Posts Tagged : vr

Combat gameplay modes added weapons

 

Patch Notes – v1.191/0.6

Here it is, the big update we’ve all been waiting for! Update now for the following features: 

– New “Combat” gameplay modes adding weapons to races for single player and multiplayer 
– Three new ships to unlock through single player career and multiplayer 
– Upgraded Unity support to allow for better performance on mid-range PCs 
– A tonne of bug fixes and performance tweaks to ensure the game loads quicker for everyone 
– Updated Steam VR and Oculus Rift SDKs for better performance and more stable gameplay 
– Added dedicated OSVR HDK1.x and HDK2 support (64-bit CPUs only) 
>> Go to ‘Properties > Beta’ tab and select “osvr_dedicated” branch option to enable >> NB. You will need to run the OSVR Server before launching the game like any other normal dedicated OSVR game title

Official Soundtrack Released!

At long last the official soundtrack for Radial-G : Racing Revolved has been released in all its meaty, beaty glory! 20 music tracks in total, what are you waiting for!?

The full album runs for 1 hr 37 mins and includes the following tracks:

  1. KOHTAKT – Phase Invert
  2. Fortran – Lazer Gazer
  3. MaverickMan – SlingBlade
  4. Mutiny UK – Overkill
  5. LabGrown Music & Dan Page – Buzzooka
  6. Tom Evans – Pro Shifter
  7. RuN RiOT – Nebula
  8. Delta Heavy – Fugitive
  9. Phil Johnston – Stellar
  10. MaverickMan – Release The Kraken
  11. Syndroid – Neuropunk
  12. LabGrown Music – Rush
  13. Audio – Craven
  14. Deadly Avenger – Skyrunner’s Revenge
  15. Herve – Velocity
  16. RacketBox – Mashed
  17. Delta Heavy – Pursuit
  18. Msoga – Magnetic Flux
  19. KOHTAKT – Terminal Velocity
  20. Utah Saints – Mindwarp

 

See below for all your download and store purchase options:

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/radial-g-racing-revolved-official/id1129225467

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Radial-G-Racing-Revolved-Official-Soundtrack/dp/B01J2MP3FI

Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/album/1nxoShT8JmkWV1ZEKue3Ie

7Digital: https://www.7digital.com/artist/various-artists/release/radial-g-racing-revolved-5536918

Juno: http://www.junodownload.com/products/radial-g-racing-revolved/3169012-02/

Deezer: http://www.deezer.com/album/13465983

Traxsource: http://www.traxsource.com/title/662064/radial-g-racing-revolved

Beatport: https://www.beatport.com/release/radial-g-racing-revolved-official-vr-soundtrack/1805166

 

Full Release on Oculus Store and Steam (Rift, Vive & OSVR support)

Good day VR race fans!

Radial-G : Racing Revolved is now a fully released title on the Oculus Store (Oculus Rift support only) and Steam (Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Razer OSVR support)!

You can buy the game and get your face into the VR race NOW!

Oculus Home: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1138122202866373/

Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/330770

The Full Release version includes the following features: 

  • A new environment set in the depths of space with three regions in and around a derelict asteroid mining station. 
  • Nine courses offering insanely fast racing around tracks including dizzying splits and twists, crazy stomach-defying jumps and inverted tunnel sections 
  • A thumping EDM soundtrack 
  • Gruelling Single Player Career mode to work through earning trophies in-game 
  • A choice of seven race craft, one only unlockable by reaching ranks in multiplayer, the others through completing Single Player Career mode tiers 
  • 16-player online multiplayer support 
  • Offline and single player modes against 15 AI opponents 
  • Combat gameplay modes with five weapons to blow away your opponents 
  • Balance the risk and reward of converting your shield to additional user-controlled boost 
  • Enhanced ship physics – each ship has unique handling characteristics 
  • Cockpit and 3rd-person camera views (VR supports only for cockpit view) 
  • Steam / Oculus achievements 
  • Steam / Oculus stats 
  • Stea, / Oculus leaderboards 
  • Support for Oculus Rift, Oculus DK2 (with latest Runtime or 0.8), HTC Vive and OSVR

Note you will need Oculus Runtime v1.3+ installed to play, which you can download from oculus.com/setup – this will also install the Oculus Home platform where you can buy the game

2015 – The Almost Year of VR

As the year draws to a close and we start to think of not much more than stuffing our faces and opening presents, it’s time to look back over the past year and the events that occurred, or didn’t and forwards to 2016.

