Preparing For Demo Update

Week ago we launched a free demo of Planetrism VR, and it has been downloaded more than 1000 times now. Planetrism followers had been asking for months something they could feel the experience of exoplanets themselves. This was the main reason for releasing this demo. Final game is still far ahead in the future, and many parts of the game core are not implemented yet. So, this demo is just a sample of Planetrism environment and some basic interactions, and you can experience what it feels to be on an exoplanet.

Right now, we are preparing an update for the first demo. There will be some minor fixes to some problems and it should be more stable now. Instability appeared a week before launch, and seemed to be caused by sound system somehow. After launch we had more time to investigate and test this issues, and we tweaked the sound system. Unreal Engine 4.18.2 update was also released this week, and after these two there seems to be no crashes anymore, at least on our test machines.

Movement speed in first demo was intentionally slowed down from normal speed. Normally player walks and runs a bit faster, and he can jump higher too, as you can see in gameplay videos we have published. Forthcoming update will put movement speed back to normal. There will be some tweaks in default locomotion, too. In the first demo player could walk when you just extend your hand a little. Extending a hand fully meant running. In the update we will shorten this dynamic movement speed range, meaning that player does not have to fully extend his hand in order to run. But we also like to point out, that there is no need to run constantly. Anyway, player cannot run all the time at full speed due to energy loss (see below)

There will be another locomotion system too, and it will be based on touchpad or stick. It is basically the same as default locomotion, but player controls the movement with touchpad or stick. You can move forward, backward and sideways relative to where you are looking. Just like in default movement, player has to really turn, if he wants to turn somewhere. This is and will be a room scale game, and we do not support sitting style of play. Our long term goal is towards realistic VR where player torso and feet are tracked too, and all your movement is interpreted into virtual movement.

Walking upwards (climbing) and jumping will be left as it is, and it will be similar in both locomotion options. Currently, player can walk upwards by pointing upwards (and pressing movement button) in sufficient angle. To jump, player should swing his controller (when pressing movement button) quickly up and forwards, and keep it there to control the length and height of jump.

Players should also understand that this is a RPG and there is a complex character system beneath the hood. When player moves, he will lose energy. Harder the movement, more energy will be spent. So, if player runs, climbs and jumps constantly, he will get exhausted. Energy level, as well as health level affect player’s maximum movement speed. If player is exhausted and injured, he will just crawl ahead. Player can get energy back when he rests. Just being relatively still, will restore energy at certain rate. Another option is drinking and eating, which is mandatory anyway, since player will also get hungry and thirsty. There are also some booster drugs, but their constant use may have unfortunate side effects. Healing from injuries will take time, there is and will not be some totally unrealistic miracle health packs scattered everywhere that will replenish your health in a second. As said, this is a RPG, not a FPS game.

We will also activate snap points in appropriate items. Player can still grab item any way he wants, but if joy grab it at snap point, then the item is immediately fused to your hand in appropriate way. Actually there were already these snap points in items, but their use just was not activated yet, except when you take your gun from your back.

Demo update will contain some other improvements. We made wrist UI bigger, since some players had trouble using it. There are now even more options in config section of wrist UI, like different anti-aliasing options, and we urge user to experiment with them to get as smooth performance as you want. For Vive users we suggest putting supersampling a bit higher, if you have a high end graphics card. 150% resolution scale makes game look much sharper, and it is easier to read e.g. wrist UI. Oculus has by default a sharper image, sot this is not mandatory.

It seems that some players did get this running reasonably well on GTX 970. It was also interesting to hear a report, that showed Planetrism working on Windows Mixed Reality headset. Due to our limited resources (two developer with no funding) we really had no means to check how Planetrism could perform on WMR platform. Now that it seems possible, we will look this option further. It is possible that we could support WMR platform, too. Unfortunately, Unreal Engine 4.18 branch has currently a problem with ghost images in WMR, and we hope that Epic will fix it soon.

Hopefully we also have time to publish more extensive background material on Planetrism universe this month. It should give players a better understanding what this game is about.