There's always an itch to immediately get back in there and keep improving once an update is launched. The release of Powers a week ago being no exception. But I decided, in the spirit of it's Early Access days to let feedback accumulate and accumulate it did.
Almost immediately new bugs became known issues, and players way more experienced with VR today than they were back in the original 2017 release date started pointing out inconveniences and things they had grown accustomed to in other titles.
With a few days worth of data and I'd like to offer up today's hotfix and patchnotes:
FEATURES
Stick rotation - You can now use the thumbstick/thumbpad on your controller to rotate 45 degress to the left or right. Simply tilt the thumbstick to one direction then press it or press on either side of your thumbpad (if using an HTC Vive).
This new mechanic is now a part of the tutorial.
Collectible notifications - Collecting Comicbooks displays a notification alerting players how many still remain.
POWERS
Fuego
- Fuego's fire dash has been reworked to simply use the Trigger instead of a combination of Thumbstick + Trigger. Holding the Trigger now start progressing the Dash's length, capped out after a second of being held, release to dash to the destination.
There are more upcoming changes to Fuego's dash such as SFX and splash damage dealt to enemies nearby, but I couldn't squeeze them in this update.
- Fuego's fireballs now track the controller over a series of frames to more accurately covey the player's swing when launched.
CHALLENGES
Racetrack - The racetrack has been reworked after reports of players getting stuck on top of geometry. Not certain if the issue is completely fixed but it should be a lot less likely now. Also fixed a blocking issue which prevented players from completing the race.
A future update of the Racetrack will reintroduce moving obstacles which increase your lap time
BUG FIXES
- Fixed a gamebreaking issue related to killing Mutated bugs. In hindsight I should have known they're so bug-prone - Fixed a collision issue with controllers and menus. - Players can now (once again) set the SFX and Music volumes from the menu
That's it for today's update. Hopefully Powers just got a bit nicer to play. I'll see you next time.
PowersVR leaves Early Access
Launch
The time has come for PowersVR to leave Early Access and join the exclusive club of games that were actually released. After years of development and a...small...hiatus the latest and greatest update is now live. To celebrate the occasion a one week discount awaits those who still haven't joined in during Early Access. If you want to head straight into the action you can download it and play it immediately. If however you want to know what's new stick around.
[previewyoutube="cpkirepYyds;full"]
The Sandbox
The hero of this update is ironically not a superhero at all, but instead the map where it all takes places. Hundreds of hours placing buildings, making systems and optimizations as well as creating unique zones to explore mean that Metropolis has now grown about 40 times of what it once was.
Parks, residential and business areas as well as a few unique locations mean there's plenty to discover. With a large amount of collectibles scattered around the island players are incentivized to search every nook and cranny. Remaking the Sandbox was a massive endeavour for me, trying to keep a stable framerate at this scale in VR seemed impossible at times, however it felt absolutely neccessary to truly enjoy the superhero feel.
Because of all the effort that went into the map, all challenges were moved outside of their own smaller maps and made part of the larger Sandbox. With Fuego's Target Practice and Zap's Racetrack challenges being placed in the world map, I had to temporarily remove Whirlwind's Flying challenge as there are some technical difficulties with it's transition, however a new Wave Defense challenge awaits those ready to rumble.
The Enemies
Speak of the devils, enemies and AI have been revamped. The signature 3D Robots which were the only villains you could face during Early Access are gone, replaced by several more thematic and appropriately 2D and comicbook-ey enemies, each with a unique way to try and kill you.
I'll be the first to admit that my 3D skills are subpar, and learning 3D modelling, rigging and animation just wasn't viable, so enemies have transformed into 2D sprites which will menacingly stare you down as you approach. Each drawn from 8 directions, their AI has improved to keep the dangerous but not annoying in case you simply don't want to deal with any evil-doers.
The Powers
Each major release of PowersVR so far has included new heroes and thus new Powers. They were either Combat or Movement Powers and players could equip one of each. The...oddity of this system was brought to my attention several times since the original release, and so this update brings a large update to how Powers work.