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We ended 2014 on a high, having recently just launched Radial-G : Racing Revolved on Steam Early Access and we were keen to capitalise on that feeling and get cracking with development once back in the studio for 2015. Starting work on Update#1 took us up to February when we did our first event of the year, “SWVR Conference” down in Bristol, UK. It was a great start to the year and we will certainly be back down Brizzle-way in 2016 for the [SW] “VR World Congress” in April.

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After a day of demoing and meeting old and new fans alike, we were keen to do more events throughout 2015 to help carry on spreading the word about the game and so we signed up for “EGX Rezzed“, to be held in Tobacco Docks, London, UK in March. We teamed up with our local dev pals Knifey Spoonie and Sock Thuggery to take a 4-berth booth and after a bit of negotiating who was going to be where, off we went with Update#2 ready and loaded on the PCs to show.

RezzedBooth1

Wow what an event! For three days we demoed, talked and promoted the game to eager players of games, all desperate for a go on the fastest, most exciting VR game at the show. We were told that we had the 3rd longest queues, after Bloodborne & Guild Wars 2, with attendees willing to wait up to 1.5 hours to try out the game! Such an overwhelming reaction and welcome ^_^ We were planning on running one PC with VR and one with non-VR modes but in order to try and help reduce queuing times, we switched both to VR only. Again, after such a welcome from the players there in 2015, we will be back bigger than ever at EGX Rezzed 2016

After we had recovered from that, work quickly refocussed back on Updates#3 and #4 to the game and we added the final full set of features and gameplay modes we wanted for release,. just in time for another event!

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We were selected to appear on the Indie Showcase at the “Brighton Develop Conference” with 9 other hopefuls, eager to be picked as organisers and press choice. Whilst we didn’t win, we certainly were happy to be doing an event in our home town once more, revisiting the locale that kicked off our journey with Sony PlayStation and PlayStation VR development in 2014.

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We’ve done a few other small scale events since then, such as the “Rocketjump Brighton” and a couple of “Geek Central” days, both held at the Komedia venue, a few more “I.Am.Arcade / Fight Clubs” hosted at our local favourite haunt Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, organised by Kotaku UK and another “VR in a Bar” where we took part in a VR roundtable discussion with EDGE magazine.

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We had one more location to visit and that was Newcastle, home of CCP Games working on EVE: Valkyrie and Callum from Oculus but we were there to see the game installed in GAME ON 2.0 as the showcase VR game under the “Future of Gaming” banner.

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However when we realised that the Oculus Rift wasn’t going to commercially release until Q1’16, we decided it best to save our limited funds and hold off doing any more events until nearer the time we release on Day One alongside the hardware.

 

So from now until then, we polish, we tweak, we prepare for v1.0 of everything to go FULL VR early next year…

 

Steam Early Access – Update#4 Live!

Greetings pilots, 

Update#4 is now live! 

Patch your game client to get the latest version, which introduces the following new features: 

  • Single Player Career Mode – 3 gruelling tiers to advance through 
  • New ship to unlock – Complete career mode to gain access to Hellfire 
  • New achievements to unlock – Complete each tier and get all gold! 
  • Steam Cloud Saves – Carry on where you left off on another PC 
  • Updated Oculus Rift Runtime support – now running OVR SDK 0.6

NB. Oculus Rift users will need to download the Oculus Runtime v0.6 at least to continue running the game on your DK1/DK2. This is available from here: Oculus Runtime v0.6

Radial-G : Infinity Released on Google Cardboard VR

Radial-G : Infinity” pits you against the deadly invasion force attacking the Radial-G universe!

Outrun the mechanical alien squid boss whilst dodging his drone minion army as they blast away your race tracks. Fall off too many times and his laser will burn you to a crisp!

Take advantage of pick-ups including magnet to suck up the surrounding orbs, shield to protect you and bombs to send that beastie back to where he came from!

Collect the orbs to power-up your ship, aim for the speed boosts to gain an advantage and avoid the slowdown areas inching you closer to his clutches!

With three ships to unlock based upon your performance, there is reason to have just one more go to improve your chances next time…

Suggested Android models for Official Google Cardboard VR headset support:
Google Nexus 6
Google Nexus 5*
Samsung S4*
Samsung S5*
Samsung S6*
HTC One M8
HTC One M9
ONEPLUS One
Sony Xperia Z3*
Samsung Note 3
Samsung Note 4*
LG G2
LG G3

* = Phones we have tested the game with.
NB. If you are running the game on a headset not listed above, we cannot be held responsible for your experience.

