Hey everyone - welcome to dev log 47!
Update 0.8 has only just splash landed last week bringing in new levels, cosmetics, and more! Today, we are looking into the future and to an upcoming feature that is one of the most requested we've had during Early Access.
'Aim Mode' - Fixed Perspective Washing
One of the unique challenges we have had for the game is overcoming motion sickness which affects some players and can be a complete blocker to playing! Part of that is due to how so far the motion of washing has been tied to moving the camera. Whilst we have put in small tweaks to help and many players have adapted the way they wash we knew we could do more.
Say hello to the Aim Mode which will bring a form of fixed perspective washing to the game. When toggling this mode on by the press of a button, your washer will move independently of your camera. Currently, your view only turns if your crosshair reaches the edge of your screen. This wash mode is totally optional and you can go back to the normal washing mode fixed to your camera/movement at any time.
Please note this is still very much a WIP and will come in a future update. It is not in 0.8. We're now certain it will come to the game and have made it integrated into the main control scheme but it still needs some work.
Here are some insights into the development and design of Aim Mode from programmer Louis:
Always looking to improve on accessibility features and reduce motion sickness in PowerWash, we've been wanting to implement Aim Mode for a while! Working closely with the design team, we settled on building a system that would lock the camera rotation and seamlessly blend player input from the camera rig into the character model, to allow players to swap in and out of Aim Mode on the fly. With a lot of the foundation already laid thanks to the work on our new camera rig for implementing custom FOV options, the majority of efforts went into improving the stability of the washer visuals and water VFX rendering to reach all possible angles when in Aim Mode. We also overhauled the crosshair UI to dynamically target washable surfaces that can be focused on when in Aim Mode, to give players that extra bit of precision when washing those hard-to-reach spots (or to help put the finishing touches on some dirt drawings…) We're super pleased with Aim Mode, it further improves accessibility for the players who need it, and has the added bonus of giving players the tools to clean with more precision and more creativity. It's also a fab way of appreciating the amazing glove and washer cosmetics from some brand new angles. It's my new favourite way to play, and I hope the community will love it too :D happy washing!
We'd also like to thank everyone who filled out our motion sickness feedback form, it gave us some really useful insights into what is working, what we could do better, and suggestions like those for this very feature!
More info on that here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1290000/announcements/detail/3132818923050869740
As Louis mentions, not only do we hope it will help with accessibility but also it adds a new way to play which many of the devs in internal play sessions have said they now prefer. Also, we will be looking forward to the art that can be created when the perspective isn't warped as much by moving away from your wash target.
Again, it isn't ready just yet but we really wanted to let everyone know it was coming, especially to those that are affected by motion sickness! Let us know your thoughts below.
Wellbeing Study
Inspired by anecdotes of wellbeing from PWS players through Steam reviews and comments. We've partnered with the Oxford Internet Institute (OII: a department in the University of Oxford,) to better understand the implications of the game. We've also hired a dedicated programmer to help conduct the study and to feedback recommendations of how we could potentially make the game better.
The full MCV/DEVELOP article is here with interview snippets from the FuturLab director and OII researcher working on the project.
Weekly PowerWash Meme
We release a format of a popular meme template using PowerWash Simulator models every Monday at 2 PM GMT, this is our latest one - Tap Mask.
Let us know if there are any formats you would like to see created! :)
Weekly Dev Stream
Our weekly Twitch stream or FuturLab Friday will be canceled this week. However, we will be back next week where we'll show this new washing system in action! :)
That's All Folks!
Thanks to everyone for reading, we hope everyone is excited about the new 'Aim Mode' feature and we can't wait for those to have suffered from motion sickness to try it. We'll be back next week with more dev insights so watch this space! :)
Join our Discord to submit and vote on ideas for PowerWash Simulator, find other players, and more!
---> https://discord.com/invite/powerwashsimulator
Keep up with everything PowerWash Simulator by following our channels:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PowerWashSim
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PWS Wiki: https://powerwash-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/PowerWash_Simulator_Wiki