VR: Under a Desert Sun - Gear
Hi everyone,

Just a small update but a relevant one. I've added an option that turns of the bloody camera view when hit. Some users requested this. Default the option is on but you can turn it off in the settings in game.



Kind regards,
Raymond
Aug 3, 2020
VR: Under a Desert Sun - Gear
Hi there,

I am very happy to announce that this is the last alpha post. This means that after this update Under a Desert Sun will enter beta phase. Just to recap:

For Under a Desert Sun I try and work in 3 main phases:
  1. Alpha phase, in this I create functionality and test it by implementing it in wavemaps or test maps. The wave maps will stay as a separate mode when the game is finished next to the singleplayer
  2. Beta phase, will focus on creating the singleplayer and narrative
  3. Pollish phase, an extensive bug fix and pollish period where we make sure everything works optimally and performance is improved as much as possible.

In this post I want to do two things,
  1. Mention the changes in this particular patch
  2. Recap all the things that are now available in beta

Changes and additions In this last alpha update
Updated weapon behaviour
  • Colt1911 is now manual reload
  • Improved manual reload on most weapons
  • Fixed Colt, Luger and Bar ammo clip drop bug. They would pop trough gun geometry sometimes.
  • Fixed bolting bug where you can pull bolt further then it should go.
Updated the tutorial level
  • All tutorials have new movies that better depict how the current guns work
  • Added tutorial text and movies on enemy stagger and melee weapons
Flight mechanics
  • Guns for player and enemies now work
  • You can dogfight enemies, enemies respawn after being destroyed
  • Hands animate when grabbing stick and throttle

Alpha recap
The alpha phase is there so I can make and test many mechanics that I will use in the singleplayer. Basically I've worked on an entire “adventure game” template which I can now use to make the singleplayer. You, the player, have helped me enormously by testing these mechanics in the wave maps and test maps available in the current early access.

Game mechanics
I’ve made a whole bunch of standard game mechanics ready to be used in game. These are things such as:
  • Health indicators
  • Hit behaviour
  • Highlighters for dynamic objects
  • Animation and sound behaviours
  • Sound, Particle and animation triggers
  • Level switch triggers
  • Menu settings
  • Physics and collision behaviour for movement and hands



Basically many of the things you need for an VR adventure game that are not standard implemented in Unity.

Weapons
I’ve implemented fully controllable melee and projectile weapons.
All weapons can be controlled by your VR controllers
Melee


Blades and knives that damage the enemy
  • You can stab and leave them in enemies
  • You can throw them into enemies
  • Ofcourse you can slash away as well!

Projectile



  • You can shoot guns that have impact on surfaces and of course enemies
  • Almost all weapons are manual reload meaning that when a weapon does not have a bullet in the chamber you manually have to reload it.
  • You can use weapons to bash some off the enemies, they will stagger


Enemies





I’ve made several enemy templates allowing me to make:
  • Living enemies that shoot guns
  • Undead enemies that have typical zombie behaviour
  • Undead enemies that are faster and more agile


Flight mechanics

  • I’ve made sure that you can fly a plane and fight enemy planes.
  • Fully controllable airplane
  • Airplane projectiles/guns
  • Crash mechanics
  • Damage mechanics

Friendly AI

I’ve implemented a friendly companion in the form of a dog. It auto attacks enemies and is ready to get more functionality like being able to go to and pick up specific things.

Lots of content ready to be used



Lastly, you see that I have purchased or made lots of content. All assets such as buildings, guns, enemies, sounds, music and a whole bunch of other things I’ve purchased for use in the singleplayer. The range of things is quite broad but basically I have all the necessary things to make a first singleplayer chapter from desert environments to rainy city scapes with a 1940’s vibe.

I am sure I didn't mention everything I did in the last three years but I hope this gives an idea of the scope of the entire alpha. Personally I am quite happy what I have achieved so far as a lone developer doing this next to his full time job ;) And now we go onward towards the beta! Will post soon when I've got some things to show.

