintville!
We've done a massive overhaul of this level, highlighting its main features, and focusing the play area to really showcase them.
Explore all the nooks and cranies to leave your mark.
Discover the hidden sky pathways!
Come back next week for more info on our NPCs and the first details of our in game art contests!
Hypatia: Painting Upgrades!
For those of you not familiar with painting in Hypatia - we have a number of areas where you can paint permanently using either paint brushes, or spray paint! These paintings persist in the world until someone paints over them!
However, we've added some new features! All paintables now have support for metallic and glow in the dark paint!
Metallic Fish!
Glow in the Dark Octopus!!
In addition to these new features, we have a number of new art tools available!
[List]<*>Pen - Useful for small details or signatures
<*>Deluxe spray paint - Paint with any color you want!
<*>Metallic spray can - Add some metallic flare to your paintings!
<*>Emmisive spray can - Glow in the dark paint!
<*>Custom Paint Palettes - Hand mix colors for use with the paint brush!
<*>Paintable Items - Paint on the cat, unicorn, octopus, or canvas![/List]
Note to current users: Current paintings will be reset when we reach the update date due to massive system changes. This is not something that happens very often - we want to keep your art alive in Hypatia!
We've also redone the Paint Ville area to be a more focused gameplay experience. Come back next week for some screen shots and more information!
Grand Opening: Commerce pt. 2
Introducing.... The Mango Shopping Center!
The Mango Shopping Center (or MSC) is one of our new areas being added in the Hypatia: Grand Opening update. It can be found right off the main street in the Centrum area. The MSC features three stories of shops selling a large variety of goods including anything from toys, to avatar parts and styles, to tea and food, to cameras and painting tools!
Here are some details on just a handful of the new toys we have for sale in one of the stores of the MSC.
Windup Chick: Wind it up and watch it go! This little friend bounces around when you set them on the ground, and they're great at parties.
Juggling Pin: These pins are optimized for juggling, and will jump up into the air when used. How many can you keep in the air at once?
Game Board: Use this board with a huge range of game pieces, and challenge your friends to a game in the park!
Flying Disc: This aerodynamic flight wheel is perfect for a game of catch. The harder you throw it, the higher it will fly!
Pool Gator: Throw this guy in the pool for an instant party! It uses our new buoyancy system to float along at the surface of any body of water. See ya later!
All of these items are available for purchase with either Coins or Bits! (Coins being the premium purchasable currency, and Bits being the earnable in game currency)
Come back next week to hear about some of the new painting features and tools!
Grand Opening: Commerce
Hypatia is now adding two kinds of currency - Coins and Bits!
Your left watch displays your current balances, level, and experience.
While your right watch displays your local date/time, and current location within Hypatyia.
Bits are earned in-game from from completing activities, and interacting with various NPCs to complete tasks. (We'll have some more details on NPCs in a later post!)
Coins, our premium currency, can be purchased directly through your Steam Wallet. Our base coin package gives you 500 coins for $4.99 giving each coin the approximate value of $0.01 (USD). Higher priced packages will give additional bonus coins.
Nearly all inventory items and avatar parts can be purchased with either Coins or Bits. There are a few rare exceptions though, since some items and parts can only be unlocked through gameplay.
Finally, any user who bought Hypatia (or buys Hypatia before we move to free to play) will be getting a bunch of free Coins, in addition to the other items previously detailed in the forums.
Check back later this week to hear about our new shopping center, and some of the new items you can buy with Bits or Coins, and check out the discussion forums to say hi and let us know what you think!
Avatar Parts + Levels
Hello Hypatians!
Last week I promised we would discuss unlockable avatar parts, but before I give you the details on those, lets first get into HOW you unlock things in Hypatia.
Hypatia now has levels and experience!
No, Hyptia is not an RPG, and you do not have to grind through quests in order to advance. Instead, we award you experience while you play naturally. For instance, if you travel to a new area, it will say something like: "Discovered Techno Plaza" and award you a small amount of experience.
As you continue to explore and experiment with Hypatia, you will eventually accumlate enough experience to reach your milestone and level up! Each time you level up you will get a gift box containing a variety of awards including Avatar Parts!
So how do Avatar Parts Work? - When you first join Hypatia, you will only have a small handful of parts available to you, to build your avatar from. Through leveling and other gameplay you can unlock a multitude of diffrent parts. On top of that each and every part is customizable with multiple color settings per piece. We want to provide you with with the ability to truly express yourself within Hypatia, and new parts will be added all the time!
Stop by our communitiy forums and let us know what else you'd like to see out of the level system, or if there are any avatar parts you'd really love to have!
Next week we will discuss another large change to Hypatia - Currency!
Hypatia: Grand Opening Release Date
Hello Hypatians!
We're pleased to announce the release date of our upcoming update entitled Hypatia: Grand Opening. We still have a lot of work to do, but with the team finally in place, we can confidently announce that we will be launching Mid May, 2018!
Every week until our launch we're going to share with you another post discussing a new feature or change coming in the Hypatia: Grand Opening update. Be sure to check in each week for the latest news, or follow us on Facebook/Twitter!
This week's topic is a pretty huge, so hang on...
Hypatia is going free to play!
We've been sitting at our current price for a while now, and we've experimented with different prices during Steam sales, but ultimately our goal is to get as many people as possible to experience Hypatia, and the best way to do that is to make it free for everyone!
Now if you've already purchased Hypatia, you might be feeling a bit cheated by this. Fear not! We will have exclusive rewards for our early players. Head over to the discussion forums for more details, and let us know what you'd like to see!
Come back next week for information on our next topic: Unlockable Avatar Parts!