Each hero now has a unique Combat and a unique Movement ability. To achieve this, some hero pairs were merged into one. Now you can equip a hero from either hand, and doing so will change the powers in both hands. The merged heroes are as following:
Phaser (Teleportation) + Witch (Telekinesis) = Phaser Zap (Superspeed) + Hiroku (Electricity) = Zap Whirlwind (Flight) + Dark Prinxess (Laser sight) = Whirlwind Alloy (Minigun) + New Power (Heavy Walk) = Alloy Fuego (Fireballs) + New Power (Fire Dash) = Fuego Nightwatcher (Grappling Hook) - Now both hands have grappling hooks which can be alternated to keep moving between builings
In addition some Powers were removed because they didn't suceed in the fantasy goals I wanted for them.
Professor Hex, Ruby and Shield Maiden simply did not feel good enough to warrant existing in the current setting. Bringing very little to the table. While it may seem that there are now fewer abilities in the game, the amount of Powers hasn't changed much. This also leaves room for thematically interesting characters in the future, where their kit can work well together.
The Bad
If you followed PowersVR from Early Access you'll be wondering by now where Story Mode is hiding in this update. Story mode was supposed to be a series of missions featuring specific heroes tasked with doing specific things to advanced an overarching plot. Way back in 2017-2018, I made considerable progress on it by fully completing and polishing the first level, making playable versions of the next two and laying the foundation for another two. And then the slump began.
My own supervillain was the growing realization of just how much I had bitten off with Story mode. How much different it was from everything I had in the game so far and how much work it would actually take a single person to achieve the unrealistic goals I had for it. Motivation became an expensive resource of which I had less and less and in some ways the very prospect of a Story mode is what caused updates to the Early Access version of the game to grind to a halt.
And then things got from bad to bad..er. Level one of the story mode, the level in which Phaser introduced himself and his abilities, taught players the controls and ran through the game's intro was corrupted during an update of the engine. All my attempts to restore it were in vain and it was the final straw for me.
The Good
If you're reading this update, there's a good chance you know that the world is a little crazy right now. This has been pretty bad in the grand scheme of things, so I'm thankful that it meant I could work from home for an extended period of time. In fact since early February I've been at home with an large amount of free time. This is when I began thinking what a version 1.0 of PowersVR could even mean. I'm not exagerrating the difficulty of creating the Sandbox, around 150 to 200 hours went into making it not only look but also perform to my satisfaction.
Most importantly I made the update because of those of you who believed in the project. I can't say whether the wait was worth it or not, however I will say it was a pleasure reading and working on feedback from the community, good or bad. The positivity was motivational and the negativity (mostly rightly aimed) pushed me to do better. I can confidently say PowersVR is a better because it was in Early Access. Thank you.
Now what?
First things first, I'd like to ask players to do what they did during the Early Access period and report any issues as well as share your opinions on gameplay. The next couple of weeks will be focused on stabilizing the game and improving it's feeling. I'll also be adding very cool things such as Steam Trading cards and additional achievement (essentials for a game nowadays I know).
After so many years it's easy to want to move on to something new, but there's a bit more steam left in me. After this initial period of improvement I'd like to go back to the old ways of adding more ways to play in the form of new Heroes, Challenges and enemies (we might see some returning faces in that regard).
Until next time.
PowersVR will release on October 10th!
Hi.
Before I get into any type of details I'd like to announce that yes, PowersVR is finally defying the curse of the indie in Early Access and launching version 1.0 on October 10 2020. Ah yes 2020. This year has frankly been a lot. If there is one good thing it did for me, is created an enviornment in which I can once again spend hundreds of hours working on something I deeply care about.
I don't want to make excuses. Work, life etc. are a factor yes, but I would like to apologize for the long wait, to those who believed in the project and backed it early on. This being my first major project would, hardly realized what I had gotten myself into until I was in too deep. Since the early days of the year I've slowly but steadily been making progress on PowersVR. The game took a different direction, and I hope it's not one which dissapoints.
Now as we're nearing the aforementioned date, I'm delving deeper into each night to bugfix and test, hoping to bring a fun sandbox for players to explore. In fact a hefty amount of my time this last year was spent specifically building the foundations on which you'll fly, run and zip around as you encounter more enemies and challenges.
