VR support enabled and price change
For the last three weeks I’ve been taking some time off from developing on Caretaker – spending it mostly in Florida. While there I decided that the time had come to enable the VR support in Caretaker. If you played Caretaker while it was being shown at any events, then chances a
For the last three weeks I’ve been taking some time off from developing on Caretaker – spending it mostly in Florida. While there I decided that the time had come to enable the VR support in Caretaker.
If you played Caretaker while it was being shown at any events, then chances are you played it in VR but for the Early Access release I turned off VR while I waited for Unity 5.4 to be released and now it’s finally here and supports VR natively it was time to turn it back on – so I have.
As of today you can play Caretaker if you have an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive VR headset. The Vive support is a work-in-progress as I’ve not had an opportunity to fully test it out but some have told me it’s working fine for them.
As this is a fairly major update the price of Caretaker will be raising too, I’ve asked Valve to raise it to $9.99 – it’s up to them to approve this price point so it’s in their hands at the moment. It hasn’t happened as of me writing this so if you want to get a copy while it’s still at the reduced price I suggest you do so now. Once at $9.99 it will stay there for a while until the next major release.
If you have a VR kit attached to your computer when you launch Caretaker than it will automatically detect it and alter the settings to use it. This means it will disable the mouse and keyboard input and use joypad only. You still need to press ‘A’ on your keyboard to get passed the initial Early Access warning screen.
The joypad controls have changed slightly in VR, the right analog stick controls vertical movement and rotation around ‘Y’ so that you can look behind you if you are sat while playing Caretaker in VR. My preferred way of playing it is stood up so that I can physically turn around to see things (a much more immersive experience) but if you’re not that experienced in VR I recommend you sit down to play it first. The roll controls are disabled while in VR, the main reason being having the camera roll while in VR is the quickest way to make you throw up – trust me on this, I found that out the hard way!
If you have a VR headset, then give it a go with Caretaker and let me know what you think. As always I accept and value your feedback!