A name carries power in the world of games. It often sets the tone of a piece, determines just how many puns RPS can get out of it before having to play it straight, and (in some less fortunate cases) may invite legal eagles to peck out a developer’s eyes. The game formerly known
A name carries power in the world of games. It often sets the tone of a piece, determines just how many puns RPS can get out of it before having to play it straight, and (in some less fortunate cases) may invite legal eagles to peck out a developer’s eyes.
The game formerly known as Spellbound – a magical school-life RPG from Starbound developers and publisher Chucklefish – is now officially known as Witchbrook. A simple ward that should protect the game from the howling mass of brand-enforcement gremlins most likely already clawing at the studio’s windows.
OH! Just before the weekend Chucklefish CEO, Finn Brice (Chucklefish being the publishers of Stardew Valley but ALSO devs of their own games including Starbound ) popped up a teaser image for their magic school RPG/sim project. It’s been described by Brice in the past as “somethi
OH! Just before the weekend Chucklefish CEO, Finn Brice (Chucklefish being the publishers of Stardew Valley but ALSO devs of their own games including Starbound) popped up a teaser image for their magic school RPG/sim project. It’s been described by Brice in the past as “something like Stardew Valley meets Harry Potter” and this image is reminding me of any number of nice sims I used to play on Nintendo handheld consoles… (more…)
-Fixed a critical bug with the Oculus Rift which caused the display to go black in the prelude level. I'm really sorry about this one, I assumed that everything was good to go on both hardware platforms when I could successfully play in editor on both rift and vive, and tested th
-Fixed a critical bug with the Oculus Rift which caused the display to go black in the prelude level. I'm really sorry about this one, I assumed that everything was good to go on both hardware platforms when I could successfully play in editor on both rift and vive, and tested the final build with the vive, assuming it would be exactly the same on rift. I've since revised my QA process to be more rigorous to avoid future embarrassments.
Fireball spell has been balanced out a bit. I felt it was too over powered and you could just nuke a large region by charging a fireball in both hands for 10 seconds.
-Fireball cooldown has been decreased from 0.5s to 0.3s; You can throw them faster!
-Fireball AOE has been decreased by 50%.
-Fireball max charge has been increased from 10 seconds to 20 seconds, which means they get powerful slower.
-Zombies can explode into gooey bits if you hit them with a powerful fireball. They also have a new impact resistance threshold which decreases as they take more damage, causing them to be more likely to explode when they're near death.
-Fireball impact force has been increased by 25%, causing them to get more explosive. This makes zombies more likely to explode if you hit them with a well placed fireball.
-The fireball flames visual effect threshold has been moved up from 2 damage to 4 damage. This is purely aesthetic, but should help increase performance slightly when you are lobbing lots of fireballs.
-Fixed a critical bug with the Oculus Rift which caused the display to go black in the prelude level. I'm really sorry about this one, I assumed that everything was good to go on both hardware platforms when I could successfully play in editor on both rift and vive, and tested th
-Fixed a critical bug with the Oculus Rift which caused the display to go black in the prelude level. I'm really sorry about this one, I assumed that everything was good to go on both hardware platforms when I could successfully play in editor on both rift and vive, and tested the final build with the vive, assuming it would be exactly the same on rift. I've since revised my QA process to be more rigorous to avoid future embarrassments.
Fireball spell has been balanced out a bit. I felt it was too over powered and you could just nuke a large region by charging a fireball in both hands for 10 seconds.
-Fireball cooldown has been decreased from 0.5s to 0.3s; You can throw them faster!
-Fireball AOE has been decreased by 50%.
-Fireball max charge has been increased from 10 seconds to 20 seconds, which means they get powerful slower.
-Zombies can explode into gooey bits if you hit them with a powerful fireball. They also have a new impact resistance threshold which decreases as they take more damage, causing them to be more likely to explode when they're near death.
-Fireball impact force has been increased by 25%, causing them to get more explosive. This makes zombies more likely to explode if you hit them with a well placed fireball.
-The fireball flames visual effect threshold has been moved up from 2 damage to 4 damage. This is purely aesthetic, but should help increase performance slightly when you are lobbing lots of fireballs.
Patch Notes: * Upgraded Spellbound from Unreal Engine 4.13 to 4.15.2. This brings a lot of improvements to performance and lighting. You may notice that the lighting looks a little darker and brighter in different parts of the game. * I figured out a new way to migrate only the g
Patch Notes:
* Upgraded Spellbound from Unreal Engine 4.13 to 4.15.2. This brings a lot of improvements to performance and lighting. You may notice that the lighting looks a little darker and brighter in different parts of the game.
