First, we would like to start by saying THANK YOU to everyone who has supported the Lunar Odyssey project so far. Since the early access release, we have received lots of very valuable feedback on how we can enhance the player experience.
The Purpose of Lunar Odyssey Lunar Odyssey was created as an Educational experience. The goal was to give the players a first-hand, realistic Apollo Mission experience, as well as educate them on what took place in these world changing exploration missions.
Making Lunar Odyssey Free In an effort to make Lunar Odyssey accessible to more people we have decided to make the experience Free on Steam. We want all of our fellow VR enthusiasts to enjoy and learn completely free of charge! We will be changing the price to Free as soon as possible.
Info for Purchasers What does this mean for those who have already purchased Lunar Odyssey? As a token of gratitude to all previous buyers (prior to 9/28/22) of Lunar Odyssey, you will be gifted with a free copy of our next project which is currently in production.
Once again we would like to thank everyone who has supported Lunar Odyssey thus far! If you have any questions about Lunar Odyssey or our future projects, please feel free to contact us!
Thanks! Fractal Blue.
Roaming Rover Update Is Live!
We are thrilled to announce that the Roaming Rover Update is now live! This third patch introduces the Lunar Rover Vehicle to Lunar Odyssey.
This is a fully simulated version of the LRV, but with a few small additions. By default you must perform the power up procedure for the LRV, there is a button to the top right of the LRV’s dashboard that will walk you through a checklist style tutorial for powering up and driving the LRV.
Alternatively, you can set the power to “Arcade” mode, which simplifies the power on procedure to just the main breakers. There is also an Arcade setting for steering that utilizes the controllers in the same way as a racing game would instead of using the control yoke.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, feedback, or suggestions; please join our Discord channel. Info for it can be found on the community page for Lunar Odyssey!
Free Roam
►Added the Lunar Rover to Free roam. You can access it just down the hill from the Lunar Lander. ►Added new factoid widgets related to the LRV scattered across the playable Lunar Surface. See if you can find the 14 additional educational facts! ►Added a training mode for the LRV that teaches you how to power on and use the LRV in simulation mode.
Bug Fixes
►Removed collision from small to extra small rocks. This solved a collision based performance issue as well as provided a more accurate experience when driving the LRV.
Roaming Rover
We are excited to announce the release of our next update: Roaming Rover. With this update you will get access to the new fully interactive Lunar Rover in Free Roam mode.
LEARN You will be guided through the necessary steps to activate the LRV from its 2 batteries, Enable the drive systems, and maneuver the LRV utilizing “Arcade” or “Simulated” controls. You can also use the “Inspect” feature to learn more about the Lunar Rover.
EXPLORE Cruise around the Moon's surface, free to explore and discover the various areas of the Orontius Crater.
PLAY Jump, Drift, Flip, Drive, and most of all, have a good time!
We can't wait to share this new content with you. We are expecting to release this update very soon along with some other minor bug fixes.
Thank you so much to everyone who has supported our project so far! If you have played Lunar Odyssey and have some feedback for us, we would love to hear it! You can reach us via Discord, Twitter, and also right here on Steam! Your feedback and reviews are vital and treasured by our team.
New Content Coming Soon
It has been 1 month since our early access launch of Lunar Odyssey: Escape. We really appreciate all of the amazing people who purchased the experience and all of the feedback we have received from our community. With that feedback we were able to release our first patch to address playability issues and create a better overall user experience for players. Thank you for being a part of this journey!
If you have purchased and played Lunar Odyssey, we would love to hear about your experience! Let us know on our Discord or leave us a review here on Steam.
CURRENT CONTENT HIGHLIGHTS
SPACE GOLF
Inspired by Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, Space Golf is a fun and challenging mini-game that simulates a driving range on the moon. Your goal is to hit targets at various ranges to gain as many points as possible before time runs out. So grab your club, pick your target, and see if you can beat our team's top-score! (306 points)... You can access Space Golf in the Free Roam menu.
INSPECT
“what does this button do?” If you ever find yourself wondering what a certain interactable object does, you can use our Inspect feature to learn more about that object. With Inspect you can learn what an object is called and what its purpose is. This feature is great for helping you understand your tasks in Escape mode and serves as a great tool for learning about the Lunar Module used by NASA on various Apollo Space Missions.
NEW CONTENT COMING SOON!
Our team has been hard at work creating new content to be released soon! This new content will include an entirely new play mode that will take your moon exploration to the next level. HINT: It has wheels... We can't wait to show you what we've been working on!
