To celebrate, we've got pumpkin helmets for you! So select your best livery and post a screenshot to the community hub!
Plus for those who are still on the fence, we've got a 20% discount until the end of the weekend :-)
The VertexBreakers Team
V-Racer Hoverbike
Halloween pumpkin screenshot contest
To celebrate, we've got pumpkin helmets for you! So select your best livery and post a screenshot to the community hub!
Plus for those who are still on the fence, we've got a 20% discount until the end of the weekend :-)
The VertexBreakers Team
MEGA UPDATE RELEASED
The wait is over. The MEGA UPDATE is here!!!
And it features everything we've mentioned in previous posts:
- complete rework on the menu system to make it full 3D with finger touch
- a career mode with championships, progression, achievements and unlockables
- new bikes, new suits, new helmets, that you can skin in the livery editor
- new SURVIVOR and NEON RUNNER game modes
- and a gazillion small improvements that bring the game to the level we envisioned when we started
Thank you all for supporting the game since its release in early access! With this update, you will most likely not recognize the game ;-)
With this update, we have reset the leaderboards and XP so that you can experience the game and its progression as it is intended.
Why do we call this a mega update and not a final release? Well, because we still plan to add significant features to further improve replayability, so stay tuned!
(you'll find out what we mean by that in the game itself, on the main menu ;-)
Anyway, time for us to grab a beer and celebrate! Enjoy the game and let us know what you think!
The VertexBreakers Team
Sneak peak at the new menu system
As the mega update is approaching, here is a sneak peak at the new menu system we added to the game.
We basically removed all the interface that you see in the current public version and reworked it from the ground up, with several objectives.
- make it look better and more polished
- make it more immersive and natural (now it's all 3D, and you control it with your fingers)
- give you more information and context about what you are doing
Check it out in this preview video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhOx7-yOjAI
Tell us what you think in the comments :-)
The VertexBreakers team
Save the date!
Mega update - Help us localize it!
Click here to go to discord
The VertexBreakers Team
LEADERBOARD RESET
Hello racers,We have recently made some subtle adjustments to the bike engine, and we fixed a bug that caused the engines to become slightly faster as you restarted races. To keep things fair, we are resetting all the leaderboards, so that everyone is on the same page and rides with the same bike engines.
It's your chance to get in the top ten, before it gets crowded :-)
Have fun racing!
The Vertex Breakers Team
MEGA-UPDATE COMING THIS FALL
Hello racers,
We just started alpha testing for a mega-update that will drop this fall.
After adding all those race tracks, we decided to focus on making the whole game more consistent and challenging to play. The update encompasses a lot of areas, but here are a few of the things it will include:
- a completely redesigned menu system with virtual hands and finger touch
- a livery editor that now lets you customize not only your bike, but also your suit and helmet
- a career mode with increasing difficulty across several championships
- all tracks reskinned in "Neon style", available in two new game modes
- improved multiplayer with a spectator mode suited for livecasting and e-sports events
- progression system with unlockables (including bike models, suits, helmets, liveries and more)
We'll give you more details as we get closer to release.
In the mean time, have fun racing!
The VertexBreakers team
Telemetry support - Weekly challenge leaderboards on discord
Some of you have been asking, so here is telemetry support in V-Racer Hoverbike! To activate it, all you need is a 'telemetry.json' file in the game's installation folder, or in the game's persistant data folder (usually found here: C:/users/username/AppData/LocalLow/VertexBreakers/vracer_hoverbike). the content of this file should be a JSON document as follows:
{
"ip":"127.0.0.1",
"port": 8051,
"refreshRate":20
}
This defines the IP address and port where the data will be sent to, with a refresh rate (20 times per second in the above example). Once you have set this up, you can read the data from a plugin to drive your motion device. The data is also formatted in JSON. Here is an example of the data you can read:
{
"speed": 350,
"accelerationX": 3,
"accelerationY": 1,
"accelerationZ": 10,
"angularSpeedX": 3,
"angularSpeedY": 1,
"angularSpeedZ": 10,
"rotationX": 2,
"rotationY": 5,
"rotationZ": 0,
"paused": false,
"onTrack": true,
"gear": 5,
"rpm": 10000,
"collectPickup": false,
"turbo": true,
"startEngine": false,
"stopEngine": false,
"collision": true,
"collisionAngle": 30
}
As a reference, here is the C# class we use to send that data, with comments explaining each field: TelemetryData.cs
Feel free to reach out to us on Discord if you want to discuss telemetry and ask questions.
And by the way, for those participating in the weekly challenge, you can now access the leaderboard directly on your phone in our discord channel by typing !leaderboard.
Have fun racing!
The VertexBreakers team
New update available: 30 RACES MILESTONE!
Hello racers! We've been quiet for a while, but we are happy to announce that we just pushed an update that contains 7 new races, bringing the total to 30! Along with the new Zakhar Frontier track, we've taken the time to make reverse versions of all the HGP tracks.
We only had 4 races when we first launched in early access. We'd like to thank you all for your great support! Now that we have all those races, we can focus on what's coming next. We've teased the Neon tracks a while back, rest assured they are coming: you will get all 30 races in a new game mode with those neon style visuals. We're also looking at the career mode, and a few other surprises for the future.
In the mean time, have fun racing, and thanks again for supporting us!
The VertexBreakers Team
Back to school...
We just wanted to give you a little update on what we've been up to during the summer. After releasing the game on Oculus Home for our friends with Rift/Rift S headsets, we took a little time off to recharge, and then we focused on the following things:
Neon Tracks
We're reskinning all existing tracks in neon style, for a new game mode that will let you race through gates, and shoot drones that try to slow you down with mines. Here's a couple of in-progress screenshots:
.
Here's an early test video we did in spring, if you haven't seen it yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnW-wKtiVMI
Telemetry
We've partnered with a couple of hardware vendors to explore how we could hook up the game with motorbikes for arcades. We'll tell you a bit more about that in september. The goal for us is to provide an API for anyone in the DIY scene who wants to read telemetry data from the game to drive external devices, like a fan, a buttkicker or even a bike on hydraulic cylinders.
New Zakhar track
We have a new Zakhar track currently in internal test. We expect to release it in september to keep you busy. Here's a couple of screenshots...
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Career mode and bike customization
We've laid the fundation for the career mode. We feel that the game currently lacks a sense of purpose, so we want to provide you with a progression system where you participate in championships to unlock bike parts and improve your vehicle's racing capabilities. Still a bit early to show you how that looks, but we felt we should tell you it's coming.
V-Racer Hoverbike on mobile VR?
With all the hype around Oculus Quest, we've had a lot of you asking if V-Racer would ever make it to a stand-alone VR headset. It's not a easy feat to port the game as it is to lower spec hardware but we always like to push limits, so we figured we'd spend some time to see if we could even get it to run at all on Quest. We still haven't decided whether we'd fully go down that path, but we did create a prototype that got us excited. We had to remove all the post process fx, and cut down the textures and geometry quite a bit, so it obviously doesn't look as good as on PCVR, but we're excited to see that we can keep the core gameplay and provide a cool experience on Quest, with potential for cross play with PCVR racers.
Before we move on with this idea, we want to take time to test it internally with a few players. One key aspect that we haven't validated yet is whether a 72Hz framerate is high enough for such a fast game, so we want to see if people get any motion sickness with that lowered frequency (we're running at 90Hz on Rift/Vive/WMR). Also, we still haven't pitched the idea to Oculus, so it's not entirely in our hands whether this will eventually happen or not. Let us know what you think about a Quest port in the comments.
Have fun racing, we'll keep you posted!
The VertexBreakers Team