New Betatest Branch
Added a new branch to the game, the public_betatest branch. This build will get updates more often, but its going to be less stable than the main branch. Once the new things are stable, they will get added to the main branch.
Graphics and performance
It contains a build of the game using NVidia VRWorks for multiresolution. If you are on an AMD card, you wont get anything new, but if you are in a nvidia 970GTX or newer, you have access to multires.
Multires is a hardware optimization for VR(AMD hasnt done that yet) that renders the center of the eye with more resolution, and the edges with less. It allows for BIG performance improvements ( up to 40% ).
Right now, there is no in-game configuration (is being worked on for the release on the main version of the game), so you have to configure it by console commands.
You can open the console by pressing the "`" key. If you dont have an english keyboard, search for UE4 open console key on google and try to find wich one its for your keyboard. The important commands are these:
- "vr.MultiResRendering 2" Sets multiresolution to level 2. Pretty much invisible, but it allows much higher performance over normal. It can be set to 3 for an aggresive mode wich gives more performance at the expense of pixellation on the borders, or to 0 to disable it. Sorry AMD users, this wont do anything for you.
- "r.ScreenPercentage 130" for the scale of the resolution, the default its 130 . If you have a worse gpu than a 970, you can try decreasing it for extra performance at the cost of pixellation. If you enable multiresolution, you can bump it to 200 easily, increasing the resolution of the game and improving the image quality by a lot. With multiresolution to 3 you can bump it to 250, but then you have lower quality at the borders, feel free to tweak to find your sweet spot with your PC. This also works on AMD cards, so if you have a strong GPU, feel free to try different values for improved image quality.
In general, temporal antialiasing has been removed, it was using too much power for little benefit. This leads to increased performance overall, so you can bump the resolution of the game if you want better image. In a AMD with similar power to a 970 you should be able to bump it to 170 from its 130 default.
If you have an AMD card, PLEASE post your performance and if you had problems or regressions with the main branch version. We dont have a PC with an AMD card, so we cant test if it breaks the game for AMD people.
Leaderboards
In the test branch, leaderboards have been implemented for the Drone Assault game, as its the most stable game. The leaderboards cant be seen in-game yet, but you can see the leaderboards in steam itself http://steamcommunity.com/stats/500360/leaderboards/1396090/
They are only for the drone game, becouse that one is simple and competitive, wich makes it a good choice for the first to get leaderboards. All scores will be updated automatically.
Oculus and multiplayer
We are getting Oculus Touch devkits. And that means 2 things. First, we will add complete support for Oculus Touch; And second, now we have 3 headsets, so we can implement MULTIPLAYER.
Given that now we have more headsets than a single Vive, we will start implementation of multiplayer as soon as the interface updates for the features above are finished. This means that the 4th minigame will have to wait, but instead of getting it, the current minigames will get multiplayer versions.
The art gallery will become the game hub, and there, players will be able to see each other. You will be able to hop in a game with a nother player, and play in a cooperative(or not) way. The multiplayer will come on updates, and the first game to get a multiplayer version will be the action bow game, where it will be able to play with 2 to 4 players at the same time, and shoot robots freely. The drone assault game will also get cooperative mode. You will be able to start seeing the progress on multiplayer on the testing branch 2 weeks from now. The current 4th minigame prototype is going to pause development, and the 4th minigame is going to be a multiplayer focused game.
Also, the art gallery is getting hats, for the player avatars. And of course, players with a Vive will be able to play with players with oculus unless Oculus forbids it or makes it impossible.