Mind OVR Matter
Small update to fix grip button not working for some users.
Please let me know if you experience any more problems.
And be careful not to make yourselves dizzy!
Thanks again for playing :)
First Video Review for MOVRM
Big thanks to Bumble for taking the time to do an entertaining and thorough run through of pretty much everything in the game - there are still a few secrets left though ;)
Mind OVR Matter Version 1.0 Out Now!
No longer shackled by the chains of Early Access, MOVRM is now a fully realised game!
I'll be continuing to support MOVRM and may even add new features down the line but there are currently no major changes planned.
I hope you all enjoy the new content and telekinetic badassery as much as I do,
Joe
Now go throw some cars at some robots!
Biggest update yet by far!!
Hi everyone,
This is a big one.
I've pushed all the new content over to the main branch and deleted the beta branch.
Apologies if I've forgotten anything (and I probably have), but here are the patch notes for this update. As you may have noticed, there are a few more than usual this time - I've tried to separate them into useful categories below:
Big shiny new stuff first -
New Gameplay Features:
- A whole new Area, 'The City', based on community feedback and requests including a city to traverse, cars to throw with your mind, robots to fight and homing rockets to pluck out of the air.
- The City includes 6 new enemy types sporting 3 new types of weapons.
- You can stand on cars in the city. And then throw them.
- A progression system. Unlock new abilities and areas by collecting data from the available game modes. This means there is now a 'master-score' of sorts - that is the total of your score across game-modes (minus purchases from the shop).
- The player is now invincible for a brief period of time after taking damage.
- The player's screen(s) (eyes?) now flash(es) when they take damage. VR is weird.
Other New Things:
- Hands!! Animated hand models added to the game.
- Added a very short tutorial to teach the basic controls on startup.
- Added a 'render-scale' slider in the Home area.
- Added button to Home area to toggle the platform beneath the player on/off.
- Added lots of new buttons to the playgrounds (used to spawn practice drones and robots).
- Added a scoreboard for the 2-player mode that is tucked away in the playground.
- Helpful text now tells you which wave you reached on death.
- Lots of new sounds (for basically everything - eg. buttons, level selector, wave start/end, lightblade collisions, welcome, grabbing, throwing etc.) - lots of "Vwooooom".
- Lots of new particle effects (such as for drones spawning, telekinetic powers, golem attacks, lightblade collisions etc.)
- Added haptic feedback to most interactions (eg. buttons) and powers.
- Time now gradually slows down on death - like "Pchyooooooo".
- Music now also slows down on death to a satisfying "booom chuuuckk boooooom boooooooom chuuuuuuckkkk".
- Added throbbing blue scan line to the background hills/mountains.
- Animated certain pieces of text to make them stand out more (eg. shop sign, wave starter text etc.).
- Re-added particle effects (new ones, though) to hands to show 'area-of-effect' when grabbing objects.
- Experimental mixed-reality support (Let me know if you have any problems with this - I'm still testing).
Old stuff what I done made better -
Gameplay Changes/Improvements:
- Revamped the systems behind grabbing/throwing objects such that they are now more robust and integrate the new droids/rockets/cars etc. Some behaviours are slightly different now, such as when grabbing an object with both hands, which is no longer always beneficial - experiment to see what happens with each object!
- The 'grab distant' power now grabs many objects around the centre of your view, not just one. This means it is now substantially easier to use and more useful than before.
- Improved the Lightblade physics (now passes through objects a lot less when moved quickly).
- The Golem now telegraphs attacks better using particle effects.
- Also changed timing of The Golem's attacks and lowered strength(speed) of his throw & bullet attacks.
- The healthbars have been made much more obvious.
- Changed the scoring/mutiplier systems such that the score gained from destroying drones is can now be vastly different.
- The 'Restart' text now rotates around the player on death to make it more obvious.
- Stopped the 'grab distant' power from affecting The Golem as it became trivial if uncurbed.
- Objects no longer 'hang around' after being thrown by The Golem - they will instead return straight to where they came from.
- Changed some later wave patterns in the wave-based game modes.
- Robots are a substantially bigger target now for anyone that has been playing the beta content recently.
Other Changes/Improvements:
- Major, major graphical improvements and a sharp new style.
