With the first STIM playtest concluded we've already been hard at work making changes, and adding new features!

Thanks to the feedback we received during the playtest we've already made quite a few changes. 

Firstly, the game now features a line renderer that highlights the exact item that the player character will attempt to bring into their hand, while also making it so that the player can "force grab" the objects towards them. Originally we had a Half-Life Alyx flicking gravity gloves style that caused quite a bit of confusion among players who were new to VR gaming as a whole. This should help remedy any confusion these players originally had and make the experience more fluid as in general.

Secondly, a small change that was made to in-game UI was the inclusion of physical buttons that are pressed when the player places their hand against them. We added this for a similar reason to the first change discussed in this post, players found it difficult to understand that certain UI elements were interactable and could be used to access different in-game features. We added these buttons to make it more clear what could be interacted with and hopefully add a bit of a better feeling user experience when it comes to interacting with the game world.

Thirdly, the radio has been adjusted to have a volume setting, so the player can manually adjust the volume of their selected channel.

Lastly, a fun little addition to the player's ship in your very own shooting range! Because who doesn't love a way to ease your itchy trigger finger? The shooting gallery features a range of targets that can be shot, destroyed and reset using a button on your right, and the button to your left spawns a moving target for a bit of extra challenge. Also, the player's handy sidearm will now respawn back on their hip holster when dropped, so no more having to run back to the ship for a replacement!

For the future we plan on having more weapon types to play around with, and with that could come more changes to the shooting range too. We could even have a few shooting challenges/exercises the player can partake in to win fun prizes!

Very soon, within the next few weeks, we should have a vertical slice of STIM, something we hope will truly help us showcase our idea to everyone. Theres a lot of work to be done and plans for the future, and we'll keep everyone updated on our development journey. 

Thank you all for reading, and stay tuned for more updates to come!

Ciao! - StimTraders