It’s been a week since we’ve launched on Early Access and things are already HOT! We count ourselves lucky that we have a very positive community growing on our official Discord. The conversations there have been a great mix of feedback and suggestions from both gamers and real life competitive shooters.
With the help of last week’s survey on the Discord, our priorities are pretty clear. First, we have to get controls right for everyone. Second, we need to tackle performance. Obviously, both of these are issues that don’t affect every shooter, but we don’t want to leave anyone behind. Then, the fun part, CONTENT! The demand for a Course Editor is clear, and we’ll be picking that back up as soon as possible, but some groundwork needs to be laid. The Course Editor will definitely be our longest-term effort, based on what’s on our plate right now, so we ask for a little patience to get it right.
Controller support has been a serious challenge. It’s been a mix of hot fixing what we have so more people can play and give us feedback, as well as a longer term rewrite. Controllers without joysticks (Vive and some WMR) are particularly tough to manage as we need a certain minimum number of inputs to maintain the interactivity with the guns and allow the courses to be playable. So, we’re rewriting the system, exposing more options to players, and continuing to tune touchpad inputs as best we can. This effort might take a couple/few weeks, but we’ll continue to put quick fixes in where we can. Movement options for left handed shooters should be coming in this week’s update.
A note on WMR, there isn't really an option to handle WMR input without having WMR hardware on hand. There's a simulator for the standard WMR controller, but outside of that there's not a whole lot we can do until we acquire relevant hardware. OpenXR might solve this sooner, but we'll have to try out upgrading Unity version to use that, which of course has the potential to break other things, so, testing, testing, and more testing.
Performance will always be an ongoing problem as we make new content, but we’ve identified a couple major offenders and are tackling one big one this week. The level environments. They are consuming too many resources and we are actively attempting different tools and approaches to see how much we can reduce their consumption. Sadly, do not expect an immediate change this week on this. We'll keep you guys updated as this progresses.
Our feedback has identified a few issues with our UI such as usability and comfort, so this effort will be a little bigger, and will be an iterative process over the coming weeks.
We’re having a lot of fun with the Aerial Clays Practice range, and are adding a new gun to really sell the experience. It feels weird to be busting clays with a 8+1 capacity shotgun with a big ol’ mag tube hanging off the front, so a new over/under break-action shotgun is in the works. It’s something we really want to have to bring the upcoming Trap and Skeet modes to life in a way that invites more shooters to our game.
Speaking of new game modes, the survey has spoken and we’re going to tackle new modes sooner rather than later. We’ll be leaning on the Discord group heavily as the 120 page rule book for USPSA is a bit daunting, but hopefully with your help, we can get a first course up and running and then flesh out the massive list of options after we get one nailed down. While most of the tasks detailed above can be handled by one team member putting their nose to the grindstone, this USPSA mode will be both a team AND community effort.
We also need to lay some groundwork for loadouts. We’re not going to have a ton of options right away, but we need some way to set up and configure the new offset red dot! We’re expecting this to dramatically increase usability in shorter range rifle scenarios such as inside the Shoot House B&B.
Some new assets are in the works inspired by a certain tactical training school known for training a certain Hollywood action star on gun handling for a certain series of movies loved by shooters and gamers alike. We’re also going to use this opportunity to design a course that is shorter and more stationary than the courses that involve a lot of movement. Dog Avengers, make ready!
I plan on keeping this S.O.T.G. a weekly feature on our Steam page. We really do want this game to be a community driven experience, and so far, it seems to be working. We’re also planning a Developer Stream for this Friday 3/19/21 @ 5:00pm Mountain Time on the Discord, we hope you’ll join and make fun of our terrible shooting.
Finally, I wanted to thank everyone for giving our game, and our team, a chance. Your feedback and suggestions have been invaluable in guiding our decision making process. To that end, there will be another survey coming soon specifically asking about courses and their design in Range is HOT!
Thanks,
12 Gauge Savior