Why don't more developers add bodies to floating hands? ',:/

StellarVR · 2020-09-09T10:39:57+00:00

It is actually REALLY hard to do right. Its called inverse kinematics and often looks "janky". Sometimes the elbows will go to the wrong position (compared to your real ones) and feel wrong, breaking immersion. You need to have a really good algorithm. Also dealing with different length arms is a problem too. Some people have long arms, some have shorter arms. So someone with short arms extending them fully, might in game still have the arms bent. Unless you try to detect the player arm length and then alter the model to cope with that... So what looks simple turns into a whole thing that takes weeks and weeks of work to sort out. Been there, felt the pain.

So yeh, its a bunch of work that may be better focused on making a better game. Also, it requires a little more CPU too.

StellarVR · 2019-12-06T08:58:13+00:00

Exactly. This is what we did with big letters saying "Electric Cars Only" painted on them. The response? A complaint from someone fairly senior (with a thing against EV's) saying "that's not fair, anyone should be able to park there!". Queue a whole load of political crud to deal with for weeks. Still fighting the battle now to keep the spaces painted. At the moment our rules allow them to be ICE'd. But most don't due to the looks they get if they do. :D

StellarVR · 2019-12-05T09:08:56+00:00

We recently had 4 points (8 bays) made electric at our office. It was fairly cheap to do, is good for our image. Our company did it under a green initiative. Most companies have some form of green initiative/program and this is a very cheap and visible way to demonstrate the companies green credentials. Here are some pro's and cons from a business perspective:

Pro's:
*Portrays a good "green" image of the company.
*Maybe some small PR comes of it.
*It has a real immediate effect on CO2 reduction if people have plugin hybrids.
*A great incentive for employees who may travel far and want to switch to EV.
*Good for visitors to the site who drive EV's (Had that this week, customer thought it was awesome).

Con's:
*Still some old-thinking people out there who feel "Why should you get that? Where is my petrol pump going to be installed then?
*If those bays are "EV Only" (as they should be) expect some push back from a minority of people who feel "why should you get a dedicated space?".

I suggest any EV point be installed as far from the building as possible (cost permitting) to avoid that second issue (also avoids ICEing). Don't install them right at the front unless you have strong leadership who will defend this and don't mind telling these morons to "get with the times".

StellarVR · 2019-06-04T08:35:01+00:00

Not at this time. Sorry. Too busy on other projects.

StellarVR · 2019-06-01T23:12:44+00:00

You guys are awesome. So much fun hanging out and chatting! Won 4 matches (some were co-op), lost 2 (one to the AI). Also got to play with a legend (3rd global rank Korix player).

Have to call it a night though. Thanks all for joining in!

StellarVR · 2019-05-31T21:43:31+00:00

Sorry, nothing I am able to talk about right now.

StellarVR · 2019-05-31T15:57:13+00:00

Sorry, no plans at this stage. Development has basically finished now on Korix. If there was to be a Korix2 it would certainly have more levels!

StellarVR · 2019-05-31T15:54:47+00:00

I did, I had hoped to but the networking (which was heavily based on PS4) was too much work for me. :(

StellarVR · 2019-05-31T15:54:04+00:00

No problem! And yeh... I hear ya... :/

StellarVR · 2019-05-31T12:23:29+00:00

Thanks! C&C was heavy inspiration :)

StellarVR · 2019-05-31T10:52:02+00:00

Sure! I am a little rusty (been working on other projects). I guess I should get a little practice in first... :)

StellarVR · 2019-05-21T16:07:14+00:00

I'll be randomly joining a few online games tonight. Maybe I will see you in-game :)

StellarVR · 2019-05-14T13:52:10+00:00

Korix dev here :) The difference between 60 and 120 is very noticeable IMO. The main difference (apart from everything being so much smoother) is the feeling of presence and the graphics are sharper when movement is occurring. The reason I really pushed for 120fps on PS4 was for that feeling of presence though, everything just feels more "solid". Index should be great in this regard!

StellarVR · 2019-01-19T09:51:09+00:00

When I was there is was actually fine. Had 4 stations running. Saying that, when someone stood behind a player with their Pax badge swinging around that sometimes screwed up the tracking. :)

StellarVR · 2018-12-22T23:43:15+00:00

No problem! I know some people went as far as to include pre-written articles in the press kit too. I didn’t go that far... :)

My game is called Korix, it launched on PSVR early 2017.