- Improved SSAO.
- Performance improved due to many optimisations and some technical upgrades (e.g. Unity's 'Single-Pass Rendering' method is working now!).
- Revamped all text in the game with a slick new look.
- Revamped the look of the drones.
- Redesigned the 'Level Selector Cube'.
- Improved procedural sfx used by objects/cars.
- Mixed the in-game music/sfx to a much better soundstage.
- Audio spatialization greatly improved.
- Buttons now have new materials (holographic) and change colour based on their on/off value.
- Improved lighting in the Home area.
- Improved layout of the Home area.
- Rearranged/Edited the Starting/Advanced Tips text in the Home area to make it more clear.
- Certain powers now use hand animations and particle effects to give feedback to the player about the power.
- Changed/moved tooltips to take up less space.
- Moved the buttons in the Home area slightly further away from the player's starting position to avoid accidental presses.
- Made the 'level select targets' in the Home area slightly smaller and raised them so that they are less likely to be hit accidentally.
- Changed the look of the Lightblade to better suit it passing through the floor etc.
- The controller tooltips now change depending on which powers have been unlocked.
- Changed the shape of most of the grabbable objects from the 'boring old cube' to a slightly more interesting 'bevelled cube'. I know, I treat you well.
- Slightly redesigned the buttons.
- The 'level-selector cube' now collides witht eh buttons in the Home area.
Things I regret and am ashamed of -
Bug Fixes:
- Player no longer sticks to walls if throwing self into them at certain angles.
- Fixed certain occlusion culling issues.
- Fixed certain lighting issues.
- Fixed many performance-hindering issues.
- Fixed bug caused by scores being too big for the scoreboard.
- Fixed a bug caused by a negative score-multiplier resulting in the player losing points when destroying a drone after a very long pause since the last drone was destroyed.
- Fixed score not displaying in certain circumstances.
- Fixed the Timed mode's timer from displaying the wrong time after the time is up.
- Fixed the game occasionally stuttering when loading in a new scene.
- Fixed the blue drones having the wrong coloured light.
Specific Requests From Users:
- [New Feature] A whole new Area, 'The City', based on community feedback and requests including a city to traverse, cars to throw with your mind, robots to fight and homing rockets to pluck out of the air.
- [New Feature] Added button to Home area to toggle the platform beneath the player on/off.
- [New Feature] The player's screen(s) now flash(es) when they take damage.
- [Change] The healthbars have been made much more obvious.
- [Change] Re-added particle effects (new ones, though) to hands to show 'area-of-effect' when grabbing objects.
- [Bug Fix] Player no longer sticks to walls if throwing self into them at certain angles.
Thanks again for playing,
I hope you enjoy,
Joe
New Content Added to the Beta Branch
Hi everyone,
A massive amount of new content (the biggest update yet) has been added to the beta branch.
To access, right-click on the game in Steam, go to 'Properties', select the 'Betas' tab, and then opt in to the beta called..."beta - Unreleased Content".
After a short update, you'll have access to the new content:
I feel the game is now a fair reflection of what the final product will be (no major changes are planned) and so I'll be looking to launch the game May 22nd if all goes to plan. Almost every aspect of the game has now been revamped.
As one of the new things I have added to the game is a progression system, it should be noted that anyone opting into the beta will have their progress reset to zero (as there was no progress before). This basically affects the powers you can use and the areas available to you and can be opted out of by opting out of the beta again.
Regardless, my intention has been to avoid making the game feel like a 'grind' at any point and so i don't think experienced players will have a problem unlocking everything relatively quickly (or finding the secret shortcut I put in there).
Also worth noting, if you haven't already bought MOVRM, is that the price is set to rise from it's current $2.99/£1.99 to $4.99/£3.99 on it's release from Early Access to reflect the increase in content and reward early supporters of the game. I still feel that the new price represents a good deal and had always intended on, and spoken about, raising the price on launch.
I'll be looking to get a full list of the patch notes up around launch (it's going to be long) but for now, here's a list of the major additions:
- Hands!!
- Robots (with rocket launchers and plasma guns)
- A city
- Lots of cars to throw around
- Much improved graphics/art style/textures/models etc.
