VRodeo: 08: Robo Recall, Smashbox Arena, and More

With the lack of employees, Jeff cloned himself in VR.

I was afraid this feature was done for. Glad to see more VR craziness!

Finally. Just in time for lunch.

im makin pancakes, im makin pancakes and then i watchin this video!

I love Matt Rorie! ughkkk i hope he puts the headset on.

There are some PSVR games they missed like Eagle Flight and Robinson the Journey. Are the guys done with PSVR? The last update fixed some tracking issues.

Smashbox?

Matt Rorie is a mad scientist type, I mean that in a good way. He always seems so hyper, must be the caffeine drinks. Always makes me laugh. :p

Jeff throwing things in VR makes me laugh every time.

The robots in Robo Recall remind me a whole lot of the robots from that Adam demo for Unity 5. Epic throwing shade?

Robo Recall looks fucking rrrraaaaddddd

Looks like you can live out all of your Reaper fantasies in Robo Recall with those shotguns.

I just don't think it's fair to keep saying there's not much happening in VR. Newer, longer, bigger, better games are coming out every day. Jeff is the only one at GB with VR and he's not been playing it much but that doesn't mean NOBODY is playing or releasing games. There's so much to see, this VRodeo format is long overdue to be put to rest, and VR quick looks should be happening left and right, but, I understand, there's not enough manpower or time to support that kind of appropriate coverage.

I just NEED you guys to stop saying that VR games aren't coming out, just because you're not playing them.

Handibot sucks now. Bring back the old handibot.

@carpe_dmt: I think the consensus is that substantial VR games aren't coming out. There definitely is a steady stream of experiences being released but most of that is just novelty showcases.

I didn't realize how much I don't need "90s announcer guy" back until that Robo Recall segment. I know they were probably going for the "fun, cheesy throwback" thing there, but it's just grating to me. Which sucks, because Robo Recall otherwise seems awesome.

Bring on the Jeffu army!

@humanity: Substantial is a subjective thing. It's a fair conclusion if you've given everything a shot, and they don't have time to do that. I get it. But it's your, and others', perspective regarding the majority of content still being "novelty showcases" that's damning to their coverage. Steam is shovelware city already, and yes, a lot of VR content falls in line. But there's a lot of 'approaching' AAA games of sincere substance, or at least, considerably improved substance / improved novelty, that they've never glanced at because they don't have the time. I'm talking older stuff here, too. Games like Arizona Sunshine, Damaged Core, and VR Sports Challenge came that came out as far back as September get no coverage because of the constraint of this format.

And while the medium is still bogged down by a majority of short form novelty content, a lot of that content is now exhibiting a crazy level of polish. Games like Mission ISS and John Wick VR don't last long but they're gorgeous experiences. And that's not even to mention the truly low-budget alpha stuff like Climbey or Pavlov which have huge merit in terms of novel gameplay / movement worthy of a full quick-look.

But you guys are right to maintain the perspective of "There's just not that much long-form substance" because that's the perspective the GB guys are propagating. And again, that's a subjective perspective - but it's not a reasonable one to project if they don't have the time or the resources to really know for sure.

I like watching the duders mess around with vr, but other than that is just seems so unimpressive.

I emailed about the status of VRodeo a week or two ago. Thank you for doing another episode (even though I'm sure I had nothing to do with it...)! As a recent purchaser of a Vive, these videos are hysterical and very useful to me.

Cheers and I look forward to hopefully another VRodeo episode in another month or two.

How many is too many when it comes to VR games where you shoot robots with firearms?

oh right! VR! almost forgot it existed for a while there

I haven't finished the video yet, but it sounds like they didn't touch on Epic's awesome business practices, did they? Epic made the entirety of RoboRecall's code open to public. This will allow, modability, better Vive integration to overcome Facebook's scummy business policies, and also let fellow developers see what they did (since there is a LOT they're doing right in RoboRecall).

Apparently you can get Robo Recall (or part of it?) for free on Epic's game client/store thing. I'm not sure if this is still possible though. Might be interesting for Vive users.

Almost forgot my self. This video seems like more of the same we have seen a hundred times already. Now back to forgetting about VR.

@carpe_dmt:

But, how many of the VR games that ARE coming out shooter galleries? Even Robo Recall, for as cool as it looks is STILL a shooter gallery.

@avioto: I've got an oculus so I don't know for sure but essentially I think you can download the mod kit for UDK4 which also comes with all the games' assets and levels. You can make a 'mod' that's basically just the game and then play that, in test mode, to play the game for free on a vive.