Discord
Don’t forget the discord channel. Any feedback is greatly appreciated! The discord: https://discord.gg/g5fK7Df

Roadmap
Also don’t forget the Under a Desert Sun roadmap. You can find it here: https://trello.com/b/CEDvwMAb/under-a-desert-sun

Be safe everyone and kind regards,
Raymond
VR: Under a Desert Sun - Gear
Hi everyone,

As you know I have started adding graphic settings to the menu. I've finalized this with this update adding the following to the settings:

  • Resolution scale, effects sharpness
  • Anti Aliasing, effects border sharpness
  • Texture quality, the resolution and sharpness of the textures
  • Bloom, post processing effect to add a haze around lighting and glimmer
  • Ambient occlusion, post processing effect to add small shadows in corners and closely spaced objects

All settings have an effect on performance. You can go all high settings and give your PC a serious workout or go full potato mode for smoothness. Anything in between is also possible:
Potato Mode:


High mode:


Comparison(High/Potato):


It is my hope that these options make my game playable for a wide range of systems.

As always comments and suggestions are very welcome in the discord:
Under a Desert Sun Discord

Kind regards,
Raymond
VR: Under a Desert Sun - Gear
Hi there,

As most of you know I am working on finishing the alpha state of the game. Meaning pretty soon we'll be going into beta which will focus more on making the single-player story.

In this update I've added some finishing touches on:

The dog!




The dog is now with you most of the time. It will attack and distract enemies.
I plan on making it do more and add to it's behaviours as the single-player needs. Ideas are welcome in the discord!

I've made a small trailer for this that you can see on the main page!

Melee
As you know I have added several melee features over time. The following have been added:
Melee weapons



Being able to throw the pointy things!



Being able to bash enemies with guns and shields, which makes them stagger!




Graphics
I've noticed the game is getting a but heavier now I add more things to the game. I thought it wise to start adding options for graphics so people can tweak the game. I've added the following post processing options which you can toggle:
  • Anti Aliasing
  • Bloom
  • Ambient occlusion

I plan on adding some more options, each option takes quite a bit of testing so this will happen over time.

Fixes:
  • I've made sure that some hand animation bugs no longer occur
  • I've made sure the flight level works again, controls were bugged after an update
  • Lots of small improvements

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: Roadmap

Be safe everyone and kind regards,
Raymond
VR: Under a Desert Sun - Gear
Hi there,

I still hope everyone is safe, well and 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 measures

Please keep in mind that some measures are specific to my country, the Netherlands.

Improved animations and physics behaviour
With the addition of melee I noticed that I wanted to give all my enemies a bit more flare. So I am updating a lot of the animations of the enemies. This way they get more character and look more diverse. I’ll be adding this in a few updates as I improve. But below you can see some examples of the improvement in my development map(Special map where I test behaviours). All of the stuff you see below is now live in the game! So go try it out!

In addition to animations I use some more complex physics behaviour to make enemies have more diverse reactions to getting hit by an object. Also visible in some of the gifs below.

Improved undead



Improved swarmers


Improved soldiers


Mummies




Discord
Don’t forget the discord channel. Any feedback is greatly appreciated! The discord: Under a Desert Sun Discord

Roadmap
Also don’t forget the Under a Desert Sun roadmap. You can find it here: Under a Desert Sun Roadmap

Be safe everyone and kind regards,
Raymond
VR: Under a Desert Sun - Gear
Hi there,

I still hope everyone is safe, well and 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 info

Please keep in mind that some measures are specific to my country, the Netherlands.

This update has one focus. Melee combat. Before I go into the details I want to reiterate the plan for Under a Desert Sun real quick.

Alpha, Beta, Pre-production
Under a Desert Sun’s development knows three main phases:
  1. Alpha, we build functionality and test it using wavemaps and other test maps. The functionality will be used in the singleplayer and the wave maps will stay as a seperate game mode.
  2. Beta, story and singleplayer focus. Building of the maps and creating cinematic stuff
  3. Pre-production, polishing all the elements of the game

As mentioned before with these last bits of functionality the game will soon go into beta. I will spend a seperate update on this once we start with beta explaining the details. And now...

MELEE

I wanted to add certain forms of melee combat before going into beta. The main reason being that I find VR fun because you can interact with the world. I wanted to make sure that you’d be able to grab certain objects to shield you from damage and to do damage with yourself. THis first version of melee combat contains the following:



  • Melee weapons that you can use to hit enemies
  • You can stab and stick melee weapons in enemies
  • Melee weapons can be thrown to do a lot of damage
  • Shields that shield you from damage.

I have added melee weapons to:
The tutorial area with explanations:


The desert day and night maps:


The idea is that I now have functionality that can make any object a shield or weapon. So in the future you might find less conventional shields and weapons in the game. For now, try them out and come give some feedback in the discord!