- A progression system & shop
- Many, many bug fixes
- Polish & tweaks to almost every aspect of the game
Hope you enjoy.
Just let me know if you have any problems,
Joe
Progress update - new stuff on the way.
As you can see, exciting new content is on the way but it isn't quite finished yet and I want to take big strides with the game from here as opposed to the smaller updates we've had in the past.
On the way, apart from the (I hope obvious) graphical overhaul, are:
some new robot friends to throw around;
a new city area filled with the most requested thing to toss around with telekinesis - cars (still very much a work in-progress but I want you to see what I'm working on);
and a few other surprises I'm still working on too that aren't so easy to show in pictures.
Not only will there be graphical and performance improvements (not to mention bug fixes) but I want to cram as much new content in there as I can while being mindful not to ignore the content that is already there. I also really want to start working on the overall aesthetic of the game which, let's be honest, still needs some love and polish.
Thanks so much for playing the game, I'll get back here as soon as I can :)
PS: I'm now helping out the guys over at Alientrap and working on Modbox which, if you've got a Vive and haven't already, I would highly suggest you pick up (though I suppose I would say that so instead I encourage you to watch some videos or something and check it out for yourselves). Very excited and grateful to the guys over there - I'm learning a lot so it should only mean good things for MOVRM. Also, it has only replaced my customer service job (who were also great btw) time-wise so please don't blame them for my delay :p
Update 0.32
Enemy bullets have been slowed significantly - this opens up the (now) viable strategies of dodging bullets or even deflecting them with your blade!
Changes:
- Slowed bullets down greatly so that players have a chance to react after they've been fired - you're no longer dependant upon the charging noises and lights to see when/where bullets are coming from. Dodging and deflecting bullets (with the blade) are now viable strategies.
- Bullets are now destroyed if they are not held by the player and they hit the floor.
- Bullets are not affected by gravity until grabbed by the player.
- Blue drones now fire 2 bullets.
- Purple drones now fire 3 bullets.
- Reduced spread for all enemy fire patterns.
- Moved tutorial text to The Playground so that players have a place to practise using their powers while having these tips at-hand.
Bug Fixes/Performance improvements:
- Enabled single-pass stereo rendering which will significantly help performance on systems limited by CPU as draw calls have been reduced significantly.
More coming soon,
Thanks again for playing :)
Joe
Update 0.31.1
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where destroying Drones with the blade would yield no points.
- Fixed a bug where an object held by both hands would use the wrong hand to calculate the score when destroying a Drone.
- Fixed a bug where the right hand's telekinetic abilities would not work properly in 'Waves (Stationary)' mode.
- Fixed a particularly annoying bug where the particle for scattering objects would be triggered unintentionally and sometimes stick around for a while.
- Changed some of the tooltips to more accurately describe the abilities they refer to.
- Corrected 'The Blade (Stationary)' sign in the Welcome room.
- Minor graphical improvements (particularly noticeable in text).
Update 0.31
I know it's not going to be everyone's favourite update but it was becoming sorely needed as the one song in the game was beginning to get a little old.
I've spent the week making 3 new tracks for the game and am now happy enough with them that they should hopefully add some much needed variety to the soundtrack.
New Features:
- 2 new tracks (along with the original for a total of 3) added to a random playlist that will play in the background of any mode if music is turned on in the main menu.
- 1 new boss track added for the boss fight.
Changes:
- Music now plays in The Playground.
Bug fixes:
- Music now defaults to 'ON' in the main menu when first booting the game.
Update 0.3
- Blade Mode added. Wield an energy-sword in one hand and your telekinetic powers in the other. Uses the same enemy patterns and boss battle as Wave mode for now.
- Added the ability for a second player to control a drone in the playground. Just press 'space' when prompted and use WASD (move), ctrl (descend), space (ascend) and mouse1 (fire) to control the drone.
Changes:
- Changed particle effect on hands to only react when an object comes within range. This hopefully stops the effect from getting in the way while also providing feedback to the player if the trigger is not held.
- Added several other particle effects to hands & powers.
- Changed orange/blue particles that surrounded 'held' objects to a more visually appealing alternative.
Bug Fixes:
- Performance improvements/optimization.
- Fixed certain audio clips being spatialized incorrectly.
Thanks to everyone for playing!