Category: Epic Games

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Robo Recall Vive Support Added With RoboRevive Mod

Robo Recall Vive Support Added With RoboRevive Mod

Developed by Epic Games and with a budget that nearly matched the original Gears of War, Robo Recall [Review: 7.5/10] is probably the Oculus Rift’s biggest exclusive so far. But a new mod is making sure HTC Vive owners don’t miss out.

You may well have heard of CrossVR before. He’s one of the developers behind Revive, a hack that allows Vive owners to play games available on Oculus Home, including exclusive Rift content funded by Oculus itself. It caused quite a stir last year when Oculus released a Home update that unintentionally blocked its access, then quickly backpedalled when it opened up further security concerns.

But CrossVR isn’t bringing Robo Recall to Vive using that program. Instead, he’s utilising the game’s mod support for a new release that he’s labelled RoboRevive. The mod uses SteamVR’s Unreal Egnine plugin.

You can download the mod from GitHub where you’ll also find detailed instructions to installing it. The modder notes that the Vive’s control scheme is not perfect, likely due to the differences in buttons between the Oculus Touch controllers that Robo Recall was designed for and the Vive wands HTC’s headset uses. Keep in mind that this is simply a foundation that the developer hopes others will build upon to make the game much more compatible with Vive.

It’s taken less than a week for modders to get Robo Recall up and running on Vive; the first-person shooter enjoyed a surprise launch last Wednesday for free. Still, it’s arrival is well timed, as others have already implemented a mod that adjusts the game to better suit 360 degree play. Currently the game is designed for 180 degree Rift setups with two sensors, constantly getting players to face forwards, but this mod changes the game so players can teleport and end up facing the intended direction.

Epic Games is also working on an official fix for this, due to launch later this month.

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‘Robo Recall’ Mod Adds Full Locomotion to Address Room-scale Niggles

Robo Recall has been given a locomotion mod for those looking for a less-restrictive movement system. Epic Games’ new VR shooter employs a teleport mechanic for movement, but has full mod support, allowing for additional experimental control systems.

Robo Recall, an Oculus Touch-exclusive action shooter, has only been available for three days and already the community has been treated to a mod that allows free-form locomotion. Like the majority of FPS titles built for VR, Epic Games designed Robo Recall’s gameplay around a teleportation mechanic, as traditional locomotion (with analog sticks) is a well-documented contributor to VR sickness. However, each time a game launches with a teleport system, a passionate crowd of gamers who aren’t adversely affected by artificial locomotion in VR complain about the missed opportunity.

SEE ALSO
Epic Games Shows You How to Create Your First 'Robo Recall' Mod

User tonsta31, developer at MGSStudios, has been posting updates to his experimental locomotion mod on the Oculus community forums, which allows more traditional movement with the left analog stick on the Touch controller (in addition to teleporting). Unfortunately, Epic aren’t currently allowing mods to function in the story mode (due to the global leaderboards), so your locomotion antics will be limited to the mission mode.

The latest version 3 of the mod adds a locomotion tweak, jump, 45 degree snap turning, adjusted slo-mo, and fixed damage. The game appears to play well with the free movement already, although it does mess with some of the AI routines. Tonsta31 is working quickly however, and hopes to improve enemy response in a future update, as well has adding ‘new guns, a new level, a double jump and other bits’. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on the forum thread.

SEE ALSO
'Robo Recall' Review

Epic’s mod support has also benefited those affected by the current rotation issues in roomscale setups. The 360 teleportation mod from developer Huge Robot solves the problem, and Epic has stated that an official resolution will be out by the end of the month.

The post ‘Robo Recall’ Mod Adds Full Locomotion to Address Room-scale Niggles appeared first on Road to VR.

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Epic Games Talk to VRFocus About Unreal Engine’s VREditor Version 2

Mike Fricker, Technical Director at Epic Games and colleague Lauren Ridge (Technical Writer) spoke to VRFocus about the changes and improvements that have been made to the Unreal Engine VREditor.