* I figured out a new way to migrate only the game assets I'm currently using in the levels. This means that the package size has been reduced from 9.8gb to 3.3gb.
* Fullscreen monitor display: I found a way to display the game play in fullscreen on a monitor. This will help anyone trying to capture gameplay video, stream the game, or otherwise present the game to external viewers. I have experienced a video card crash with an NVidia 970 while recording gameplay.
* Bug fix: Casting the arcane missiles could cause a game crash if it targeted an invalid creature.
Patch Notes: * Upgraded Spellbound from Unreal Engine 4.13 to 4.15.2. This brings a lot of improvements to performance and lighting. You may notice that the lighting looks a little darker and brighter in different parts of the game. * I figured out a new way to migrate only the g
Patch Notes:
* Upgraded Spellbound from Unreal Engine 4.13 to 4.15.2. This brings a lot of improvements to performance and lighting. You may notice that the lighting looks a little darker and brighter in different parts of the game.
* I figured out a new way to migrate only the game assets I'm currently using in the levels. This means that the package size has been reduced from 9.8gb to 3.3gb.
* Fullscreen monitor display: I found a way to display the game play in fullscreen on a monitor. This will help anyone trying to capture gameplay video, stream the game, or otherwise present the game to external viewers. I have experienced a video card crash with an NVidia 970 while recording gameplay.
* Bug fix: Casting the arcane missiles could cause a game crash if it targeted an invalid creature.
UPDATE: The story telling system has been overhauled to reflect how I envisioned it. Now, you pull a book off of the shelf and read it, and then enter into the storybook world. After you complete the level, you return to the story and conclude it. This completes the narrative gam
UPDATE: The story telling system has been overhauled to reflect how I envisioned it. Now, you pull a book off of the shelf and read it, and then enter into the storybook world. After you complete the level, you return to the story and conclude it. This completes the narrative game loop, so now we have a nice beginning, middle and end, and we're now staged and ready to begin the next story in the series.
UPDATE: Player profiles have been added on the backend. For now, you play with the default profile, but eventually you'll be able to customize settings and properties to get the best play experience.
UPDATE: The pickup system is being overhauled. Though you can't see it in action yet, you can now telepathically collect pickups by pointing at them. There are no pickups in the prelude level aside from spells. This object interation system will be pretty important for the next content.
UPDATE: The wraith projectile visual effect has been polished.
UPDATE: The prelude level has a cave system tucked away
UPDATE: You can now calibrate your height in the library world (press the right thumbpad).
FIX: Zombie AI was getting stuck in an idle behavior pattern some rare cases. This has been fixed.
FIX: Zombie AI was not navigating around walls because the navmesh was not recognizing them as blocking objects.
FIX: Seeking for the homing system has been improved. This makes the arcane missile slightly improved.
To be totally honest, I really don't keep track of every little thing I fix. One of the things I'm going to be trying to figure out in the next update is how to record full screen 16:9 video of a VR game. This is necessary for creating a better game play trailer and will help anyone trying to create youtube videos or twitch streams of gameplay. The other focus will be to complete the content for the Prelude chapter so that I can move forward and resume building the content for Book 1.
UPCOMING NEWS:
-Leap motion has been kind enough to give me early access to a new build of the new Leap Motion plugin. I'm going to start digging into this in the following weeks. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle locomotion yet.
UPDATE: The story telling system has been overhauled to reflect how I envisioned it. Now, you pull a book off of the shelf and read it, and then enter into the storybook world. After you complete the level, you return to the story and conclude it. This completes the narrative gam
UPDATE: The story telling system has been overhauled to reflect how I envisioned it. Now, you pull a book off of the shelf and read it, and then enter into the storybook world. After you complete the level, you return to the story and conclude it. This completes the narrative game loop, so now we have a nice beginning, middle and end, and we're now staged and ready to begin the next story in the series.
UPDATE: Player profiles have been added on the backend. For now, you play with the default profile, but eventually you'll be able to customize settings and properties to get the best play experience.
UPDATE: The pickup system is being overhauled. Though you can't see it in action yet, you can now telepathically collect pickups by pointing at them. There are no pickups in the prelude level aside from spells. This object interation system will be pretty important for the next content.
UPDATE: The wraith projectile visual effect has been polished.