EGX Rezzed 2015 – Post-Mortem

We took the game to the EGX Rezzed 2015 event this month, held at the sprawling location that is The Tobacco Docks in London. This is the biggest event we have had a booth at to date, so we were excited and nervous in equal measures.

Preparation

Weeks of preparation, artwork creation for the booth and flyers as well as build polish culminated in our glorious dual-booth setup, ready for Day One of the event. We were sharing a 4-slot setup with two other Brighton indie game devs, Sock Thuggery with their excellent ‘Mighty Tactical Shooter‘ and Knifey Spoonie showcasing their unique take on the match-3 genre with ‘Pro Puzzle Wrestling‘, as part of the Brighton Game Collective non-profit indie games group.

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We arrived to set up after a painless journey up to London and the venue, to discover that the PCs allocated to us weren’t quite the specification we’d been informed would be in place. Never-the-less we got the Oculus Rift Runtime installed on both and the builds up and running to test performance. We weren’t overly happy with the framerates in places and managed to get the organisers to swap over the machines with higher end hardware. Unfortunately this happened late in the day so we had to re-install everything in a rush early in the morning of Day One. But once up-and-running again, everything was running smoothly so we donned our freshly printed Radial-G t-shirts, ready to welcome the first players!

RezzedBooth2

The Event

The first day was supposed to be more of a Press Day with lots of journalists expected to be around, as well as the general public who had the 3-day passes. That evening was the BAFTA Games Awards 2015 being held onsite, so in the afternoon we were demoing the game to people wearing penguin suits with coiffed hair and cocktail dresses before they headed off for the ceremony. Sorry to all those who had spent time and money on their hair for the evening, the Oculus Rift DK2 headstraps aren’t the best for these hairstyles! Overall everything went off without a hitch and we rode the adrenaline high to bed, ready for Day Two.

RezzedBooth1

After quickly realising that we had to run both booths with VR to keep the queues down, and having had Thursday to get our patter nailed down, Friday went well even with larger numbers of visitors to the event and booth. Unfortunately we were two people down with other commitments and illness so just two of us worked tirelessly all day, talking to those in the queue and getting players strapped into the VR headsets etc. Lunch? Who needs lunch!? With the day wrapped up, everyone happy but starting to feel the effects of standing up all day, a quick couple of beers and dinner with the rest of the team who had arrived to help on Day Three, we happily collapsed in our beds once more, ready for the final onslaught.

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Day Three, being a Saturday, was always going to be the busiest and boy we weren’t wrong! From 11am when the doors opened to 6pm when the burly, grumpy security guards bundled everyone out, the queue was a constant 1.5hr waiting time. Fortunately we had more staff to cope with the increased numbers so 2 were busy getting players setup, explaining the game and taking the headphones and headsets off etc when they had finished their demo slot, another 2 were chatting to those who had just come off their turn as well as those who had been patiently waiting and were next. Others were managing the entrance to the queue whilst chatting with people in the queue about the game, our development and generally keeping people happy whilst they waited.

RezzedQueue

Then as soon as it had started, it was suddenly all over, the visitors were ejected from the building by the security staff and we had to tear down the booth and travel back home to our welcoming beds.

RezzedPlayers

So what went right? What went wrong and what could be improved, or handled differently next time?

Things That Went Well

1. The Positive Reaction

Pretty much every single person who played the game was utterly blown away and was very, very enthusiastic about it, raving about their experience to us, their friends and others waiting in the queue. We cannot begin to describe the sense of pride and appreciation we have for everyone who was able to play, talk to us and give us their honest feedback. To see people as stoked as we are is such a great feeling, something that only indies with direct connection to the players can really understand and enjoy. We saw over 500 people play the game over the three days and apart from one person who felt a little worse for wear afterwards, everyone else LOVED IT!

2. The Resulting Coverage

See below for all of the videos, articles and lovely things people have said about the game, the team and the event itself. Whilst we missed a couple of journalists we would have loved to have been able to get in front of the game, overall we are really, really happy with the coverage we’ve had so far as a result of the event.

3. Meeting Other Indie Devs

As some of us come from a AAA background, a lot of the time at events you are faced with faceless PR and marketing machines rather than the actual people who make the games, so EGX Rezzed was a wonderful opportunity to meet and talk to other people in the same boat as you, facing the same struggles, dilemmas and experiences of game development, design and promotion. This was a welcome breath of fresh air and a really nice change being surrounded by so many talented, open and honest people who are actually making the games.

