Pierhead Arcade
Claw tweaks
Also if you are having issues with resolution or stutter you can change the game's quality settings by holding Ctrl when launching the game.
What next for Pierhead Arcade?
It's been a fun ride thus far.
I spent a lot of my youth (and some of my adult life) inside arcades and I've had VR on the back of my mind ever since trying a Virtuality style machine for the first time in an arcade as a child. I can't even remember the name of that game but it was standing VR and you had a motion tracked controller which you could use to aim down sites of a low poly gun (it wasn't Dactyle Nightmare). I was blown away by this and even then I knew that hand tracking was key to the experience.
Fast forward to the second coming of VR. I saw what Palmer Luckey was doing with his Rift and I knew that this time VR would stick so I went and backed his kickstarter. A short time later I had the DK1 in my lap and I was making awesome games with it. I knew then that this was the direction I wanted to go in so I left my job and started Mechabit.
Then at EGX I listened to an insightful talk by Chet Faliszek about developing for VR. I approached him afterwards and he liked what we were doing, a few months later I had an early Vive devkit in my office.
The Vive was so simple and intuitive to use and develop for that we had a simple white box room you could throw balls in minutes after setting it up. It was just so much fun messing around in this room that we kept adding more and more white boxed tables and games to it and thus Pierhead Arcade was born.
We took it to GDC and everyone was blown away by it so we knew we were onto something. The game was still pretty early at that time but we wanted to share it with everyone as soon as possible so we went with Early Access.
We kept hammering away at it and it's come a long way since then. We feel like the game is really strong now and represents all the things we set out to do when we started.
I feel like we've come full circle so it's appropriate that we launch the game at EGX this month on the 22nd September. We'll continue to add new content to the game up to and post release but we're confident now that if you bought Pierhead Arcade it would feel like a complete game.
After that we'll be porting the game to other VR platforms so that more people get to enjoy the experience of running around in their own arcade with unlimited tokens.
We haven't decided yet what future content will look like, maybe new rooms with more variety of games, maybe DLC packs of themed games.
Stay tuned and thank you for your continued support. Seriously, I read all the comments here and on reddit and it's really rewarding to see people enjoying what we've created.ːsteamhappyː
Toys, multiplayer and physics
We've got a new claw machine for you claw fans. The claw arm swings more as well.
There's also a new place to show off your prizes!
The prize hut has also been given a face lift to match the cool looking prize corner.
We're experimenting with using steamworks for NAT punch-through, it's still best to port forward but for some users it might be possible to skip this step. Networks / routers that block NAT punch-through (e.g. school/uni networks) wont be supported and a relay server would add way too much lag so it has to be a direct connection.
For Bowling fans we've made slow bowling much more consistent with fast bowling. Let me know how it plays now.
Other changes:
<*>Only the host can buy things at the gift shop
<*>Fixed an exploit in penguin shuffle
<*>Penguin shuffle pucks have no clip
<*>Fixed an issue with Network Transforms
<*>Lighting a sparkler online lights it for both players
<*>Rocket ball physics improvements
<*>Rocket ball particles
<*>Rapid Fire physics improvements
<*>Scarab Toss particle effects
<*>Added some more music and effects
<*>Fixed ragdoll physics
<*>New achievement icon for Pays For Itself
<*>Comet Drop wheel slows down gradually instead of stopping suddenly
P.S. We're exhibiting at EGX on the 22nd. If you're in Birmingham drop by and say hi and we'll give you some swag!
Quick Match and Bowling Update
We've added a quick match option. This will match you with a public game in your geographic region if one exists. If not then you'll host a public match and someone else might join. You'll have to back out manually if nothing happens due to ports not being forwarded for the moment. The game will time out after 20 seconds if no connection is made. (Forward port 7777 on your routers)
We've also added a private host option for friends only.
On the bowling side we've made it so that the ball doesn't get knocked out of your hand so easily and the unwaxed portion of the alley has been made a bit less frictiony and the ball comes out of the ball return chute instead of appearing out of mid air.
We've also made it so that the toggle grip is disabled if you're already holding something to prevent accidental gripping.
Also we've recently discovered a network buffer issue which was preventing objects from syncing which we've temporarily fixed by setting everything to all costs messaging which isn't great for performance. We'll switch it back once we find out what's going on.
Should be working now.
Update
On the beta branch we've added a multiplayer invite prompt which will show up on the left controller of the client. They have to select either Join or Ignore.
Please head over to the community forum to leave feedback on the steamworks features as we iron out the kinks.
We've also added a counter in the info panel of each game to show how many times you've played them so you can rejoice/despair about the amount of virtual coins you've spent!
Enjoy!
New Game and stuff!
In Comet Drop you get 5 balls to score as many points as you can.
Get 4 balls into the jackpot holes and you get bonus balls.
Hit the multiball hole and instantly launch a bunch more balls.
Can you beat my score? ;)
Other changes include curve bowling!
Here's a video of me playing (poorly)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpYSj5-MTGk&feature=youtu.be
We're looking for specific feedback on ball momentum, break point and curve amount.
Obviously you wouldn't bowl like this in real life but let me know what you think in the comments.
The gift shop also has new fire crackers for you to blow stuff up with!
Other changes:
<*>Removed advanced teleport as default on
<*>Removed some of the teleport snap points
<*>Removed rotation snapping on most objects
Happy ball dropping/exploding/curving!
Render Scale Options!
We've added render scale options to the game now so you can bump up the crispness of the image at the expense of performance or lower it slightly if you're experiencing slow down. It goes from 50% to 200%
We've also changed the claw machine balls to match the image on the side of the machine and fixed a couple bugs to do with the gift shop and Arctic Shuffle.
Sorry if you legitimately got over 50k points, had to wipe all those scores to be sure. That's early access for you ;P
Enjoy the crispness!
Multiplayer Avatars and Arctic Shuffle Update
Got a couple changes here for you:
We've added a couple awesome avatars for when you're in multiplayer. It picks one at random currently.
We've also removed the score cap on Arctic Shuffle for those 4 people who had max scores on the leaderboard. Now if you play a perfect game you get another set of penguins and you can theoretically keep playing forever if you never miss a shot... Good luck with that!
We've also spiffed up the teleport marker a bit.
Enjoy!
Trading Cards and Game Mechanics
We've added trading cards!
Also we've been getting a good response from the Rapid Fire changes so now it's live on the main branch and the leaderboards for it have been reset. If you wanted to be on the top spot for that game you've got a blank slate to play with if you're quick :)
Happy trading!
Rapid Fire Overhaul
Now the game is more about skill than luck which you can get better at with practice.
We've also added metal fence sound effect when you throw a ball at the sides.
Let us know how this compares with the old version and we'll roll it out to the main channel if there are no issues.