"Heard people really like superhot" *proceed to make Robo Recall*.

Man that game looks cool.

@vicious17: I'd actually say that the primary genre of shovelware VR currently on steam is the 'escape the room' game. There's a few companys pumping out a new 'room' every couple of days and it's overtaken the shooting galleries, though they still remain THE VAST MAJORITY, because it's the easiest kind of game to make and, just like any genre of game, people will make whatever is easy and then shovel games onto steam of that type. And just like any genre of game you need to take some time to mine that shit-pile for gold, Drew talked on the bombcast about how hard it was to comb through the steam releases every week and VR is no different. But just like that steaming indie pixel art shitpile, the majority of the worthwhile games deviate from the norm. None of the games I mentioned above are 'shooting galleries' any more than any shooter campaign is a 'shooting gallery'.

Okay I guess damaged core is basically the most like a shooting gallery, and Arizona sunshine is a first person shooter campaign in which you shoot zombies, and Pavlov is basically counter-strike in VR, so while you're shooting other people, you're still shooting...And john Wick VR is literally just a shooting gallery...

Well, look. So I definitely didn't pick the best indication of the trend away from shooting galleries. But those games are also hella old, there's so much more than just shooting in VR these days, even as mentioned above. Climbey's a great example, it's a game in which you just climb and run around - which is novel strictly in terms of its' control schemes, which feature things like rorie explained in which you swing your arms to run and 'grab' the air and throw yourself around to 'jump' over crevaces and grab ledges and shit, it's very interesting, and very nauseating. Different from "The Climb" although that deserves another look now that it has Touch support. Mission ISS is also hell of awesome in terms of navigation, and also hell of nauseating. It's a very polished recreation of the international space station, in which you can do that thing what astronauts do, throwing yourself around and catching ketchup and such, as you explore and do experiments and learn about space. If you started shooting shit up there it'd be pretty rad but they don't go there. VR sports challenge is like Wii sports for VR but a lot better polished, so no shooting there.

I could go on for ages about other games I didn't mention, and then there's 'games' like anyland and pantheon in which you just make stuff and teleport to other worlds where people have made stuff and you shout at each other, which sounds dumb but defies explanation or genre confinement. VR's strengths have always been in deviating from the norm, and that deviation will only continue to increase and those experiences will only improve. LESS VRodeo makes no sense, unless we get our first VR quick look some time soon, and sadly I still think we're a far cry from that. GB's coverage of VR will likely continue to languish in this format, which will always contribute to games feeling short-form or lacking in substance because there's always a pressure to move on to the next thing.

I don't think they have the time/manpower to do it but I'd love to see the VRodeo's done in mixed reality. I've watched tribal instincts videos on it and it adds quite a lot to watching someone play VR.

*Damn*, Robo Recall looks fun. Since it'll never come to PSVR, I hope someone makes something similar for it, with the Bulletstorm-esque combo system and such. Say what you will about all the shooting gallery games in VR, but it's a great genre for the tech. I've always liked lightgun rail shooters, though, so I'm admittedly more forgiving of the proliferation.

@shagge: Speaking of light gun games in VR, New Retro Arcade is an 'arcade emulator' in which you can deisgn all the cabinets and place whatever MAME games you want in there - They played a bit of it without VR support on an unprofessional fridays way back before it was officially release, it's interesting - But more interesting is their 'emulation' of actual light gun games. You 'walk up' to this cabinet and pull out that lightgun and go, and It's FUCKING weird to play time crisis with a nintendo zapper in an arcade in your head.

When I got my Vive I used these VRodeos to decide what I wanted to buy. You guys should check out climby (not a shooter!) and Sairento, both are pretty great games. There is also a sub simulator (IronWolf VR) that is suppose to be pretty good but I haven't played it myself and the Paranormal Activity game which has mixed reviews.

Robo Recall is pretty fun and will be much better when they patch the teleportation method to work better with a 360 setup. Right now it treats everyone like they have a 180 setup and its super awful and disorienting. The mods out there right now are pretty cool too.

They added cross-platform co-op between the VR and non VR versions of Serious Sam the First Encounter which I haven't tried yet but sounds awesome.

This video has a serious lack of Racket NX. Super awesome game for Vive!

Edit: And it's not a gallery shooter so that helps.

lol vr

@slyspider: @big_denim: @yodalong: There's a LOT of games they've missed since the get with this format of video, and even the games they cover they barely cover - Onward comes to mind, they tried to get in a game, couldn't, and just moved on, espousing the lack of games running in multiplayer games (even though there were plenty of games running, the game was just glitched) intending to give this 'a longer look' but never did and never will.

