More Backend Work and Visual Effects

February 1st. How did that happen?! As usual, the time is flying by, but that's life in the fast lane, I guess. Thankfully, we have made some good headway since the last update.

Multiple Game Modes

Work on the back-end continues. We're trying to make this game playable (and fun) in VR and also without VR. One thing we discovered is that the "epic/cinematic" camera mode we're using in VR also looks really cool without VR. And we also learned that some people still get dizzy even with slow camera movements. So, we've decided to offer multiple camera modes in both VR and non-VR modes. This has meant a lot of time to make the game code aware of what the heck it's dealing with (VR headset? Monitor? Game controller? VR touch controller? Keyboard and mouse?...) There are a ton of moving parts, but this stuff has to be dealt with up-front or we'll have a huge mess on our hands later.

One cool thing we landed on was a cursor design for when in non-VR mode so you know what objects are interactive. We didn't want a cross-hair style reticle, and then we realized (Logan's suggestion iirc) we could use the Lifeless Moon logo. Notice how it changes when you roll over an interactive object:

      

Visual Effects Work

It's always hard to show progress without some sense of mild spoilers. Without too much discussion here, let me say we are working on some interesting visual effects for the game. They're proving challenging, but that's because we're doing something new and I'm excited at how this will pan out. Here's an early test render of one of the animated models we're working on:

 
Thanks as always for your support and especially for your patience! We're stretched thin most days but rest assured we're working hard to bring this project to life.

Thanks again,
Dave & the Stage 2 Team