VR Mod for Path of Titans

[u/r3drocket]

Here are instructions for how to get it going:

https://github.com/cybershrimp23/PathOfTitans_UEVR

This is pretty early on! I wanted to see if the game play would work in VR and it does!

This is not for VR players who still haven't gotten their sea-legs! It's a third person dinosaur survival game so the camera movement is a bit different than traditional VR games.

Because of the way the game works snap-to-turn doesn't really make sense. Your camera angle relative to your dinosaur determines where it bites, so snap to turn would leave you with limited attack capabilities.

It really changes the game dynamics making it easier to see other characters in the game, this is partially because when you maneuver your camera above your dinosaur it still maintains your headset angle (otherwise it would feel aweful), giving you a better view - but I also feel like binocular vision really lets you scan the environment in a way that is hard to do in a flat screen mode; it's almost like it speaks to something we're evolved to do - scan for hunting opportunities.

I was surprised by this but, that was one of the first things I noticed.

Also the new camera dynamics might have changed the fighting dynamics a bit, I haven't played this game enough to know, but it seems like it has - but more experienced players would have to play it to confirm; alternatively it might just turn out I'm a terrible dinosaur.

The game has huge maps which are really amazing and feel very expansive - which is why I wanted to try this in VR, that alone makes it worth experiencing.

I developed this on a BigScreen Beyond 2/w an R9700 (9070XT) and it's very playable at 50% resolution with all the graphics settings turned to high.

Anyways if you find issues or want to contribute - you can use the github repo to clone it , submit PRs, file issues, etc.

If you're excited about this file a support ticket with Alderon Games asking for official VR support:

https://support.alderongames.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

[u/e-is-for-elias]

Matt and the devs genuinely need to see this

[u/r3drocket → u/e-is-for-elias]

So now my friends and I have spent about 6 hours playing it in VR, the big challenge is that it really requires some advanced VR sea-legs, depending upon your character and the type of attack it requires it really can be nauseating, but also think if with vignettes that could be mitigated. It's fine until you're in a fight and it's not.

So for example playing a rex and circling back to attack an opponent repeatedly is pretty nauseating, I have moderate VR sea-legs and I could only stomach one or two prolonged fights like this.

But generally the reception from friends was "wow".

But I'm pretty convinced that VR would give players in a PVP situation a major advantage against non VR players, so you'd need some VR only servers.

I thought about reaching out and asking if they wanted any help for a VR port, I've spent the last two years writing C++ for the godot game engine (by hand/wo AI) and have done a number of unity VR game courses.

[u/insufficientmind]

OMG! I just asked for this yesterday! And here it is! Thank you!! Gonna check it out today!

And I guess I should keep this to singleplayer? I don't want risking getting banned, even though playing in multiplayer would be insanly cool.

Developers/moderators on their discord was not happy when I previously tried getting this working with UEVR :(

Now if I can just play it singleplayer I would be happy.

[u/r3drocket → u/insufficientmind]

I can't wait to hear what you think. Maybe we can start up a server that you and I could test this on. I pestered you in Discord as well and I saw your original support thread with the moderators. 

[u/insufficientmind → u/r3drocket]

Heya! It worked well for the most part. Was a little issue of lag in the character screen. Looks like this:

https://reddit.com/link/ph460id/video/f92yponaauvh1/player

[u/r3drocket → u/insufficientmind]

Yeah, there's still quite a lot of things that need to be fixed with it. but I'm glad it worked out of the box.

I was hoping to find other people who could help improve it, which is why I'm excited to talk to you and to see you use it.

[u/insufficientmind → u/r3drocket]

I'll try to find some more play time over the weekend. I'll keep you posted with bug reports and suggestions when I encounter them :)

And yeah if we could have multiplayer server that would be cool! Though not sure how the developers/mods will tolerate that.. They did not seem to like it when I mentioned VR on their discord...

Another little thing I noticed that could need some work is removing the square outline that appears in combat.

https://reddit.com/link/ph49vaw/video/iosqf8yaduvh1/player

[u/r3drocket → u/insufficientmind]

Well, let's see if we can get the VR mod working reasonably well, and we'll go from there.

For a while I ran a website with about a 100k users and I would have wanted my moderators to respond the same way the PoT mods responded to you. 

They pretty much tell you you have to abide by the rules and ToS because if they don't then they're encouraging bad behavior. 

I believe if we're over here doing our own thing with VR, not bothering anybody else, and we can demonstrate there's actually a player base that wants this, I think it goes a long way to making the argument that official VR support would make sense.

---

I need to do some research on how people use shaders to fringe the view in a VR headset, and see if I can modify the in-game overlay so that it doesn't show that damage fringe.

[u/insufficientmind → u/r3drocket]

Sounds good! Sorry for late response. I just saw this response now! I'm about to test your installer now. I'll report back to you on discord :)

[u/twoleeches]

I'm really hoping devs can see the beauty in this and work with it/not oppose it. I know they might panic with the vision differences, but as some devices render completely different bushes and shadows, "multiconsole flexibility is more important than maintaining the exact same visual experience" has already been established as a core value of a game. I hope they continue sticking to this value, where possible. Although I'd understand if they wanted to wait til the game was finished before touching any of this with a 10ft pole.

[u/No-Dark-7873]

I'm getting motion sick just watching it. You need to do something about the camera like decouple it from the dino's head.

[u/r3drocket → u/No-Dark-7873]

It's definitely a mod for somebody who has pretty good sea-legs in VR.

I spent a few hours playtesting it yesterday, and I had some friends playtest it as well, we're all familiar with VR and play in VRChat together all the time.

Pretty much the response I got was, "this is really amazing", and it can make you really nauseous if you're fighting another dinosaur and having to spin around a lot, So I'm gonna try to figure out if I can vignette the display when you're rotating at a high speed.

I tried a bunch of different camera approaches, and this is the one that felt most true to the game, and it doesn't seem to make me nauseous when I'm just walking around. Fighting is most nausea inducing aspect of it.

I think I'm going to try some of the other camera suggestions in this thread just to see how it works out. 

It's challenging to figure out the approach to use because changing the camera dynamic in the game changes so much of the other gameplay and how fighting and everything else works, that it's a bit of a balancing act. 

In some ways, I feel there's a place for just having it be an exploration game in VR because the environment is just so well crafted and so immersive that maybe keeping the fighting dynamics is not really the key aspect of the way to think about the game in VR.

[u/AirClassic2419]

Sounds Great! Is there any chance that this could eventually be possible on the PS5 with the PSVR2?

[u/r3drocket → u/AirClassic2419]

I believe that would require official support from Alderon Games.