The map has grown and the powers have changed, but for a detailed list updates I humbly ask you wait a little more until launch. Thank you for your patience and I'll see you soon.
Happy birthday to PowersVR
Well, it's been an year since I released PowersVR in Early Access and after a lot of back and forth and community feedback I feel like we're getting somewhere!
If you've been following these posts you'll know that after the initial few content patches I've moved on to only working on the story mode, and while progress is slow, it's certainly happening.
As maps get bigger and more detailed I've put in extra time to tinker with lighting and optimization. One of the problems with having cities is...well someone has to make the city, and that's quite the task for a one-man team. So I've been working on some tools and systems to make the endeavor a bit lighter. Using systems I've talked about before and some new ones I'm slowly getting comic book New York to feel more alive. Most notably I've recently finished a dynamic path system, where a street, or train tracks or anything similarly linear that can bend will be generated along a spline. As well as allow to cyclical items to be generated along it's edges, like street lamps, or signs.
In addition you'll notice some basic cars. This is just an image, but trust me, in the real thing they move along the roads. Very advanced stuff. Well not very, but moderately. Cars, signs, fire hydrants, lights, buildings all these systems now allow me to make a pretty good playground for would-be superheroes to unleash their powers.
Additionally I've taken on the new task of learning to properly make 3D models from start to finish. High-poly, retopology, texturing, rigging and animation. All things I gotta learn to do, so wish me luck. My progress so far is getting most of Professor Hex sculpted, so there's a long way to go, but we'll get there!
Lastly I want to thank everyone who became part of this game. PowersVR raked in about 1700 sales in it's first year as an indie VR game, which is (statistically speaking) great. It got covered by a few major YouTubers and got me showcasing at conventions which was so much fun (although my legs still hurt from being up all day). I've always wanted to make games, but I never really understood what that's like until I starter making this one. And it's tough, but seeing people's reactions makes it absolutely worth it. So let's make this year even better :)
Progress report - A month on the pipeline
Been a while since the last update. Work is progressing on the story mode and I wanted to let you know how it's going. Right now I've decided to make a complete playable level, just so I can implement most major systems that will be used in the story. It's one of the first levels in Act I and features some city exploration and combat.
Different levels will feature different types of gameplay and this level in particular has a couple of wave defense segments. So some of the work I've done in the last month has involved both the Wave system and improvement for the game's AI.
The first step was creating as many assets as I can to make the city feel believeable. Props, decals and buildings have been the focus for the last couple of weeks.
In addition to that I've been creating outlines for early story cutscenes and storyboards for later ones. After the this level is complete I'll paint in the story cutscenes, animate them and test how it all plays together before moving on to the next one.
This part of the process can be slow but after building up a fair library of props and models, future maps will be easier to build. I'll keep you posted!
v 0.4.0 - Origins
You guys know I'm just playin', when I give you update estimates right? No? Well I am. I've missed another deadline, but in my defense I'm quite bad with estimating, and the list of things I wanted to get done just kept growing. But enough of this directionless rant, let's get down to bussiness. After the 0.3.0 update I warned that my primary focus from now on would be work on the Story mode, while keeping the sandbox and challenges updated especially using systems and assets that I've made for the story mode. For the most part that's true, but there were a few things that I felt needed to be done and that's why today I'm releasing the Origins update.
Note: Scroll to the bottom to see the full patch notes
The first big addition is the Gallery - a new location accessible through the main menu. Here you can read the backstories of heroes you've unlocked in the Sandbox. Some are quite lengthy and contains hints as to the characters' roles in the upcoming story. I felt this area was needed because people often ask why they aren't creating their own superhero, in the end PowersVR is a story-driven game and the modes that are currently playable will be only bonus content in the full release.
Second I've gone hardcore into optimization and profiling. They say that optimizing the game is one of the last things you do during it's development, but not only am I working on a live product, I'm also making a VR game, meaning that bad framerate can literally impede proper testing. Overall I've employed a lot of tactics for creating my assets that come naturally to indutry pros. As I refine the asset pipeline, the models and textures become better looking and more performant and that's a nice segue into the topic OF assets. A lot of additional 2D and 3D art has found it's way into the sandbox, I've touched up on a lot this update ranging from UI to particle effect improvements. Most notably the two heroes from The Rising Sun update always had pretty lackluster effects so that's been worked on.