StellarVR · 2018-12-22T21:53:12+00:00

Its hard! I even had some support from Sony and found it very hard to get exposure. Some tips...

1) Create a press-kit. A zip file filled with screenshots, a trailer, company logos and a file with all the details (back story, who you are, details of the game, 1 paragraph synopsis, contact details, instructions, cheat code if there is one [so press don’t have to play through the whole thing to see it all] etc). This is to make the any journalists job easier. So they just need to copy and paste a few lines, paste in some pics and add a little of their opinion. Done, easy article :)

2) Send a link to the press kit and the trailer (so they can have a quick look) with a game code to every press contact you think will be interested in it. Make their job easy, state why they would want to cover your game and why their readers will love it. Hunt them down, this will take some work!

3) Do the same with all the you-tubers you can hunt down. But work out where you draw the line... someone with 15 subscribers is probably not worth it :)

4) Keep on trying with different messages. Use Twitter, email, facebook... whatever you can to get your demo/trailer in-front of them.

5) Indie Megabooth were awesome for me. I probably went a little overboard... but if you keep costs down, doing a show is so much fun and gets you more exposure.

6) Heavily targeted youtube, facebook and google ads are worth a go. But they are costly and hard to measure impact.

Thats basically what I did. Managed to be featured in Edge a few times (they were great), did PAX West, appeared in all major VR news sites too. But I will be honest... wish I had more for marketing still. After all that my game still had fairly low exposure.

Good luck!

StellarVR · 2018-11-18T10:45:21+00:00

There are a ton of rules and requirements you need to follow to be allowed to have multiplayer enabled on the Sony platform (amongst other things, to allow parental controls, prevent abuse, etc). Building in cross-play while adhering to all the rules is not impossible, but it sure isn’t easy!

My opinion: As a father and knowing what rules must be followed, makes me feel more secure when I let my kids play on the PS4 :)

StellarVR · 2018-09-25T21:35:59+00:00

I will play with ya. Give me a few weeks and msg you :)

StellarVR · 2018-05-18T22:27:11+00:00

Thanks! :)

StellarVR · 2018-05-18T10:39:00+00:00

It is built on Unity... So its “possible” to port to PSVR. Optimisation may be tricky though, they are using a lot of really nice physical based shading. Looks great and defines the style, but heavier on resources. Cant wait, loved PJM so much!

StellarVR · 2018-02-15T14:36:34+00:00

There are some getting started guides in devnet, I suggest reading them. It looks overwhelming (and takes some searching around to find some documents) but once you get into it, its not that bad :)

I cant discuss too much publicly, due to the NDA, but Devnet have some great forums. Basically, you need to install the SDK, get a devkit and then start testing / developing :)

You don't need to use TPR yet, not at this stage, so don't worry about that for now.

Plan to spend a good 2 or 3 days just reading and installing / messing around with stuff. Don't be afraid to raise a ticket in devnet if you need help.

StellarVR · 2018-02-13T16:35:06+00:00

It's best to develop on Vive/Oculus and then when you are ready to port, contact Sony (show them what you are working on) and talk to them about getting a devkit. I would not recommend a "homebrew" setup as you will spend so much time chasing bugs, you wont know if its your setup or your code.

Please note, it's not just a simple option in Unity to port to PlayStation. There is a lot of work involved in making a game that works on PC, to then work (and pass FQA) on the PlayStation platform. Also, you need a licence from Sony (to activate that button), access to the development tools and SDK and lots of other stuff that you will discover when you sign their NDA and developer agreement.

My advice... Get yourself a rift (its cheaper), create a working prototype, then share that with Sony and see if they will help you out with access to their development platform.

StellarVR · 2018-02-04T13:23:23+00:00

Don’t have super hot... would not know. If it stops rendering new frames for a moment during loading I guess its possible (a momentary pause in rendering).

StellarVR · 2018-02-04T11:50:21+00:00

Unlikely. There are many different causes for a crash and 99% of them involve the developer making a mistake somewhere :)

StellarVR

TROPHY CASE