Robo Recall is my favorite game in VR right now. It's fantastic.

Fun tips:

1. Shotguns can be held with one or two hands, but if held with 2 and the second support hand pumps the action 2x, it fires all 3 shells at once and does more damage (though it empties out the gun in a single shot too).
2. Almost any non-bipedal robot has a secondary function when "grabbed" by the player. If you grab the "flying drone bot," the gun on it can be used by the player directly via the pistol trigger as a hand-held beam laser weapon that charges and fires until it runs out of ammo and explodes while "Spider-bots" can be grabbed and thrown like grenades, etc.

Im pretty sure Rorie let out a absolute huge fart at 37:04

The resolution they output for external monitoring is lower than the in-game resolution. That's why it looked "fuzzy" to Rorie and Brad.

@jdp83: I think it'll be the first game I break down and purchase from Oculus. I generally have taken the stance of avoiding those games on principle, but this game looks pretty awesome.

Man that dude at 54:57. Poor guy, no mercy from Jeff.

The only slightly confusing bit is when you teleport.

I figured it out after a few minutes, but it's not necessarily perfectly intuitive.

When you teleport, the "arrow" direction pointing does change your orientation, but it does not mean that you will necessarily be oriented in that exact direction from where you're currently looking...

It actually teleports you and reorients based on where "forward" will be, with respect to "forward" being "facing the Oculus sensors."

Though this is not necessarily as intuitive (and not an issue with Vive, because of how the lighthouse sensors surround from all potential sides, while the Oculus cameras only accurately detect from something more like 180 degrees), it is a way to constantly re-orient the user in such a way that they are encouraged to PHYSICALLY reorient themselves in the real world to face the actual hardware... even when in the virtual world it may feel like it's not "correct" and that wherever the arrow is facing should be where you're facing, even if in the PHYSICAL world, you are looking 90 degrees left from the Oculus sensors...

Does that make sense? If not, play the game and you'll learn what I mean...

@26:27-ish, see, Jeff teleported thinking the arrow would make him teleport and have his CURRENT facing direction become "forward" in VR... but instead, they made it so the "forward" direction in VR matched the actual PHYSICAL "forward" direction in reality.

They need you to face the sensors all the time so when teleporting they reset the forward virtual : forward actual orientation to be 1:1 with the direction the actual sensors are.

Again, due to the limited field of view 2 Oculus sensors have compared to the 2 lighthouse sensors from the Vive have, they need you to be oriented so that they can keep proper tracking of the controllers and more accurate head-tracking.

@jdp83: It makes sense why they do this though since not all users have a roomscale set up. Otherwise if a seated 2 camera user is looking to their right and then warps and redirects to the right again it would cause them to turn around completely away from the cameras which is when tracking can get wonky on the Oculus (from what I've heard).

Seems easy enough for them to patch something in that gives the user a setting on how they prefer it to work though. That way roomscale users can warp the way they'd expect it work.

Also, regarding the "upgrade tokens" in Robo Recall, Jeff did "unlock" the laser attachment for the pistol, but he didn't fully equip it to the pistol.

The way they do this is actually pretty cool:

They let you choose between interacting with the guns and the attachments themselves (aka "diagetic" UI) OR press a button to equip and unequip attachments to a gun. The interface auto-adapts based on which action you take.

Either way, this set of user actions is still just the "gun setup" portion of the weapon assignment. After setting a gun up the way you want with attachments, you grab the floating gun with the attachments you want and then "assign" it to slots by placing it in the floating window that appear to your sides - pistols, rifles, and shotguns...

So if you want your right-hip holster to have the revolver (once it's unlocked), you go to guns, pick the revolver, customize it, then grab it out of the air and put it in the floating window to the right.

Then the new "custom" gun is equipped in that holster.

The game automatically decides whether or not it's a hip holster gun or a back holster gun, so you can only equip the gun types that can be equipped to that type of slot - over-the-back or hip holsters.

how many shooting gallery are in this Vrodeo....

sigh

The Oculus Rift has terrible god rays; have they ever talked about it?

I think since GB had issues on the first day getting it to work well both in the studio and at home they pretty much gave up on it so yeah there has been a bunch of stuff that could have been part of the rodeos like you said Eagle flight, Robinson the journey are ones they could have looked at, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is another that is pretty fun.

Since the update came out Jeff has said he wants to get back into PSVR so hopefully that will happen and they add some PSVR stuff to the next rodeo.

VR heaven! More like...V....Vralhalla...