Another important addition to the art side of things is the new building system (which I've talked about in previous posts). It allows me to generate buildings of variable sizes and colors by using a simple set of 3D models. This dramatically decreases the work that needs to be done for generating believable city blocks on top of which caped heroes can pose heroically. The next steps for the system is generating procedural props on the windows and roof and eventually creating entire clusters of buildings by entering just a few parameters.
I've put in some work to improve the new player experience with better instructions around the city and even in the main menu, as well as a new notification system which for now only notifies you when you've unlocked a new hero, but in the future will deliver all sorts of messages to the player.
One reason I delayed the update for so long is that I'm getting ready to go to my second convention soon. Hopefully I'll gather a ton of feedback like last time and get more people excited about VR. This time around I have a site to direct people to. Just the like the game it's still very much a work in progress, but in the coming weeks I would hope that the PowersVR website will turn into a valuable resource for people to follow it's development. (psst, click the link and find a teaser for two upcoming heroes in development).
Alright player, thank you again for bearing with me with this update. Lots done, much more left to do. For now I leave you with the complete patch notes, while I got take a long nap (30 hours ought to do it).
GALLERY
* Added Hero Gallery
- This area can be accessed from the main menu, next to the Sandbox button
- In this area you'll find a computer terminal with a keyboard and screen
- The terminal contains records of all heroes and villains currently in the game
* In future updates lore about the world and organizations will be added to the terminal
GENERAL
* Updated to Unreal Engine 4.17
- This type of incremental upgrade usually improves stability and performance
- Opens up more features I can now use to make the development easier
* Hero selection menu has been reworked
- The "Change power" button now needs to be held to keep the menu open
- Instead of a menu of four heroes at a time, bubbles with all heroes pop up around the controller
- Releasing the "Change power" button over one of the bubbles will set that ability as current
- Releasing the button without hovering a bubble will retain the current ability
* Remapped some controller buttons
(VIVE)
- Trackpad now activates an ability's secondary effect (such as cancelling teleportation)
- Holding the Side button now opens the hero selection menu and releasing it closes it
(OCULUS TOUCH)
- Pressing B or Y activates an ability's secondary effect (such as cancelling teleportation)
- Holding the Index trigger now opens the hero selection menu and releasing it closes it
* Unified input system
- This will allow to easily integrate new controllers such as the upcoming Vive Knuckles
* Additional models have been added to the game world, replacing older ones
* Added base of new Billboard system which will help populate the city with colorful fictional ads
- Until I get offers to add real world ones *cough*Coca-Cola call me*cough*
* Added more decals around the city
* Fixed an issue that made most enemy projectiles invisible.
UI
* Added new notification system
- This system displays messages to the player one at a time, before removing them after a delay
- For now the only notification is to inform players when they've unlocked a new hero
- In the story mode this system will display conversations between characters or tips/prompts
* Added a "Return to Main Menu" button in the game menu
- This will abort challenges and in the future story missions
* Added building generation system
- The system builds whole buildings using a couple of 3D models and parameters
- This will drastically speed up building creation and allow for bigger variety
- Next I'll be looking into generating whole city blocks dynamically.
