Author Topic: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?  (Read 6126 times)

Offline Tridus

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Re: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?
« Reply #15 on: January 08, 2017, 07:01:39 am »
To me a critical part of VR is the room space and Vive controllers (which is what I have). When I've played games that don't make use of those things they are only a mild improvement on normal gameplay, and something I'm not sure would really catch on. However interactive room space experiences are a whole other thing, and give you a truly different gaming experience - which is often hard to come by. I'm hopeful that will be enough for VR to catch on. Of course the most important thing is to get past the current phase where there are no extensive VR games because not enough people have VR because there are no extensive VR games. I'm hoping Fallout 4 VR will help with that.

I also have an Emotiv Insight. Sadly that tech is a little farther from being useful for gameplay...

Also there are too many competing types of VR equipment, and most of them are too expensive to hit the mainstream. Both of things have to change for it to catch on enough to get any big budget development.

Offline x4000

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Re: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?
« Reply #16 on: January 09, 2017, 11:21:02 am »
Some general thoughts:

1. I agree that it's cumbersome to set up and you have to want to go into "let's play some VR now" mentality.  To me that makes it pretty imperative that whatever it is I'm doing has to actually be compelling.  Playing any sort of online games where you're locked into a match with someone for 15-20+ minutes (like Pokemon TCGO for instance) also has a big "must block off this amount of time" cost, so I don't think that's a killer all by itself.

2. If this turns out to be a fad that passes, then I'll be sad but it's not the end of the world, just to clarify things if anyone was wondering.  I've invested less in VR than I would have to for a single PS4 or Wii U dev kit, for example, which is hilarious.  That said, right now there are a number of people who come into this and go "games aren't different enough from normal to warrant the hassle," and that's exactly the sort of person I want to excite.  I kinda fall into that camp myself; there are some amazing experiences, and pieces of some amazing games, and there are some amazing games that are short (like SUPERHOT), but there's nothing to long-term keep me coming back to one game over and over again for weeks or months.

3. In terms of the gimmicky-ness of it, I think that's something that for most people gets dispelled when they either try the Oculus Touch or the Vive with the controllers.  Without the motion controls it is definitely a gimmick.  And if you're just trying out the tech demos like The Climb (sorry, I know that's $50 but it will always be a tech demo to me), that really just furthers the feeling of it being a gimmick even if you were using the motion controllers.  I seriously can't recommend SUPERHOT VR more in terms of seeing what is actually possible, despite its frustratingly short length.  Even there a lot more could be done, though.

4. Worst case, I think this is a good place for me to hide out for a while while the Steam market is in turmoil and unhospitable.  I think that thanks to past residuals and the smallness of the market and my particular style, I can make a living here during the next year, and we'll see how things evolve.  With indie games, which seemed to be faddish to most people in the 2008 timeframe or so, I happened to be right on the cusp on that when that started in earnest in 2009, and hence Arcen really existing.  This has a similar feel, but if that's not how things play out I won't be crestfallen.  I still have plenty of non-VR ideas I want to do, too.

5. I think that the comparison to 3D TVs is a bit unfair, mainly because those add next to nothing.  Some folks like 3D, but overall it doesn't add anything to the storytelling or much to the immersiveness, and it can actually add a feeling of disconnection to what is happening on the screen, as well as giving people like me headaches after not all that long.  With VR, there's a lot of stuff that can frankly only be done there and not in a traditional game, so it's a legitimate new storytelling medium.  I think the question is how devs wind up using it; if I hand you a nailgun and you only use it as a blunt object to hammer in nails, and occasionally line it up behind a screw to fire a nail into the back of the screw to get it in by secondary pressure, then a nailgun is a useless gimmick and not worth the hassle and the setup.  It kinda feels like a lot of developers are doing that sort of thing with VR.  But a nailgun actually is a really amazing tool if you use it properly.  3D TVs are more like a particularly shitty roomba. ;)

6. As far as there being too many headsets right now, I think that competition is a good thing.  Not when it causes a segmented market like what you have with the Oculus store exclusives, which sucks.  But the Oculus Touch and the Vive are the same price and same overall functionality (similar enough, anyway), and can both be targeted simultaneously pretty well.  The playstation one is more of an outlier, but hey it's a console.  And things like the Gear VR and whatnot are just too underpowered to be worth much, but they take less setup and cost and are a good "gateway drug" to get people to understand the idea of what VR can be.

7. The price of the Vive and Oculus needs to come down, and I'm sure it will, but right now it doesn't matter too much in my opinion because the price of the PCs that can run them is the bigger factor and those need to come down even more.  So we're a few years out from this becoming anything like mainstream, and that's just fine with me.  It keeps the biggest fish away from the pond some (they can't afford to develop for such a small audience), and gives folks like me a fighting chance.  I'm not saying I intend to make software that will make or break the adoption of VR, but I think that developers with similar flexibility will cumulatively do so.  That and large companies that are investing in VR without any hope of immediate positive returns, for whatever reason.

8. In the end, the VR market is attractive to me largely for the same reasons that ultra-hardcore strategy games as a market is/was attractive to me.  It's small, underserved by the big guys, a hungry audience, an audience that actually tends to have some money to spend in a reasonable way (versus the freemium things that attract teenagers in large droves), and it's an area I have a personal passion for as well as ideas.