To stay connected with us in the meantime chat with on Discord or post on our Steam Community Page.
Lunar Odyssey Update
This second patch of Lunar Odyssey addresses a few of the larger feedback items we’ve received from the community. Overall goal of this patch is to push further changes that improve quality of life and ease of use while playing Lunar Odyssey.
Escape
►Fixed an issue that prevented cables from working properly based on the current interactive state of the netting. ►Fixed an issue with the saved state system that would not properly mark previously completed steps as complete upon resuming a session of Escape. ►The main entry hatch for the lunar module is now a simple click and play system. ▷This addresses some community feedback regarding how complicated it was to enter the main hatch. Now players can simply reach out and “Click” the door and it will play the handle animations and open all in a single click. This further streamlines the entry into the LM. ►All dashes have been removed from the checklist ▷This change addresses some feedback we got from some of our community pilots that let us know that in aviation checklists when you are instructed to enter a sequence of buttons, every item in the sequence is pressed. The prior way we listed out button sequences, the ‘-’ symbol would have been required to be pressed. By removing the ‘-’ symbol we have further removed unintentional confusion. ►The “Restart” button in the menu has been re-enabled.
Free Roam
►The “Close” button on Cleanup widgets has been removed. ▷We felt that since the widgets automatically appear and collapse themselves based on player proximity that the “Close” button was a redundant feature so we have removed it.
Menus
►The “Continue” button has been re-enabled. Thank you for your patience during the brief time that it had to be disabled.
Miscellaneous
►xEMU suit audio has been implemented. ▷Previously, the xEMU suit did not have audio fully implemented or mastered. This is now done.
Bug Fixes
►Fixed a bug that prevented the game from properly ending on launch if the player exited the interior of the Lunar Module during lift off. ►Fixed a bug that would launch the player out of the Lunar Module like a cannon if the proper sequence of buttons were pressed. ►Fixed a bug on Index/knuckle controllers that would sometimes cause switches to flip in the wrong direction.
Patch 0.5.1
This first Early Access patch addresses multiple items we’ve received via community feedback. Overall theme of this patch is to make areas of the Escape experience easier and more clear to the player as well as multiple UI/UX improvements.
Escape
Lunar Module ladder now has animated hands to clarify how to climb the ladder.
Initial checklist clarifications and verbiage changes
First step now clarifies that the player only needs to grab one battery First step now requests the player place the battery inside of the Lunar Module instead of just “In a safe location” First step now clarifies that the player can climb the ladder with only one hand since they will be holding a battery in their other hand.
Jumper Cable hookup step
Simplified the jumper cable hookup step, now when the player picks up a jumper cable they will grab an entire jumper cable in one hand. While holding the jumper cable there will be a glowing ghosted version of the properly placed jumper cable connected to the battery and the player just needs to overlap the jumper cable with the new ghosted cable to place it. This replaces the older system of having to grab each end of the jumper cable and place each end independently.
LM Door operation clarification
Added a more detailed description of how to operate the LM door, this is a stopgap measure until the next patch where we will be shifting LM Door operation to a single click action.
Removed animated widget instructing player how to spawn the Floating Menu
This widget is no longer necessary now that the menu spawn has been moved to a controller button.
Updated waypoint system
The waypoint system now exists in the world in a fixed location above the waypoints rather than on the player's HUD. In the old system the waypoints would fly towards the objective when the objective was in the player's view. This created excess information on the HUD and generally made the waypoint system very busy and distracting. This new change streamlines the entire system.
Increased available Oxygen supply from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours.
This ensures that the player should have plenty of oxygen to complete the experience.
Free Roam
Added a new menu selection screen
When launching into free roam the player is now prompted where they would like to spawn; LM Interior, Moon Surface, Space Golf.
Replaced golf platform stair collision with ramp collision to smooth out walking up the ramp.
Previously walking up to the golf platform would cause a jittery up and down motion which could lead to motion sickness in some players. This has been replaced with a ramp collision to smooth out walking up the stairs.
Golf cleanup widget now only cleans up the golf mini game.
Previously the cleanup widget on the golf platform would cause everything in the game to reset to it's default state. It now only effects items involved in the golf mini game.
Golf club has been moved to make it more obvious
Some players were walking past the golf club at the top of the stairs due to it's material being similar to the platform. It is now on the green in open view.
Menus
Streamlined Escape Launch experience.
Removed settings menu instruction screen.