UPDATE: The prelude level has a cave system tucked away
UPDATE: You can now calibrate your height in the library world (press the right thumbpad).
FIX: Zombie AI was getting stuck in an idle behavior pattern some rare cases. This has been fixed.
FIX: Zombie AI was not navigating around walls because the navmesh was not recognizing them as blocking objects.
FIX: Seeking for the homing system has been improved. This makes the arcane missile slightly improved.
To be totally honest, I really don't keep track of every little thing I fix. One of the things I'm going to be trying to figure out in the next update is how to record full screen 16:9 video of a VR game. This is necessary for creating a better game play trailer and will help anyone trying to create youtube videos or twitch streams of gameplay. The other focus will be to complete the content for the Prelude chapter so that I can move forward and resume building the content for Book 1.
UPCOMING NEWS:
-Leap motion has been kind enough to give me early access to a new build of the new Leap Motion plugin. I'm going to start digging into this in the following weeks. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle locomotion yet.
This is a huge update and is one step closer towards my vision for how VR should be. This update contains hundreds of changes, big and small. I stopped keeping track of the specific changes, but I'll do my best to describe what has changed: NEW: The way characters are controlled
This is a huge update and is one step closer towards my vision for how VR should be. This update contains hundreds of changes, big and small. I stopped keeping track of the specific changes, but I'll do my best to describe what has changed:
NEW: The way characters are controlled has been completely redesigned and rewriten. This is the biggest change, which took a really long time to work out. Now, instead of controlling a character directly, you are a ghost which can possess a character. You control the ghost, and the ghost controls the character. This means that in the future, you'll be able to switch to and control other characters at any time. This also means that adding support for additional VR hardware platforms will be a lot faster and require no reconfiguration (I just swap HDMI cables). This also means that it will be a lot easier to support observers, mixed reality, different game modes, and multiplayer in the future. If I did my job right, you won't notice any difference ;)
NEW: Support for Oculus Rift + Oculus Touch
NEW: The wizards hands can close and open. If you have Oculus Touch, you have touch sensitive per-finger gesture controls. It's just aesthetic for now, but will become useful later.
NEW: The title world now has illustrations to complement the narrative story. You can also click the illustrations to speed through it. This is a placeholder while we wait for additional artwork.
UPDATE: The game has been updated to support Unreal Engine 4.13. This brings a slew of backend updates, capabilities, and small performance updates.
UPDATE: You can now turn your head and look over your shoulder.
UPDATE: You can now crouch. This also shrinks your collision profile proportionately, meaning you can duck under overhangs or hide behind walls. The wizards knees also bend down to match your position, creating slightly better body presence via mirroring.
UPDATE: You can now have a different spell in each hand -- by design. To fully support this design change, I had to change the spell selection and spell targeting system. To target a creature with a spell, you point your hand at it. This also means we're one step closer to combining elements to get new spell effects :)
UPDATE: The wizards endurance has been increased from 3.0 seconds to 8.0 seconds. This means he can run for a longer period of time before getting tired. This also means players may get motion sick faster, so use care. Note: To run, move your hands up and down as if you are jogging.
UPDATE: The book summaries in the title world have been removed (for now). It's a redundant step.
UPDATE: Sparklers have been added to the title world to help attract new players attention to points of interest
UPDATE: Some really dark parts of the prelude level have better lighting.
UPDATE: Added more destructible brambles to the beginning stage of the prelude
UPDATE: The AI for zombies and wraiths has been completely rewritten. This fixes some small AI glitches and increases their performance considerably.
UPDATE: The "Crawler" zombie and "walking" zombie have been combined. Same behavior and attributes, different body and collision profiles.
UPDATE: I can now find player torso orientation to within a very small margin of error (~5 degrees?) based off of motion controller and HMD locations.
UPDATE: The "Spell Orbs" have been changed to have a new aesthetic appearance. This is more inline with the idea that they are not "Spells", but "elements" which create various spell types.
UPDATE: Rather than using the "look down" gaze select for spell elements, you now press the thumb pad on the Vive / thumbstick on Oculus Touch, and move your hand into the element you want to select for that hand. I suspect that this user interface change will frustrate a lot of people, so it may end up being a preference setting. Please tell me what you think.
UPDATE: Wizard movement speeds have been increased very slightly.
BUG FIX: Wraith projectiles glitch far less. A wraith which died while charging a spell would leave behind it's spell.
