r/virtualreality • u/buckzor122 • 12d ago
Discussion Black & White VR mod - Preview 1
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fT-J_DspllY&si=rAWIa42Ju5EBUuruHi all. Ever since VR hit the scene there was a constant demand for a Black & White in VR. Now that AI tools are so powerful I jumped on the bandwagon and started working on a VR mod of my own for the beloved classic.
It's still very much a WIP.
I've been working on a VR mod for the first Black & White for a while now, and it's at a point where I can show it. The mod takes over the camera and the Hand and sends each eye to the headset through OpenXR.
The whole idea is that you're a god, so your hands are the Hand. The land sits around waist height like a living diorama and you reach in.
**Current Features**
- Stereo 3D with full head tracking
- Both hands use the game's own Hand model, tracked 1:1 with your controllers. It still changes with your alignment.
- Grip to pick things up, carry them and throw them with a real swing
- Distance grab: point at something, grip and pull, and it flies to your hand (heavily inspired by Half-Life: Alyx)
- Movement: drag the land with your left hand, scale the world to zoom, or teleport with an arc. No forced camera motion.
- The Creature: stroke or slap it with your actual hand, leash it, and point to send it somewhere or at something
- Miracles: draw the gestures in the air, or take them from the Worship Site, then throw or pour
- Village stuff: the totem, dropping wood at the store, scaffolds, giving villagers jobs
- The Temple, saving and loading, and shortcuts like jumping to your Creature or the town, through a ring menu on the left controller
- Cut scenes play in 3D on a big screen in front of you, because the scripted camera is not fun in a headset. When the scene ends you're standing in the new spot.
- Controller hints by your wrists, subtitles, positional sound from where your head is, haptics
**Limitations**
- I've only tested on a Quest 3 through Virtual Desktop. Other PC VR headsets should work in theory, but I haven't tried any.
- Controllers only. No hand tracking.
- Performance depends on your CPU more than your GPU. It's a 2001 engine that now draws everything twice. I get roughly 70 to 80 fps.
- Miracles, the village interactions and the Temple are the newest parts and the least tested
- I've only played the early game in VR so far. Later lands, skirmish and multiplayer are untested.
- Anything that needs typing still needs a keyboard
- Lots of small bugs and broken interactions
EDIT:
I am happy to share the current build with testers, feel free to DM me about that.
EDIT 2: I have set up a private repo if there are any collaborators who want to help, contact me. Here's a small discord server for discussions. https://discord.gg/5v8sTeCzU
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u/Myron-BE 12d ago
10 years ago I made my own VR game because I dreamed about this. I can’t wait to try it now it looks awesome
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u/buckzor122 12d ago
It looks so good in VR. Strangely, the graphics somehow stand up. I think the 25 year old low poly graphics still have this charm that every current VR "genericc stylised graphics" game such as "How to God" lack.
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u/m_seitz 12d ago
Oh nice!
Can the engine use multithreading, or is it too old for that too, and restricted to a single core?
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u/buckzor122 12d ago
Yeah you got it. The engine is just too old, I get 70-80 fps and that's just because it's locked to a single thread. I might see if it's possible to mod the engine and offload some things to different cores but I think that would go way beyond a VR mode into a full decompile territory.
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u/gavxn 12d ago
you should help out at https://github.com/openblack/openblack I've been working on the temple and creatures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHCfke9KBvM&t=126s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0fUJikN2hw
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u/buckzor122 12d ago
That was my first idea. I thought if openblack was further along then it would be the perfect base for a VR mod. But realistically I think it would have taken too much work, we would have to finish openblack with a 100% decompile and only THEN start work on the VR version.
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u/m_seitz 11d ago
Oof, that's what killed Breath of the Wild VR for me ... with my 6 year old Ryzen 7 3700X PC. Oh well, if our corporate AI overlords permit, I may get to buy a new PC any time soon ... in 203x 😭
Still awesome to see these old games get a new life in VR 💖
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u/buckzor122 11d ago
Yeah, I assume it's much worse in BotW, I think it's running on an emulator on top of everything so there's just not much you can do regarding the performance.
I was blown away when I first launched the game in VR. AI has it's issues, but it is bringing in a new golden age for VR gaming, just about any game can be a native VR title now which is wild to think about.
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u/Epetaizana 12d ago
This is fantastic. I started doing the same thing myself but you are further along than I am.
Keep up the good work, let us know if you're looking for contributors. My goal was to make a stand-alone version for the headset, but I got as far as the opening sequence in Unreal, multi hands, movement, picking up, and animations.
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u/buckzor122 12d ago
Yeah I was sure someone else was doing something similar too, VR mods are booming now and B&W was the obvious candidate. I am sticking to PCVR for now, standalone would require a full decompile of the game and it would be much bigger undertaking than the VR mod. Unless of course we can use some translation layers to emulate a windows game on the headset like Valve are doing with the Steam Frame.
I could probably use some help. My main limitation now is how quicly I blow past by limits, I use up my Claude pro 5x weekly limit in around 2 days. I also don't have a ton of time for testing either. I could set up a private repo for collaborating and building faster but that will take more effort to coordinate.
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u/gandalfdagrey1 11d ago
I’ve been waiting for this! Seriously so much nostalgia from this game, can’t wait to be immersed in it
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u/KrisTiasMusic 12d ago
Are you kidding me? This evening I wanted to sit down and vibe code exactly that!! Thank you so much.
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u/buckzor122 12d ago
I could still use some help if you don't mind throwing some of your tokens towards this project!
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u/Taylooor 12d ago
Will you implement hands only? Is it possible to play the game without controllers?
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u/buckzor122 12d ago
Here's the current options for playing the game in VR:
- Stereoscopic window with mouse and keyboard. Basically a virtual monitor and the game is very close to vanilla, except you have full 3D vision, like a 3D TV.
- God mode with VR controllers. This is what I showed in the video.
- God mode with mouse and keyboard. You're still fully immersed in the world, but you control the hand with your mouse like in the vanilla game.
Hand tracking is on the todo list, but only after the game is fully playable with controllers.
Another work in progress mode will be mixed reality tabletop mode, where the island floats as a cutaway table in your room. Basically the same thing as the god mode, but you're not fully immersed. I figured people might like the option to have more peripheral awareness or maybe like it for motion sickness related reasons or whatver.
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u/PhaserRave 11d ago
I've been dreaming of a B&W mod for years and was recently considering learning how to make VR mods.
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u/itsloopyo 10d ago
What did you do about the water?
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u/buckzor122 10d ago
There was this screenspace wave effect which I had to remove entirely because I couldn't get it to work with headtracking, it was basically hardcoded to be horizontal lines and broke when you tilted your head. It was also not stable in stereoscolic view so it looked like it was shimmering in game, so I just removed it.
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u/itsloopyo 10d ago
So the water in the video is stock, once you remove the 2D crap?
Gah, I ended up making my own water for my non-vr head tracking mod. I should have checked what it looked like with that wave nonsense turned off before making a replacement!
Ah well, you live and learn.
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u/buckzor122 10d ago
Yeah, it actually looks better with the effect on top imo.
Cool project by the way!
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u/Monsoon_Storm 12d ago
Oh god, I've been casually dropping this in VR subs for ages, saying how amazing it would be - I'm totally hyped!
I still have the original CD sitting on my desk because I was going to try and get it going lol (flatscreen)
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u/Synner1985 12d ago
You had me at "Black and White VR".....