It's finally time for a new release of Virtual Warfighter.
This release was initially supposed to be a quick fix to allow the player to choose his own interaction scheme, mostly to give Rift players the chance to use the Grip button to grip items and weapons. However, it turns out that our previous release (First Person Hands) managed to generate some interest in our game, and we got some dedicated players / beta testers.
We've had a solid month or two of developing according to their feedback, which has led to numerous improvements. The largest improvement has been the stabilization of the physics, which makes the physics act much more natural (and avoids game crashes, which is somewhat of a bonus).
Next up in the pipeline is a game mode which is basically co-op vs bots, which both allows for some target practice as well as something fun to do while waiting for the playerbase to increase :). Other things in the pipeline are sound occlusion / reflection / reverb, a recoil revamp, injury penalties and a new weapon.
See the video below for a demonstration of the biggest new improvements
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTRTNWm9bFo
Controls - major revamp to better support rift. Now possible to choose how to interact with items based on category.
Physics - major stability fixes and more natural feeling physics
Trigger reset - weapon triggers resets at 50% to more closely match real life trigger action.
Ping - now showing other players ping in the "In game menu"
Customization - multiple new options to allow your own playstyle
Recoil - Added horizontal recoil. Balancing and work on getting the correct feel will continue.
New content in the form of a red dot and a battle rifle.
Hundreds of major / minor fixes and tweaks
Status Update 9
Hey guys!
Sorry for the lack of sign of life. We have gotten some new players on Discord which is super fun, they have helped us play test the new update. We have found some issues and stability stuff that we want to address before we release the update.
Stay tuned, the new update has alot of cool features for input, movement and the like, and even some new content. A ton of great feedback from discord has also made it into this update. So again, stay tuned, and join discord if you want to help playtest!
Over and out
Update 8 Hotfix
Hey guys.
We fixed two half serious bugs
1) Syncing item in other player hands to new connecting players caused broken state to hand rigging.
2) Bomb case lid broke when placing bomb
Happy hunting, back to coding for me! :D
Update 8 Give me a hand!
Hi guys! After a (not so well deserved?) summer vacation, we are finally ready to deliver the next update: First Person Hands. Since it in our case involves meticulously choosing good, natural grips for all items, with multiple setups for many of them, it takes a great deal more time than you would think. Some items also have dynamically calculated grips for extra smooth feeling.
Me and my brother really feel like we struck gold with the immersion factor here, it really means a lot for the natural feel of all actions to have this fleshed out system for first person hands. Check out the video below for some visuals!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqk3OAHoMNA
Our focus for the next update will be to improve on the controls, and add stepless rotation (for the forward facing crowd). This release will be relatively minor. After that, work will start in earnest on providing bots to play against.
Also, we have partially updated the trailer available here, to show the new first person hands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFzd2m-1Miw
Thanks for reading and for your support!
Devlog #3
Hey guys!
We are getting back to normal here after summer vacations and some R&R :D
We continue to work on the first person hands, what we are working on now are to support multiple hand rigs for each item, check the video too see how much immersion it brings to the game!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxYn9TJUpKk
Devlog #2
Hey guys.
Thought I show you the progress we have done for the few last days. So we are mainly working on first person hands and AI for bots. The fp hands are coming along fine. We have actually gone the full mile and implemented finger IK for the trigger finger, it looks so good when you press that trigger and the finger actually follows the trigger correctly.
Most of the code is done, we need to fix some aspects like doors, but other than that its mainly fixing the riggnings. We have reused our old first person riggings for now and they do not sync perfect to the first person hands. I have outsourced the job to retrosync our two characters to the new first person hands, so hopefully we can use the same item rigging for both first and third person which will cut rigging time in half! Also we need to fix rigging for some items that did not have rigging in third person, like the slides.
Also we need to better sync the Vive wands to the hands, that big chunky controller does create problems, you can see me having problems with drawing the slide on the pistol in the video, thats because the controllers are colliding.
Also, I have some tracking problems in my home office when the window blinds are up so please ignore that :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPwVyuxaO-s
Update 7 Conquest!
Hey guys.
It's that time of month that we know you guys are waiting for, another update of Virtual Warfighter!
This time around we bring you a Conquest/Domination/King of the hill type game mode. It's lots of fun!
We have added a new ingame lobby spawn selector map, we have also fixed a mechanism for protecting the main spawns from base rape. And lastly off course a mechanic to cap base flags.
A huge part of this update has been securing balance on the existing maps, so we have remodeled two of our maps, Subway and Precinct 13. Subway has gotten a new entry to avoid choke point and it has also gotten a new building type with interior which will bring some awesome fire fights!
The Precinct 13 map has gotten a new floor and a stair case connecting the two floors.
Here is a quick update video: https://youtu.be/ijP4yWjkJNw
Also dont miss the gameplay video we uploaded earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVYXu8weYY4
We are now starting to work on first person hands and single player / coop bots!
Update #6 Patch 1
Hey everyone.
So we have a small update/patch for you. We wanted this out before the summer sale! There are some minor fixes when it comes to state syncing doors to new players. But we have also introduced two handed aiming or Front grip aiming as we call it.
Previously you aimed only with the main grip controller, now by default the weapon will rotate towards the front grip controller. To turn off this behavior uncheck "Front grip aim" under options.
And do not forget to pickup the game during the sales! We have some cool features coming for you guys!
Devblog #1
Hey guys.
So from the start we though we would do regular video devblogs, we were a bit naive there before initial release how much time we would have for other stuff than actual coding :D So lets try a text devblog instead!
Write in the comments if you think we should keep up with these blogs!
Allright, so we have started the next sprint after Update 6, alot of focus will go into increasing player base, but off course we cant stop coding just because of that :D We are working on the new Base conquest (WIP name) game mode, it will be similar to other popular titles, your team needs to hold a higher player count within a certain area and you will cap the base. The state of the cap will be presented by a flag with your or the enemies team color.
Our maps are not very balanced for this type of game mode so one of the biggest challenges this update will be to update the maps to support "bases". First out is the Subway-map, the city part of the map will get a new building with internals. The entire building plus the alley and street outside will count as cap area and should create interesting fire fights. When creating multiplayer maps you always want to minimize the risk of choke points, or if choke points are part of the design you want to have educated design around were these will happen. Our building has two floors above ground level. You get to them by a stair case. Instead of making one stair case we made two, one accessed from the back alley and one from the side alley. This will create interesting scenarios were the capping/holding team must defend both alleyways and stair cases to succeed in holding the building and flag.
Update 6 Weapons!
Hey guys!
It's time for another update of Virtual Warfighter! This time around we bring you two new weapons in the form of a compact SMG and a combat shotgun! Slap releasing the action on the SMG makes you feel as bad ass as John McClane in Die Hard!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zipzCI-2zHE
We have also started working on the player base as promised, the first step for this is a new store trailer that reflects the current state of the game better. We think our chances of Steam letting us have a free weekend are a lot higher if we really show that VWF is one of the top players when it comes to physical interaction.
The new trailer can be seen in full here in 1080p@60hz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiZi1o_AtTU