Overall, this update is a significant *technical* update which adds support for multiple hardware platforms and brings additional VR capabilities and improves the existing input capabilities. There will be a lot of rapid updates to fix minor problems and add performance improvements.
In the next update, my focus will shift away from adding hardware support and technical improvements and building out content and adapt to feedback and input from you and the community. A few feature requests have been requested and implemented, but I still have polishing and updating to do before it goes live. Tentatively, we'll be having faster update cycles for the non-technical updates. I look forward to hearing everyones feedback!
-Eric Nevala
This is a huge update and is one step closer towards my vision for how VR should be. This update contains hundreds of changes, big and small. I stopped keeping track of the specific changes, but I'll do my best to describe what has changed: NEW: The way characters are controlled
This is a huge update and is one step closer towards my vision for how VR should be. This update contains hundreds of changes, big and small. I stopped keeping track of the specific changes, but I'll do my best to describe what has changed:
NEW: The way characters are controlled has been completely redesigned and rewriten. This is the biggest change, which took a really long time to work out. Now, instead of controlling a character directly, you are a ghost which can possess a character. You control the ghost, and the ghost controls the character. This means that in the future, you'll be able to switch to and control other characters at any time. This also means that adding support for additional VR hardware platforms will be a lot faster and require no reconfiguration (I just swap HDMI cables). This also means that it will be a lot easier to support observers, mixed reality, different game modes, and multiplayer in the future. If I did my job right, you won't notice any difference ;)
NEW: Support for Oculus Rift + Oculus Touch
NEW: The wizards hands can close and open. If you have Oculus Touch, you have touch sensitive per-finger gesture controls. It's just aesthetic for now, but will become useful later.
NEW: The title world now has illustrations to complement the narrative story. You can also click the illustrations to speed through it. This is a placeholder while we wait for additional artwork.
UPDATE: The game has been updated to support Unreal Engine 4.13. This brings a slew of backend updates, capabilities, and small performance updates.
UPDATE: You can now turn your head and look over your shoulder.
UPDATE: You can now crouch. This also shrinks your collision profile proportionately, meaning you can duck under overhangs or hide behind walls. The wizards knees also bend down to match your position, creating slightly better body presence via mirroring.
UPDATE: You can now have a different spell in each hand -- by design. To fully support this design change, I had to change the spell selection and spell targeting system. To target a creature with a spell, you point your hand at it. This also means we're one step closer to combining elements to get new spell effects :)
UPDATE: The wizards endurance has been increased from 3.0 seconds to 8.0 seconds. This means he can run for a longer period of time before getting tired. This also means players may get motion sick faster, so use care. Note: To run, move your hands up and down as if you are jogging.
UPDATE: The book summaries in the title world have been removed (for now). It's a redundant step.
UPDATE: Sparklers have been added to the title world to help attract new players attention to points of interest
UPDATE: Some really dark parts of the prelude level have better lighting.
UPDATE: Added more destructible brambles to the beginning stage of the prelude
UPDATE: The AI for zombies and wraiths has been completely rewritten. This fixes some small AI glitches and increases their performance considerably.
UPDATE: The "Crawler" zombie and "walking" zombie have been combined. Same behavior and attributes, different body and collision profiles.
UPDATE: I can now find player torso orientation to within a very small margin of error (~5 degrees?) based off of motion controller and HMD locations.
UPDATE: The "Spell Orbs" have been changed to have a new aesthetic appearance. This is more inline with the idea that they are not "Spells", but "elements" which create various spell types.
UPDATE: Rather than using the "look down" gaze select for spell elements, you now press the thumb pad on the Vive / thumbstick on Oculus Touch, and move your hand into the element you want to select for that hand. I suspect that this user interface change will frustrate a lot of people, so it may end up being a preference setting. Please tell me what you think.
UPDATE: Wizard movement speeds have been increased very slightly.
BUG FIX: Wraith projectiles glitch far less. A wraith which died while charging a spell would leave behind it's spell.
Overall, this update is a significant *technical* update which adds support for multiple hardware platforms and brings additional VR capabilities and improves the existing input capabilities. There will be a lot of rapid updates to fix minor problems and add performance improvements.
In the next update, my focus will shift away from adding hardware support and technical improvements and building out content and adapt to feedback and input from you and the community. A few feature requests have been requested and implemented, but I still have polishing and updating to do before it goes live. Tentatively, we'll be having faster update cycles for the non-technical updates. I look forward to hearing everyones feedback!
-Eric Nevala
