Playtest 6 Post Mortem, Flatscreen Redesign - Devlog 27/07

Playtest 6 has finally ended, after a whole week of burgling! Hope you guys had a chance to play, let me know in the comments or discord if you have suggestions or questions about the latest build. In this post I'll go over how the test went, and then talk a bit about the new direction I'm taking with the non VR version of the game.

Playtest 6 - How did it go?

It went very well! Since the test was part of Steam's VR Fest, we got a lot of new eyes on the game from Steam itself, which is rare but appreciated. There were around 4.5k wishlists from the playtest in total, which is a huge number for a single event. Here's the wishlist graph from the playtest, which started with that large peak on July 18th. This is quite typical with the playtests, the first day is always the most busy no matter which day it launched on.

Daily wishlists during the past 30 days, covering the playtest period from 18th July to 25th July.

You can see the playtest in context here, with this cumulative graph. The 4.5k wishlists from this test represents around a 13% increase in current total wishlists.

The discord server also grew by around 1000 people, many of which were invited by friends already in the server to play together. So, all in all it was a very successful playtest! Based on feedback, it did also highlight a few major areas in which the game needs improvement. These areas are Networking, Flatscreen mode, and Performance. Now that I have a solid idea of the scope of the game, and what people want to see from it, it's time to rework a lot of the systems to be more robust and easy to use.

Flatscreen Overhaul

To start off this process, I've been thinking about new systems for movement in non VR. The movement has always felt clunky compared to VR mode, especially the climbing, and vaulting over short objects. To fix the climbing side of things, I've implemented an auto-climb feature, which means that flatscreen players no longer have to select each point they point their hands on. Instead, they'll just point where they want to go, and move there. Hands are placed automatically if there are valid nearby climbables. 

The first implementation of autoclimb in action. There is still a bit of hand jank which needs to be fixed.

The start of the climb is the same as before, and still needs to be made easier (there will be a larger hitbox for climbable so you don't need to accurately click on them). Notice how after starting the climb, the player doesn't need to click or press anything again. Hands are placed automatically on the rope line, and will seamlessly transition to grabbing the roof edge as well.

This system will hopefully bring the flatscreen climbing experience closer in line to VR mode, and make it less clunky to get around. I'm also intending on adding support for quick-climbing or vaulting, in cases where there is an obstacle of fence or waist height respectively. This will mimic how players can quickly climb over single obstacles in VR mode by grabbing and pulling themselves over. I'm interested in thoughts on these systems, so let me know in the comments!

Twitch

Also as a last note, I'm hoping to do more regular twitch dev streams going forward, on Mondays and Thursdays around 2PM Eastern. Remember if you send me your twitch username in patreon chat, I'll give you a VIP role in the chat for being an early supporter!