Small stuff

I improved the LvlCube table. In my opionion it was quite messy and now it is easier to see that if you're new it's best to start with the tutorial level.

Discord
Don’t forget the discord channel. Any feedback is greatly appreciated! The discord: Under a Desert Sun Discord

Roadmap
Also don’t forget the Under a Desert Sun roadmap. You can find it here: Under a Desert Sun Roadmap

Be safe everyone and kind regards,
Raymond
VR: Under a Desert Sun - Gear
Hi everyone,

As always I want to keep people posted on what I am working on right now. With hand physics out of the way after a few patches I now have time to work on some of the final stuff before we go from alpha to beta. I also am working on the singplayer maps.

Singleplayer map progress


The above images are from the singleplayer early on in the first chapter.

Melee weapons




As a last addition to player functionality that you will be able to test in the "testwave" maps I want to add melee weapons and shields. I figured it would be logical and just downright cool if you can use melee weapons that lay around as well as the guns that are already in the game. Maybe even pick up a shield and use a handgun captain America style.

As you can see in the image, I have enough weapons to choose from to make this work. I already have a prototype working. THis is a bit to buggy yet. As soon as it works a bit better I will post progress ofcourse!

Kind regards.
Raymond

VR: Under a Desert Sun - Gear
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:
  1. Realistic hand behavior, I wanted the hands to react to the world.
  2. Flying improvements, more work on making flying fun and enemies fun to play with
  3. 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:Trello

Be safe everyone and kind regards,
Raymond
VR: Under a Desert Sun - Gear
Hi everyone

I hope everyone is safe and well. I wanted to keep everyone up to date on what I am working on for the next update. Currently I am mainly working on Three topics Singleplayer, Physics for hands and the airplane mechanics.

Singleplayer,

I am working on the flow of the first chapter of the singleplayer. Above a small image of a new map I am working on.

Physics for hands




I've worked on the hands in Under A Desert Sun with the result that they now no longer go trough walls. As you can see in the examples the fingers behave realistically when you touch a surface as well. I think this adds greatly to the immersion of the game and the difference is very noticeable compared to the old method where hands could freely move trough walls.

Airplane

I've worked on better airplane gauges. You now have several meters and such that give a more realistic few of speed, rpm, artificial horizon etc. I also added a enemy targeter because it's just handy to have. Before anyone starts..nooooo ...this is not super airplane sim accurate... I know.. but it serves the purpose of what I have planned for the singleplayer nicely.

I also added more enemies which will try and shoot you. You'll notice that they now keep more distance to you. In the first builds they would simply try and crash into you.

All these things and more will be released in Under a Desert Sun alpha 0.9.

Discord
If you like what you see. Found bugs during this early access phase or just would like to talk and mention ideas for the future of my game, we have a discord!:https://discord.gg/g5fK7Df

Kind regards,
Raymond
VR: Under a Desert Sun - Gear

Hi there,

First off all I hope everyone is well and 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: CoronaVirusInfo

Please keep in mind that some measures are specific to my country, the Netherlands.

In this update I've added

- Update on the flight-model, you can now shoot bullets and the AI shoots at you(Work in progress) so expect some bugs. If you try this feedback is welcome, please don't see it as finished.
-Added more realistic Rpm and Speed gauges
- Added a - not so realistic but handy - enemy indicator
- you now have 3 enemies following you and shooting.
- Please keep in mind that enemy bullets and your own bullets don't do damage yet!
Working on it!! So if you test this, it's purely info on how it all feels that I need.

Improvements and fixes

- Climbing has been improved, try it in the tomb test level
- Falling bug, you now always fall and can't get stuck flying when descending stairs
- Shotgun shells backwards, they are now correct
- Invisible enemy bug in city map solved
- Occlusion bug in desert wave maps solved
- Overall stability improvements

With these fixes i'm going to leave Under a Desert Sun Alpha 0.8 and start working on the next big update. In this I'd like to work on the first full narrative level and further addition of game mechanics.

Discord
Don’t forget the discord channel. Any feedback is greatly appreciated! The discord: https://discord.gg/g5fK7Df

Roadmap
Also don’t forget the Under a Desert Sun roadmap. You can find it here: https://trello.com/b/CEDvwMAb/under-a-desert-sun

Be safe everyone and kind regards,
Raymond
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