At the Epic Games keynote, a new version of VR mode tools was revealed during a video presentation. Added features included; Asymmetric hands with laser pointer for object tracking. Floating user interfact (UI) panel with radial menu for rapid access to options to switch between playing and editing rapidly without ever needing to take off the headset. A new Mesh editing mode to allow users to create objects from scratch within Unreal Engine while still wearing VR headset.

First version was released over a year ago, and the new version is available now on Github to download and compile.

You can watch the interview with Mike Fricker and Lauren Ridge below.

VRFocus will keep you up to date with developments on the VREditor and Unreal Engine.

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VRLO Returns To London This Month With Microsoft, BBC, Epic And More

VRLO Returns To London This Month With Microsoft, BBC, Epic And More

GDC is nearing its event but the VR events won’t be stopping there. VRLA might be the expo to head to if you’re on the west coast of the USA right now, but those living in the UK have plenty of options too. VRLO is returning this month, for example, and it’s bringing some big names with it.

VRLO 7 will take place on Monday March 20th at the new location in the Picturehouse Central, not far off from Piccadilly Circus. From 5:30pm – 9pm you’ll be able to check out some new VR demos, meet others in the industry, and listen to talks from industry leaders. Tickets just went live over on the event’s meetup page.

Speakers at this month’s event include representatives from Rowland Manthorpe, Start Editor at Wired UK, Tom Burton, Interactive & Technology Lead at BBC Studios, Leila Martine, Director of Product Marketing at Microsoft and Daryl Atkins, Creative Director/Visual Artist at REWIND, the VR production studio that hosts the show. HTC and AMD will also be giving talks on the night.

There are also demos in the form of Robo Recall [Review: 7.5/10], the just-released Oculus Rift shooter from Epic Games, BBC’s Home – A VR Spacewalk and ROM: Extraction being exhibited by AMD, and a new VR glove from Noitom.

Tickets to the event are absolutely free, which means they’ll no doubt be gone very soon. Picturehouse is a tiny bit smaller than the previous venue near Marble Arch, too, so make sure not to miss out.

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Robo Recall Mod Already Adds 360 Play, Official Fix Coming

Robo Recall Mod Already Adds 360 Play, Official Fix Coming

If you, like many Oculus Rift and Touch owners, downloaded Epic Games’ Robo Recall [Review: 7.5/10] when it launched for free yesterday, you’re likely still getting to grips with the game’s teleportation system.

The mechanic is designed to support those with only two sensors, thus can’t use their Touch controllers as well when turning away from them and blocking their view of the devices. As such, when holding down one of Touch’s two analogue sticks to teleport, you can rotate them to change the direction you’ll face when you move. It’s a little tricky, but it’s the best possible solution for those only with the sensors included in the Rift and Touch boxes.

But not everyone will be playing with two sensors.

Though Robo Recall only lists ‘Front-facing’ as its supported tracking mode, those with three sensors can still play the game without worrying about occlusion blocking the Touch tracking. Even in its earliest battles the game gets hectic, and you’ll need to spin on the spot to quickly take care of enemies rather than using the teleportation system, so three sensors are pretty handy.

The problem is if you teleport when you’re looking away from where the game considers the front sensors to be, you’ll end up facing the opposite direction to where you’re looking. Why? Because if you’re playing with a 180 degree setup, you’ll still then have to turn back towards those sensors to see what you wanted to see. That’s all well and good for players with two sensors, but the feature reportedly doesn’t turn off when using three sensors.

That means these players that are spinning around to natrually face enemies in the game are sometimes teleporting and finding themselves facing the wrong way. You can imagine how annoying that could get in the heat of battle.

Luckily, the game’s full mod support — an Epic Games staple — is already here to help. Huge Robot, the developer of the Freedom Locomotion VR system, has become one of the first to make a mod for the game, removing this feature, so 360 setups can be played trouble-free.

