This is a topic that comes up a lot. It comes up in nearly every review of any winter sports game that has been released in the last decade. Rightfully so. Expectations are important right? Players want to know what they're getting for their hard-earned cash.
But then the never-ending battle of which is better gets dragged out in the comments section. Many believe that games should be as realistic as possible while others point out that games are fictional and should be an extension of fantasy. Who's right? Where do we stand in this? What is Powder VR aiming for and why?
Some players enjoy super-difficult, technical challenges which is usually the simulation route and some players just want to strap in and fly at 100mph through the craziest, most dangerous terrain. Obviously it's more nuanced than just choosing one side and making a game. There's more than one facet to action sports- from terrain, to controls, to style, there are many pivotal points when designing a game to choose which direction to go.
If we were to make a perfect winter sports game, it would take the visuals and exploration of Steep, the style, creativity and excitement of SSX 3, and the technical aspects of Skate 3 and mash them into a gamer's dream. Alas, we don't have all those resources and many of our decisions have been made for us given our platform, our resources, and our players.
There is one tenet in video gaming that overrides both realism and fantasy, and that's fun. More details in the next post.
New Menu Options to Reflect Upcoming Changes
So much has changed since we started Powder VR that it was time to update the main menu. The idea of spawning into an open-world snow park and having to find your way to each course has been deprecated in favor of an instant quick race option. After a lot of testing, we found out that the snow park was just too technical for beginners.
The first stages of the story mode will now focus on straight, wide-open areas and give players plenty of time to practice in large, friendly settings before requiring them to tackle more difficult terrain like black diamonds.
For those who liked the snow park, not to worry! There will still be an exploration mode like the existing infinite runs that lets you choose which areas to spawn and will let you ride without any pressure of competition.
Finally, our simulation settings have grown so large that it needed its own page just to fit everything in there!
Unity + VR + Loading Screens
What's the deal with loading screens in VR games? Why are they non-existent or generally terrible? Non-VR games often have videos and cut scenes or better yet, playable mini-games while you transition scenes, so why are VR games so far behind? Are VR devs just lazy?
Nope. As is usually the case, it's several magnitudes more complicated doing things in VR than in regular pancake games.
I've seen some pretty cool integrations with Unreal Engine but being mostly familiar with Unity, that's what I'm going to talk about. Utilizing native Unity-based scene management tools and functions, what can you do while loading a new scene in the game?
Almost nothing.
What? It turns out that while you're loading a new scene, the load process is so resource intensive, your app is no longer able to render any frames to your VR headset. This means it can't even track your head movement and render your view correctly which can lead to nausea and disorientation. At this point, you get teleported back to your compositor, ie: Steam home while it tries to load the content. Overall, it's a pretty poor experience.
Surely someone has figured it out? Probably. Most of the standard SDKs don't offer anything better and if someone has hacked their way around it, they're not sharing. The only decent solution comes from Steam VR's SDK in the form of the SteamVR_LoadLevel class. It lets you load new scenes while standing within a cubemapped skybox and gives you the option of displaying a loading bar and an image poster.
The loading bar is not great. In my trials the loading bar would not fill up in a regular fashion, instead it would sit empty for a long time and then abruptly appear 90% full before loading the rest as usual. I also had issues with the loading bar and poster textures and had to disable image compression before I was able to get them to work.
Regardless, here we are with a working loading environment so that we may keep players engaged in the game. It's not a video or mini-games, but it's better than nothing.
Join us as we turn Powder VR into the top Ski & Snowboard VR game! Carve the mountain before the masses and be the first to explore the vast expanse. This is another minor release. We're planning on making more iterative updates this round so join us in Discord and sharing your feedback!
Now you can enjoy complete Avatar Customization in Powder VR. In the up and coming release you'll be able to make them your own. Select hat facial hair, goggles, snow jacket, pants and the color in as you prepare your decent down the epic mountains and scenic terrain.
Don't forget to sign up for our email list to get your beta test key!
http://eepurl.com/gGFXDX
Powder VR Beta Preview 0.6.5b Available!
If you have a key, you can set Steam to keep it up to date with new releases. We didn't give out new keys this round since it was a minor update and we're still working on it. Thanks in advance for all your feedback!
Hey all, it's been a while since the last update. I'd like to thank everyone for their suggestions! I was able to get someone to help me promote the game. Now we have a Discord server and a bunch of other cool channels for promotion. We'll be putting the trailer up on this page shortly along with some gameplay video of our in-game full body avatar and what we're doing to combat VR simulation sickness with our comfort settings.
Please help us by getting the word out about this game and don't be shy about requesting features! We'll be in beta and Early Access for a while so we can cram as much cool stuff as is technically and humanly possible.
Dev log, for reals!
So I've been doing a lot of development and the game is very playable and IMBO, very fun. So what's the hold up? I've done zero work on marketing/community and I don't want to launch the game into indie obscurity- I did that last time and lost a year of my life. This time I want to do Early Access and tweak the game until most players think it's as kick-ass as I think it could be.
This brings me to the most painful part of being a single dev: spend time making the game better or spend time convincing people the game exists and is worth their time?
I usually lean towards the first choice, but if I do that all the time nobody will have heard of the game. Thus, I've come to the conclusion that I either need a publisher or I have to do a bunch more marketing. Either way, I have to get active and talk with players and get some dialogue going with the game's community. So please, feel free to ask questions! Sometimes I'm slow to respond because I haven't figured out a good system to get notifications but I'm working on it.
Ultimately this might push back the official release date but hopefully I can get a closed beta program going in the near future.
