Honor and Duty PSVR update

Now that the VR update has passed QA, I wanted to spend a little time talking about the update. First of all, the update takes the existing game and adds support for the PSVR as well as the aim controller. The single player game is the same as well as online multiplayer. Multiplayer is mixed in that VR players as well as non VR players can play together. Part of the reasoning for this is that the game has been out for a year and a half and the multiplayer community is still pretty small. Segregating the players by VR would further reduce the amount of games available.

I want everyone to remember that VR was added to an existing game never designed for VR so it was quite a challenge to make it happen.  Although the core gameplay should be fine, there are a lot of areas that are not as polished as games built for VR from the ground up. The initial challenge was altering the game to conform to Sony’s VR requirements. This meant slowing the default movement speed down, implementing snap turning, removing the ability to jump, and making crouching instantaneous. The second challenge was getting the performance up so that VR mode was smooth. In order to achieve this, we had to remove some items.  Here’s a list of things missing in VR mode:

1) Green outline around objectives – This was a huge frame rate killer and had to go. This is only used in a few places to highlight an objective.
2) Mini map – This was another big frame rate killer. We’re using some middleware for this and it was not practical to fix.
3) Terrain – Grass and trees were removed as they were costly to render.
4) Rocks – The rocks in the Canyon level were combined with Mesh Baker which combined their textures so some of the rocks have lost their detail.
5) Warehouse decorations – The Warehouse level lost some of it’s decoration items such as lamps, electrical boxes, etc.. This level was a challenge and removing some unnecessary decorations like tanks in the background helped improve it.

As far as the VR gameplay goes, movement is just like in the regular game so there’s no teleporting. You can choose to move in the direction you’re looking (default) or to move in the traditional sense. The best way to describe this is with the default setting, turning your head to look over your left shoulder turns the player to face that direction. Pushing forward will now move in that direction. If you turn this off and look to your left, the player is still facing the same direction so moving forward will not be where you’re looking. Jumping had to be removed in VR mode per Sony’s requirement as it was causing discomfort for their testers.  This will only be an issue in one multiplayer map where non VR players can jump up and get on top of buildings in the warehouse level. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much we could do without going back and reworking the level to make some ramps and such. This isn’t all that hard but everything little thing like this adds more days before it can release and this wasn’t deemed worth holding up the game.

Snap turn is enabled by default but can be turned off.  The initial movement speed is slow but can be turned up in the VR options. We’ve created an ability to quickly turn in the direction the gun is pointing called “Auto Turn” and there are some settings in the VR options to tune this. If you hold down the left trigger and point the gun off center, the player will automatically rotate to align with the gun. This can be useful for quickly turning but takes a little getting used to.  You have to move the gun back to center as you start rotating or otherwise you’ll rotate past the point you were aiming at. I’ll be very interested to hear feedback on this one.

Although I often say “we”, Strange Games is pretty much a 1 person studio that uses contractors at times.  “We” an “I” are pretty much the same right now. I say this so people understand this game was created by a very small studio. When I started the VR update, it was mainly just to add VR support to the game but I’ve been floored by how much interest and excitement it’s created. I’m truly grateful for everyone who’s helped spread the word and get interest up for this update. I’m just worried about expectations and hope people don’t expect too much for the initial launch. I’ll be looking for feedback and will issue an update to fix or tweak things to try and work out any issues. One problem for small studios is that we can’t release betas and don’t have resources to setup 10 PS4s with VR gear to do thorough testing.  It was a challenge to even get people to help test the original release with PC builds. With that being said, I think SP plays great and I think MP will play good too but I’ve just had to guess at settings and such.  My biggest fear is that there’s something obvious that has just been missed and may cause problems.  When you work on a game for such a long period, you may overlook something for so long that you forgot you were planning to fix it later.  There are also other issues that just don’t come up when you’re testing with a few players.  I believe there’s now an option where I can rush a patch out so if that comes up, just be patient and we’ll try to get a fix out quickly.

With all the interest in VR, we’re now planning a sequel built for VR from the ground up. We’ll incorporate what we’ve learned so far as well as H&D feedback into this new game. It’s already in the works and there will be a formal announcement in the next month!