9. For those outside of either market it can have kind of a "Wat?" sort of feel to it in both cases, but people here have always been inside the market (strategy games), so I haven't had to deal with the "wat" factor here when it comes to strategy games.  I've had similar discussions about this sort of thing (not faddishness, but just the unviability for many reasons) on other forums (literal and figurative) regarding the type of hardcore strategy games, or strategy games that don't include PVP, etc.  People wouldn't shut up about the unviability of non-PVP strategy games for a number of years there, haha.
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Offline BadgerBadger

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Re: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?
« Reply #17 on: January 09, 2017, 11:19:26 pm »
Well, I've been waiting for a great game to make me want to get VR. That and linux support and a clearer sense of the marketplace.

Offline jenya

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Re: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?
« Reply #18 on: January 12, 2017, 01:40:36 pm »
"‘Nebulous’ Developer Warns Against Creating A VR Game With Non-VR Support"
http://uploadvr.com/vr-halfhearted-nebulous-developer/

Offline jenya

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Re: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?
« Reply #19 on: January 12, 2017, 01:42:38 pm »
I'm afraid VR is susceptible to the gorilla arm sindrome.
https://www.techopedia.com/definition/31480/gorilla-arm
"Gorilla arm is what happens when the user interacts with a vertical touchscreen for a long period of time. The arm becomes tired, and it becomes more difficult to interact with the interface."

Offline NichG

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Re: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?
« Reply #20 on: January 12, 2017, 08:58:24 pm »
To date, my longest VR usages have been actually ignoring the Vive controllers entirely and just touch-typing to have keyboard/mouse interactions with the game (Eilte Dangerous, which has both VR and non-VR support and is generally speaking designed to be a huge time-sink rather than a one-off 'experience'). I wouldn't say that it was my best times with VR, but I'd say it met the requirements for me to do more than a 10-15 minute session and remain physically comfortable.

The keyboard thing is awkward but doable. Definitely not optimal. I really wish there were a good solution to using a keyboard with though, because the keyboard brings so much to a game compared to just using the Vive controllers (and using the controllers to type on a virtual keyboard is really, really awful - 1-2cps, lots of miss-clicks, etc). Maybe some kind of glove device that tracks individual fingers?

Offline Squashyhex

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Re: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?
« Reply #21 on: January 12, 2017, 11:32:16 pm »
Maybe some kind of glove device that tracks individual fingers?
Haptic feedback on a virtual keyboard, where you can see your hands in vr, finger for finger?
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Offline x4000

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Re: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?
« Reply #22 on: January 13, 2017, 11:18:35 am »
Gorilla arm is something that really is based on your consistently having to hold your arms out in a specific way.  With VR, typically you're moving all around in various ways, and putting your arms at rest at various times.  And certainly changing their orientation.  I don't think a 5-hour VR session is likely or a good idea, but I find that after playing something like SUPERHOT I actually feel like I've been working out (in a good way!), and am sore the next day if I was doing a lot of contortions.

You don't HAVE to do those contortions, but if I'm in a Matrix simulator you better believe I'm leaning back to get out of the way of bullets, and throwing my feet out from under me to land hard on my ass, guns up, as a bullet flies overhead.  It's a good workout in the same way that Rock Band was, playing the drums: it's not really a user interface thing at core.

When it comes to making a singular game that is both VR and non-VR, I agree that has been universally horrible.  When I see games with non-VR support, my immediate assumption is that the VR aspect probably sucks.  For me, at this point I'm thinking I want to create a pair of games that work together: one that is VR and one that is not, and they can play multiplayer interchangeably.  They'd be 95% the same code, but those other 5% of the code determines how your interactions work with the game, and makes them quite different experiences despite being in the same server world together.

Basically it's asymmetry, which we all know I like. ;)  The VR characters would look and act differently, have different weapons and abilities, and most certainly different movement characteristics.  The traditional characters would act more like in a traditional game, and they would have some advantages over the VR players (speed), but some serious disadvantages in other ways (the VR players can do some cool extra stuff).

These would have radically different system requirements, and the VR version probably wouldn't even be multi-platform at first (and possibly only Linux + Windows long-term), whereas the non-VR version would be lighter on the requirements and support all three OSes.  So having them be separate products, but with a way to cross-grade ideally if you want to is I think a good idea.  Or possibly they can only ever be bought as a bundle, or... something.
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Offline jenya

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Re: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?
« Reply #23 on: January 13, 2017, 12:19:18 pm »
This reminds me about Dance Dance Revolution pad, workout at home. Woudn't want to workout in VR though, my vestibular apparatus is very sensitive and I'm afraid it will give me troubles. Heck, even the idle sway of the Pipboy in Fallout New Vegas gives me slight troubles when I'm trying to concentrate on the menu text (and apparently it is imppossible to turn it off without a mod).
https://www.reddit.com/r/fnv/comments/42wb70/does_the_swaying_of_the_pipboy_make_you_sick
« Last Edit: January 13, 2017, 12:27:41 pm by jenya »

Offline x4000

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Re: So what does Chris plan on doing while AI War 2 goes on?
« Reply #24 on: January 13, 2017, 12:41:09 pm »
Wow, that's crazy on the pip boy one, but I cansee how that would be disorienting.  Anyhow, yeah -- I think that the current styles of VR are not any sort of useful-for-everyone system.  Microsoft HoloLens would probably work for someone like you, but I can't imagine doing games for that really.  VR/AR hybrid?  Ick.
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