Removed menu spawn gesture command
Updated controller layout screens to reflect the new Menu spawn button
This new binding replaces the old gesture based menu spawn. This should drastically reduce accidental menu spawns during gameplay.
Made inactive buttons darker
Inactive menu buttons should now be more apparent that they’re not active or useable. Clarifying and simplifying user experience.
Arm Calibration
Arm calibration menus have been overhauled and re-designed to make it more clear to the user how to execute calibrating arm length. This should reduce confusion in use of the system as well as make the system overall more user friendly and consistent. Added a “Skip Calibration” button when launching Escape that the player can use to skip that step if player arm length is already appropriate.
Added an option to calibrate again in case of improper calibration.
Floating menu fix applied that should prevent it from spawning behind walls.
Miscellaneous
New higher resolution launch Icon
A new icon has been added in both Unreal Engine and Steam at a higher resolution.
Added a new in-game light near the Lunar Module Main hatch to make it easier to see.
In the first patch, the door on the LM was completely in shadow due to the surrounding LM exterior casting one, making it difficult to see the LM hatch, we have added a soft light here to illuminate the door further.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug that prevented the crouch command from functioning as intended.
In the back of the LM when the player was on top of the engine cover or the ramp collision leading up to it, crouch functionality stopped working. This should be fixed now.
Fixed an issue that prevented players from being able to interact with the menus.
Under certain conditions the flag in Unreal Engine 5 would "forget" the player should be flagged as being able to interact. This should be fixed.
Fixed a bug that prevented closing the inspect widget if nothing was currently highlighted.
Players should be able to close the inspect widget regardless if they have something highlighted or not.
Lighting state inside LM now correctly saves with game save state.
Previously if the player had turned on the lighting inside of the LM and than quit the game; upon resume the lights would be off. This should no longer occur
We hear you
What an amazing first week it’s been! We have all be blown away by Lunar Odyssey’s launch and are thrilled to have our first three reviews (at the time of this writing). All three of these Steam reviews are full of wonderful information, feedback, and insight. We are truly blessed that our small but growing community has left such thorough reviews, and even a YouTube video, all of which are immensely helpful to the team. We have also been receiving feedback via more direct communications, which have also been immensely insightful and are shaping our next steps in between our larger planned content deliveries.
Which takes us to the main point we would like to make; We hear your feedback, and we are already in the process of implementing some of the larger sticking points for people in the initial launch of Lunar Odyssey’s Free Roam and Escape modes. We are planning on releasing a patch on Friday (February 25th, 2022) to begin addressing the following:
-Difficulty in climbing the ladder. -Clarifying the initial checklist steps involving the battery (We’ve heard and seen that people are trying to carry both batteries up into the lander at the beginning of the Escape experience.) -Streamlining the jumper cable hookup portion of the checklist. -Overhauling the arm calibration User Experience to make it more clear, understandable, and consistent for the user. -Adjusting the lighting at the LM’s door to make it easier to see. -Fixing a bug that prevents the crouch functionality from working properly. -Further greying out inactive buttons in the UI in order to differentiate them more from active buttons. -Checklist verbiage updates for clarification. -Remove the current method of spawning the floating menu in game with a button press method, drastically streamlining the floating menu spawn and reducing the chance of accidental menu spawns during normal gameplay.
We are also planning on releasing a patch the following Friday (March 4th, 2022) to address some of the more complex things that have been identified by the community. These items are:
-Difficulty in operating the main Lunar Module door. -Being able to walk along the LM entry platform in addition to the existing grab and climb system -Further Verbiage updates to the checklists to clarify steps. -Waypoint system changes to reduce the amount of HUD clutter and clarify what the waypoints are pointing at. -Adding additional options to the launch of Free Roam that enable the user to decide which area they would like to spawn into.
Once again, we want to thank all of you that have purchased Lunar Odyssey so far and we want to extend an extra special thank you to those of you that have left us reviews, both positive and negative. The reviews really help the team to zero in on what you find important, and we want to make the best product possible for you all and can really see your passion for Space, the Moon, and the Apollo missions! We have a lot of exciting additions planned and can’t wait to share them with you, but before moving on we want to ensure that what we’ve made for you so far is amazing!
Before we close out this first community post we would also like to extend an invite to everyone to come and join us in our company Discord at https://discord.gg/fractalblue
If you are a Space Nerd and you identify something we got wrong we would love to hear from you or if you just have feedback, feature requests or want to hang out with the team and follow along with the development of Lunar Odyssey we would love to see you there!
Thank you from all of us at the Fractal Blue team.