Mods are nice, official integration is always preferable, so we reached out to Epic Games to ask if they have any plans to allow three sensor-users to remove this feature. A spokseperson told us that the company will be releasing a patch later this month that will address this issue. Until then, you can download the free mod.

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Watch The Unreal Engine Features Showcase Video Here

At the Epic Games keynote at GDC in San Francisco this week, a short video was unveiled to show off the features that would be available in Unreal Engine over the coming year.

Unreal Engine’s original iteration dates back to 1998 with the original Unreal. It has been designed from the very beginning to be easily extensible and simple to mod. The release of Unreal Engine 4 as a free, open source engine in 2015 took it to new heights of popularity and alongside Unity it is now one of the most popular game engines in the world. Unreal Engine 4 is being used to develop up and coming games such as Tekken 7, Snake Pass, InSomnia and We Happy Few – as well as many virtual reality (VR) titles of course, on a variety of headsets and platforms.

Unreal Engine 4 Header 2

Unreal Engine’s newest updates for 2017 will incorporate many new and improved features, such as photo-real lighting and post-processing, physics-driven animation, a replay system, high-performance VR at 90FPS, a full VR editing tool, Vulkan API support, Blueprint visual scripting, a visual material editor and GPU accelerated particle animation.

You can watch the Unreal Engine 2017 Feature video below.

VRFocus will continue to bring you information on Unreal Engine updates as well as the rest of the news from GDC 2017.

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Epic Games Shows You How to Create Your First ‘Robo Recall’ Mod

As has been Epic Games’ style for many years, Robo Recall – built on the company’s Unreal Engine 4 – allows you to change the original game via the engine’s editor, giving you the tools you need to mod the title to your heart’s content.

The slickly designed and expertly executed first person VR shooter Robo Recall is an interesting prospect for Epic Games, the developers behind the title. As a title funded by Oculus Studios, the studio had an opportunity to build a title they evidently wanted to make, but more than that – it also allowed them an opportunity to hone performance and visual fidelity within UE4 for VR projects, with their improved forward renderer a prime example. But the final bonus for Epic may be a crafty back door induction to Unreal Engine via the tantalising prospect of modding Robo Recall itself.

robo-recall-mod-1Epic Games have launched a tutorial which walks anyone interested through the steps needed to mod the title, which of course requires Unreal Engine. It’s a clever way to introduce those who may never have considered themselves programmers to take a look at, and play with the same toolset used by triple-A developers in the games industry. And as its technically possible to design and build games (VR or otherwise) within UE4’s environment without writing a line of code (at least in theory), perhaps some might decide to grow beyond the ‘simple’ first mod onto considering building full games.

SEE ALSO
'Robo Recall' Review

All that aside, before you start, you’ll need a healthy amount of free disk space and an Epic Games user account in order to access all the Unreal Engine and the required content. The instructions then walk you through the basics of UE4 components, Level designer how to use the Blueprints visual scripting system. You’re then set to launch into creating your first new mod, and the guide starts with an example for creating customised weaponry with its own unique design before moving on to testing and releasing.

robo-recall-pick-gun

This isn’t low level programming, the vast majority of the work is aided by UE4’s GUI, but some may still find this in itself a little daunting at first. But if you manage to deploy your first mod, you can launch the game and see the results of your hard work almost immediately.

It’s a great way for those who’ve been itching to get creative with their gaming hobby for a while, and with this tutorial you may even gain skills that lead to other interest or even a new career. Check out the full tutorial over at the Unreal Engine site here.

The post Epic Games Shows You How to Create Your First ‘Robo Recall’ Mod appeared first on Road to VR.

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Watch: ‘Robo Recall’ is Playable on HTC Vive Using ‘Revive’ Mod, Here’s How

Oculus Rift exclusive title Robo Recall – which launched just yesterday – can already be played on the HTC Vive, using the infamous Revive mod. And, as you can see in this video, the game seems to work remarkably well.