4. The Team Effort

Whilst we’ve done a lot of events now as a team, this was by far the largest and required the most coordination and cooperation amongst the team. As you will see from some of the coverage and feedback listed below, everyone marvelled at being open, honest, friendly and approachable at all times and never let it show how tired they were or how sore their feet were. We were all as excited to talk to you as you were to us! By the time Saturday came around, it was a military-precision-like effort, whilst still allowing for the free flowing interviews, chats with whoever wanted to talk to us and more.

Things That Didn’t Go As Well

1. Queue Wars

Because of our location next to a large booth for I Am Bread, we initially had a bit of an organisational quandary how best to manage and position our queues with theirs, since both game titles were popular every day, all day long. They were giving out lots of freebies which obviously attracted attention from visitors but only had one playable pod set up, reducing their potential through-flow rate. But after a bit of rearrangement, we found a layout that kept everyone happy. However because of our queues and the positioning, we ended up creating a bottleneck around our area and had to constantly send people back who were just trying to cut through to get to another booth. Also massive thanks to our booth partners Sock Thuggery and Knifey Spoonie for their patience and apologies for any issues it caused them. We were obviously hopeful to be popular but hadn’t expected it to be that crazy!

2. Getting Journalists to Play

Of course the main onus of the event is to get the game in front of indie game players but we were also hopeful to pick up some coverage of the game on the larger websites through the various journalists we’d approached previously or who were roaming the rooms looking for new games that caught their eye. We were told on many occasions that the game had created something of a buzz in the press room so were hopeful for a good number of inquisitive members of the press to come check out what all the fuss was about. To give credit where due however, many did come up but saw the queue and didn’t want to jump in ahead of those who had been waiting 1.5hrs and just got to the front. So lots to follow up with after the event…

3. Not Being Able to Showcase the non-VR Version

There is a lot of buzz around VR at the moment and a large percentage of visitors were very keen to try it out for the first time, or get their hands on the game in VR. However we have always struggled with making it known that you don’t need a VR headset to play the game, and focus on our non-VR version now to help spread the word and our reach overall with indie gamers. We saw this event, with two slots on our booth, as a perfect opportunity to have the non-VR version up and running in the public eye to ram this message home but it quickly became apparent we needed both running VR headsets to keep the queue down. Hopefully we got the non-VR aspect across to everyone waiting in the queue before they had their turn but knowing about it is very different from actually trying it.

4. Lack of Freebies

We totally underestimated the appeal of freebies and giveaways, even if it was a badge (everyone LOVES badges) or silly paper hats. But freebies cost money to make, something that is usually in short supply for indie developers; however you cannot underestimate the power of thousands of visitors walking around with your game logo strapped to their head giving you free advertising. So next time, pilot masks for everyone! (Maybe, if we can afford it.)

What We Would Do Differently

Whilst there isn’t a be-all one-fit-all template for events, as each one has their quirks and nuances, next time we will cater more to the event attendee based upon the type of show it is. If this means dropping showcasing the VR aspect altogether, then we will have to do this but we know VR itself is still a big draw for the crowds. We would also have a schedule and try to pre-arrange further in advance with the press time slots when they can come and play the game, or have a separate machine available just for them so we avoid the issues we had this time around. Finally we would probably try to find out in advance which other booths / games are located around us if possible so we can better plan layout and queuing areas to reduce any grief for all involved.

The Coverage

As mentioned, there were a couple of journalists we were disappointed not to finally get in front of the game after failing to at previous events (you know who you are :)), those who had press passes and were able to have some play time have created some wonderful articles and genuine excitement around the game. We strongly believe that the game speaks for itself and we don’t believe in fostering any potentially controversial relationships between devs and press, so to randomly meet so many members of the press and see the resulting articles and videos as a result is a great, positive boost for us.

See below for some of the video interviews and articles that have been created since EGX Reezzed (will be updated as more appear online):

Our game producer has appeared in an article for VICE UK looking at the future of gaming and VR previously, so it was nice to get them in front of the latest version of the game as well, making it onto their  “Best Games of EGX Rezzed” list article, which was the first bit of coverage that appeared.

Then Ian from Eurogamer included us in his list of the Most Wanted Indie Games of EGX Rezzed (skip to 3 minutes 10 seconds for Radial-G):

Having recently announced that we have received our PS4 dev kit and Sony Morpheus VR prototype HMD, there has been an increase in interest from the press who cover all things PlayStation, so it was great to meet and then hear the guys from PSGamer getting very exciting about our future platform support (from 12 minutes onwards).