* Replaced instructions around the city with visual tutorials
* Added a basic controls guide in the sandbox and main menu
WHIRLWIND
* Removed option to land manually
- Fly/Land spam was an easy exploit to confuse enemies and that wouldn't work for the story mode
- The feature was also quite prone to bugs
- You'll still be automatically landed when you change to a different movement power
RUBY
* Updated particle effects to make them more impactful
HIROKU
* Updated particle effect
- Lightning now occasionally arcs from player's hand
OPTIMIZATION
* Disabled tessellation (which wasn't being used to begin with)
- Big framerate boost especially with many objects on screen
* Implemented Simplygon tools in the workflow
- Simplygon offers automatic Level of Detail (LOD) generation
- This allows for objects farther from the player to be rendered with more simplistic graphics
- When building a whole city, this will prove invaluable to maintain a good framerate
- All new assets and many old ones now have LODs
* Due to a peformance drop, fire escapes have been removed from the game until they can be optimized
- All citizens are advised to call a flying hero in case of emergency
* Some older models have receieved tweaks, especially regarding their textures
* Some particle systems (especially ones using translucency) have been reworked to make them lighter
Progress report - Building buildings
I'm working on a 0.4.0 release which implements some important gameplay changes, as well as brings a bunch of assets into the game, but that's at least a week away so I wanted to catch everyone up on what I'm up to exactly.
First of all, I've been doing work specific to the Story Mode. I'm not gonna talk about it much to avoid spoiling something, but I've evaluated all segments of the story and have worked on the ones that I'm sure I wanna have, and ignored ones that might be rewritten or removed in favor of more sensible segments. Right now Story Mode work mostly consists of drawing the comicbook panels that will be used for the cinematics and is something I do to unwind from other work, as they are the least priority item on the list.
Moving on - assets! Almost anything in the game can be considered an asset, but when I say assets I mostly mean 3D models or 2D drawings. I've been making models for building this last week, but it's time-consuming work, so during the weekend I cooked up a new system that I've been thinking about for a while now. You feed it several modular 3D models, give it a set of parameters such as floor amount, wall width etc. and it creates a building out of it.
The three building on the left all use this new system and are made from the same pieces, while the one on the right is handmade. Obviously there are still things to work out here to make buildings look better, but this new system will dramatically decrease development time of new buildings. In the future I'll be adding things such as dynamic door placement, random props on the windows (air conditioners, laundry, antennas). I'm also doing some work with discoloration, that can be applied to specific areas of the building, to make it look more varied.
I'm doing some experimentation on input (both Vive and Oculus) based on feedback I've received, and so far I've made a big change regarding the power selection. And of course, this being a 0.#.0 release there's some new content to check out. But all of that you'll be able see out when the update hits soon.
v0.3.6 Patch notes - Where do you think you're going?
Another day, another patch brought on by the object pooling system. I promise you, it's worth it, but as it stands, pooled objects that were supposed to be attached, would appear in seemingly random location when reactivated.
The issue was brought to my attention after users noticed the minigun floating around the map after switching to a different power and back to Alloy. The same thing happened to Shield Maiden's shield. Well, that's the main reason you're getting 0.3.6 early, but not the only thing included in this update.
If you've read previous announcement, you might know that (as with a lot of superhero themed media) PowersVR's story mostly takes place in New York. This suggests a busy city, with many buildings and streets, and while I have been slowly churning out 3D models to populate the sandbox, I hadn't actually considered that New York has it's own aesthetic.
Luckily for me I'm working on a VR game, and as such have a couple of pairs of VR headsets, so I dove into Google Earth VR and flew straight to New York. Shrinking myself as far as I could I managed to experience the Big Apple from a more personal perspective, and so this week I've dedicated a large amount of time to work on buildings and stuff that attaches to buildings.
You'll notice on the side of this apartment building, that there's a fire escape going up the wall. This is actually one of the other things I've given time to this week. The fire escape has parameters to determine the floor height, floor count and other little things. Making it very reuseable on different kinds of structures. This is part of a larger system I'm working on, which will hopefully see customizeable pipes, vents, wires etc. Saving me a lot of time that would be needed to model them for each possible building.
Not a huge update, but what was I gonna do? Let you live without your minigun for a week? Fat chance.
v0.3.5 Patch notes - Object Sink
Another quick update. The main reason I'm publishing this one is a major fix for an issue I noticed recently. If you've been reading these announcements, you'll know that I put in an object pooling system in the game. This lets the game reuse objects without creating/deleting them, which improved performance a lot especially when projectiles are introduced.
Well after some testing I realized that despite the game running fairly smootly, it wasn't thanks to my new system. The system didn't work at all! I was still spawning/despawning everything. A day later I had a fix lined up, but since it wasn't so critical I decided to beef up the update with something else too.