Oculus’ approach to encouraging development on their Rift virtual reality platform via funded exclusive (be that timed or permanent) has been one of the most divisive and hotly discussed since consumer VR became a reality. It’s something that’s divided the VR community and is brought into sharp focus when exclusive titles are perceived as particularly desirable, as is the case with Robo Recall – a title developed by Epic Games exclusively for Oculus Rift and Touch motion controllers, published though Oculus’ content portal Home.

SEE ALSO
'Robo Recall' Review

Whatever your views are on Oculus’ stance on the subject of exclusivity, the fact remains that there are a lot of VR enthusiasts out there who only own the Steam VR powered HTC Vive headset who would very much like to play Robo Recall, one of the most polished VR titles yet published. Luckily for them they can, thanks to the infamous Revive software mod, and as seen in the video above, this is exactly what some Vive owners are now doing.

SEE ALSO
Platform Politics: Inside the Oculus and 'Revive' Dilemma

What’s perhaps surprising is how well it seems to work. The YouTuber MERPTV (above) puts the title through its paces, with the most obvious potential issue – the lack of thumbsticks on the Vive’s Steam VR controllers – taken care of with the trackpads used in substitute.

Of course, if you don’t own an Oculus Rift and Touch device, the title won’t be free to play on the Vive. You’ll need to stump up the £22.99 ($29.99 in the US) on the Oculus Store to get access to the game first – a price I’m sure many are willing to pay for such a polished VR title. After which, Vive users should head to Revive’s GitHub page which includes the latest version of the injection software as well as a setup guide for new users. One important note here – we’ve not yet had a chance to try this out for ourselves and would point out that running such a configuration will be officially unsupported by the software’s developers and publishers. If you’re happy with those caveats, you should be good to go.

robo-recall-1Of course, the game was developed with the Touch controllers in mind, and as pointed about above, although using the SteamVR controllers may not be the optimal experience, they are certainly more than functional.

Let us know how you get on with Robo Recall on the Vive using Revive in the comments below.

The post Watch: ‘Robo Recall’ is Playable on HTC Vive Using ‘Revive’ Mod, Here’s How appeared first on Road to VR.

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Chevy’s augmented reality test drive puts you behind the wheel of your dream car

Epic Games continues to expand the reach of video game technology by partnering with Chevrolet on a new project that uses augmented reality to transform a custom Blackbird vehicle into any car. In addition, that same Unreal Engine 4 technology drives a new Chevy car customizer.

The post Chevy’s augmented reality test drive puts you behind the wheel of your dream car appeared first on Digital Trends.

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Spray-Painting Game ‘Ghost Paint’ Comes To HTC Vive

Ghost Paint is the brainchild of Epic Games Principal Artist Shane Caudle. What was originally a solo passion project has become a full virtual reality (VR) video game for the HTC Vive. The inspiration for the game was when Caudle first held the Vive controller and noted how similar it was to an airbrush.

Gameplay of Ghost Paint involved travelling to various city locations, tagging and spray-painting your designs onto a diverse range of surfaces such as concrete, brick, canvas and metal. The paint is very realistically rendered, with liquid paint behaviour such as dripping and overspray fully present. There are multiple tools available for painting, such as an airbrush, spray can, stencils, copy-paste and mirroring functions.

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The game was entirely built using the Unreal Engine Blueprints visual scripting system, which uses Nodes, Lines and Events to build the structure of a game very simply. It also allows for pre-fabricated objects to be used to flesh out the game, enabling rapid prototyping.

Despite the game originally merely being a project for Caudle’s own amusement, the management at Epic Games loved the concept so much that they allowed Caudle to run with it. A commercial release date has not been confirmed yet, as Caudle says it still needs to further tweaking before it is ready, but a limited Beta is available via Steam.

Further information on Ghost Paint and other Epic Games VR products will be here on VRFocus