Next up we have two videos from Danger Gerbil, one where we are listed as one of the Top 5 Indie Games of EGX Rezzed! (Skip to 2 minutes 5 seconds for Radial-G)

and then a preview of the current Steam Early Access version of the game:

Now we aren’t the only ones starting out in the world of indie games so we’re more than happy to help others and give exclusive video interviews to help boost their own reach, this time with JJKM:

Here’s a glowing review from FV:Review who became instant fans of the game. Just goes to show being able to talk direct to people pays off

Time for another podcast discussing games from EGX Rezzed, this one from the guys over at Big Red Barrel, where they have indie legend Rami Ismail as special guest as well (skip to 01:05:30 for Radial-G)

Another Podcast “Taste My Game Face” talks about their experience in VR at EGX Rezzed too and how the game is a system seller! (skip to 18:45 for the game discussion)

We had a great time chatting to Cazza Gaming on the day and did a follow-up interview with him afterwards, which you can watch below:

So a massive thank you to everyone who has covered the game and our appearance at EGX Rezzed. If you have written an article or recorded a video, let us know and we’ll add it above! See you all soon at the next event!

Steam Early Access – Update#1 Live!

 

We’ve just pushed out Update#1 to the game, which includes the following new features and content: 

  • 3rd-person camera view! Press LEFT BUMPER or C to change your camera view point once in a race (NB. This is only for non-VR users) 
  • 2 new race tracks added; Möbius Delta and Dead Zone Alpha 
  • 2 new music tracks added; Buzzooka and Rush by LabGrownMusic and Dan Page to accompany the new race tracks 
  • Multi-player lobby text chat; settle rivalries from the last race, or apologise for that particularly nasty bit of racing or just get the banter going (non-VR/VR modes supported) 
  • Track selection screen now shows first iteration of the track layout overlay 
  • Change your race craft from the race lobby; no more going back to the main menu screen! 
  • Split times; now you can see how far ahead, or behind, you are 
  • Changes to race track names: Asteroid Sprint is now Möbius Alpha, Dead Zone is now Dead Zone Delta, Processing Plant is now Processing Plant Delta. Alpha = Short, Theta = Medium, Delta = Long 
  • Volume levels and controls customisable in race lobby 
  • Various fixes, tweaks and improvements to multi-player, game code and engine stability

We hope you enjoy the new additions and changes. The next update will be coming in a few weeks to add more race tracks, more music tracks and possibly the following features: Speed classes, player ranking, leaderboards and more tweaks to the game mechanics. If you haven’t already, get the game now!

Radial-G on TV and in the printed press

It’s been a busy week for Radial-G as we’re working towards opening the closed alpha test for multiplayer to those who have responded to our call to arms.

In the meantime, harking back to July when we attended “VR in a Bar” at Loading Bar in Dalston, London, we were featured in the Welsh TV channel S4C show “Y Ile” who were there filming. You can watch the English-subtitled version of the show over on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPzi_K1JLdg

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Then over the weekend we discovered that GamesTM had run an article on Oculus Rift gaming and listed Radial-G as one of the Top 5 Best VR Experiences! Check it out below and be sure to pick up a copy to preserve our first-printed-press milestone!

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YouTubers’ Let’s Play Videos

We can tell you until we’re blue in the face how much fun Radial-G : Racing Revolved is to play, but we’re the developers so why take our word for it!?

Why not watch these YouTubers doing Let’s Play videos, with feeds of themselves as they play, having lots of fun and showing the sheer joy and excitement of the game instead? (NFSW language in some!)

Yogscast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjglBbe-ckM

RockOn1m1 🙂 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VKNpc2glOg

emart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2NVbUApdYs

Cymatic Bruce: http://youtu.be/Fxjw-OfoLz0?t=41m52s

eVRrydayVR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XObDA1nsL38

Pure VR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTYgjNAFgBA

Oculus Rifter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSfawny7aF4

BroganGames1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CSV5-_Qfps

ScottofEngland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivjr8EUAKu4

TrevorTheHyena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=951f5sMKlak

VR Brotherhood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAaQgV0G-L4

GetRift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgz3dllgIwk

Andy Mayer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTRZC1pseww

Rob Plays That Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXIweqmkNm8

Stereo3DProductions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy3jtNZl67Q

Unnecessary Pixels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjOUydCcUo0

Thanks for watching!

NB. Videos that refer to the Kickstarter: The Kickstarter campaign is no longer running.