On September 30 we ran an AMA on the /virtualreality subreddit. We got some really interesting questions, which made for some really interesting answers. So we've decided to repost all the Q&As here for you to read.
Those of us who were answering questions were:
Kun Wang, Vanimals Studio Head - In charge of company operations and product marketing.
Yue Zhang, Producer - In charge of entire game production involving Eternity Warriors™ VR.
Zhong Yuan, Tech Director - In charge of game engineering and tech related works (platform and server).
Jin Chan Yum Wai, Community Manager - Working on the social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
On with the questions!
llViP3rll asks: Great game! Any plans to add pvp? :D
Yue - Currently there are no immediate plans for PVP, however we will be adding a "friendly fire" mode to the game so you will be able to hurt your allies in the near future. That way you have to be extra careful while helping each other, or if you are feeling evil you could just kill your friend. :P
We will be using this feature to test player-on-player combat which can hopefully evolve into a complete PVP mode.
Clover12121 asks: hi, I haven't played your game yet, but I've read about special abilities and the absence of a tutorial on them, are there any plans to add this in the future?
Jin - Short answer: Yes.
Currently the game does teach you about the character skills and abilities but they seem to be a little unclear to most players. So we will be improving the clarity of these abilities in future updates, and later adding proper tutorials of each hero class. Those tutorials will be in sometime before the full launch of the game.
For the meantime though we will be posting guides of each Hero class on our Steam page.
Jewels_the_Psychotic asks: Love the game! The art design in Eternity Warriors VR is top notch! What challenges did you encounter when making a game that looks this stunning for Virtual Reality? Not only does it look gorgeous but it performs great as well.
Kun - Constructing high level 3D assest for a game like this takes time. A lot of time was dedicated to the concept and planning phase for both enivronments and characters. After that we thought about outsourcing the art but that was going to take longer than expected. Finally we decided to recruite "next gen level" 3D artists who brought our characters and environments to life.
We also have TA (Technical Artists) who are fully dedicated to improving things like lighting and GFX, aswell as working closely with our 3D artists to find effecient ways of rendering to keep assests performance friendly and beautiful at the same time.
Yue - The 3D rendendering technology we decided to use in our game is based on PBR. PBR is famous for being used in games like Gears of War, RoboRecall, RawData and COD. Games which all use a lot of metallic textures.
One challenge we encountered using the technology is that PBR requires the use of a lot of Ambient light, which can be found in many console games. But in VR the way that we designed our scenes is complex, and we couldn't use too much ambient light. So we had to think of creative ways to mimic ambient light using only limited directional lights. This is the kind of work that our TAs and Scene Artist have to work out.
Terror_Absolute asks: What have been some of the pitfalls and challenges of developing this game?
Jin - One of the biggest challenges on the marketing and social media side of things is getting over the "wave shooter" stigma. A lot of VR players are sick of wave shooters and understandably so, so when we say "we are a wave shooter but trust it's different and you'll love it" it's a really hard sell. This is still a thing we are working on, but we have been so happy with the response from the players and the fact they are enjoying and "get" what we are trying to do with our game.
Zhong - Keeping the game at 90fps has been a huge challenge.
Kun - Piggy backing off what Zhong said, the framerate was really important. We invested a tremendous amount of time working on the technical and art side of things to make sure they game runs well. We are quite proud of the performance of our game running on a GTX970.
Yue - A big challenge when developing for VR is that regardless of previous gaming experience nearly all players are "new" gamers when it comes to VR. There aren't many standards that everyone understands yet. So you always have to keep that in mind when designing a game for VR.
mattshonestreddit asks: Hey guys. First of all this is one of my new favourite VR games I actually have 2 questions. 1) will this always be a wave shooter or are there any plans to ads movement in the future? 2) is there a chance that we could see a 4 player version of this game eventually?
Kun - 1) Internally it's still being discussed. We will be doing an experiment here before finally do it for the product. :) and it'll be an ASAP.
2) 4 player version, this depends on the number of concurrent gamers. Technically the game supports 4 player mode and it shouldn't take too long when we see it an emerging need.
Fuingo asks: Hello guys! Are there any plans for leveling up weapons and abilities? It'd be great to unlock a couple of different arrow types for the Archer! Keep up the good work, this is definitely one of the most active VR games I've played!
Yue - We won't be doing a traditional stat based leveling up system, but we are planning an equipment system. Players will be able to unlock new swords, bows, gun, etc all with their own unique stats and abilities. Players will be able to select their class and then customize their loadouts.
We are also looking into developing a skill tree. Players will be able to earn points and them spend them on a skill tree to unlock equippable abilities.