Hi there,
First off all I hope everyone is well and still coping with the current situation concerning the coronavirus. For anyone having practical questions about the coronavirus, the dutch government has a pretty complete overview here: Covid19
Please keep in mind that some measures are specific to my country, the Netherlands.
In this update I’ve focused on the following:
- Realistic hand behavior, I wanted the hands to react to the world.
- Flying improvements, more work on making flying fun and enemies fun to play with
- Bug Fixes, as always I try to fix as many bugs as I can. Thanks community for mentioning them!
Just a reminder, the game is in alpha. I’ve found that sometimes players are enclined to write a review in which they mention many usefull improvements and bug-reports. I would appreciate it if any comments, ideas and bugs would be mentioned to me on my discord channel for the game instead. Trust me, I am listening and always answer any questions and reports. see the link below in this update text.
Realistic hand behaviour
I wanted the hands to not move through objects anymore. As most big VR games have this feature and it’s really becoming the norm I wanted to make sure Under a Desert Sun does not lag behind on this aspect. I’ve implemented an early version of hand collision that in my opinion works quite nicely. It does the following:
- Hands do not move through objects anymore
- If you push your hands through a wall or an object the hand stays somewhere close to the entry point of the wall
- You can still move your hand along the wall
- Your fingers move in accordance to the wall, this is quite neat, the vingers bend a bit with your hand, just like in real life! It doesn’t work perfectly because that would cost too much performance but the illusion works well enough. I Think it adds to the immersion.
- When holding a weapon your hands still can’t go through the wall and when a weapon sticks out too far into an object it will turn and make sure it does not go through the wall, this last bit is not perfect yet, weapons can still stick slightly in a wall.
As a lone developer this is some pretty intense/math stuff so I will keep working on this to perfect it. However, I think for a first attempt in the alpha this works quite well already.
Flying
The flying testmap has been improved. Please keep in mind this is very alpha stuff, if you test this map all feedback is greatly appreciated, come tell me on discord!
- Added working throttle and airspeed Gauges
- Added artificial horizon, now you always know when you’re upside down
- Added airplane targeter, it points towards a target, handy!
- Added more enemies with more complex follow behavior(The enemies no longer crash into you and try to shoot you while getting behind you)
Please keep in mind that I am still working on bullets and shooting, even though the enemies try to shoot you and you can shoot, you won’t be able to hit anything yet ;) As I said, very alpha and only released so people can test things as early as possible.
Small stuff
- I added a fade to black before a level is loaded. This is much easier on the eyes as the normal level loading behaviour was a bit jittery.
Bugfixes
- The mummy-like enemies no longer faded away after death, This is now fixed, dust everywhere!
- You no longer hang still midair when stopping movement on stairs, instead gravity does its work properly now
Discord
Don’t forget the discord channel. Any feedback is greatly appreciated! The discord: Discord
Roadmap
Also don’t forget the Under a Desert Sun roadmap. You can find it here:[url= https://trello.com/b/CEDvwMAb/under-a-desert-sun]Trello[/url]
Be safe everyone and kind regards,
Raymond