While I was fidgeting with some settings I noticed the menus looked outdated and oddly designed. As if they were being drawn to have something underneath all buttons rather than for visibility, clarity and aesthetics. I've made several changes to menus and feel like the results are pretty good.
Here are the patch notes:
GENERAL
* Found a critical bug in the object pool system that rendered it useless
- Now after the fix, the game should be much lighter on your CPU
UI
* Redesigned settings menu elements and layout
* Changed styles for all challenge menus as well
* Fixed an issue where invisible bodies were blocking the menu cursor
In other news the game was just released on the Oculus store, so hopefully new players from there will also be inclined to leave feedback.
And on the subject of feedback, since communicating with people on the forums can be slow and feel indirect, I've created a Discord server for PowersVR. Anyone can join, give their feedback and maybe have a discussion about the game. I'm active throughout the day on Discord, so I'll be sure to respond!
v0.3.4 Patch notes - Polishing
With my current focus being on the story mode, it's easy to forget that the game is out, even if it's in Early Access. That's why I took this weekend to fix some outstanding issues with the game as well as do some polishing such as improving performance, size and art quality.
One thing I tackled this weekend, and think will pay off in the long run is proper Steam integration. It took some tries, but the game now features it's first set of achievements. They're all related to gathering heroes in the sandbox, but many more will come especially with the story mode. This now opens up the door for things such as Cloud saves, Trading cards and rewards. Since they're non-critical to the completion of the game I'll tackle them when I need a rest from doing other things.
I'm also quite pleased with the lighting in this build. More so than previous versions where you could see artificats and oddly placed shadows. Things aren't strangely tinted in blue/green anymore either.
Here are the full notes.
GENERAL
* Added Steam Achievements
- Collect all classic heroes in the sandbox
- Collect both "Dark Night" heroes
- Collect both "Rising Sun" heroes
* Updated lighting
- Improved shadow quality
- More consistent light distribution
* Updated water bodies
- Easier to reuse
- Improved visuals
- Performance still needs to be properly evaulated
* Added dampening to all physics items in the game to make them feel less floaty
* If only one power is equipped, the opposite hand will now use the same texture
* Deleted a large number of unused assets
* Projectiles no longer interact with invisible collision boxes/spheres
THE WITCH
* Fixed several issues related to physics and collisions
* Reworked aura particles
* Added a dark trail to affected object
* Added a hit effect
* Changed item launch sound effect
* Added an impact marker where the launched item hits
WHIRLWIND
* Fixed an issue where hovering would occur even close to the ground
* Fixed an issue that would cause landing to take the player underground
SHIELD MAIDEN
* Updated shield material
* Adjusted hand color
PROFESSOR HEX
* Removed hand aura
* Converted all spells to use the new projectile system
* Knockback spell now properly pushes enemies
* Slightly increased Blast spell damage
* Fixed an issue where the Blast spell was hitting enemies multiple times
ALLOY
* Projectiles no longer interfere with movement abilities
As you can see a big focus of this update was getting the new projectiles to behave as well as or better than the previous ones. There's currently an issue with the way projectiles are pooled, and it's something I'll look at in the next update.
Since I started this project with no idea on how to 3D model, texture or create particle effects, I bought a lot of assets online. Some are still in the game, and I'm slowly phasing them out in favor of custom art. After a huge purge of such assets, the file size of the game is now more than 100MB lower than before. That's almost 25% less space for a version that's got a lot of new assets in it.
For this patch I spent quite a while figuring out what I wanted to do with The Witch (Telekinesis). Her power didn't really feel impactful to use, despite it's high damage potential. Now after having a few new particle, decal and sound effects added and all the old ones changed, she feels much more like the dark, ominous presence she was meant to be.
Some work was put into an official site for the game, and I'll be sure to link it here as soon as it's live, for now you'll have to settle with the Facebook page.
I've also been making progress on the story of course, mostly in the form of comicbook panels, which will be used as cinematics between missions.
I certainly have my work cut out for me, but with the support I've gotten I so far I can't help but feel optimistic. Unless I keep playing Splatoon 2 this much of course..
