neat corporation – Page 5 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

March 21, 2018

GDC 2018 ‘Day 2’ Roundup – ‘Budget Cuts’ Hands-On, Google Maps and ARCore, Squanch Games’ Exclusive, and More

Here’s a roundup of news from the second day of our GDC 2018 coverage. We go hands-on with Budget Cuts, Google presents ARCore and Maps API-enabled apps, Squanch Games’ Daydream exclusive title announced, and Magic Leap talks about developing games for a spatial computing platform.

Hands-on with ‘Budget Cuts’

Developer Neat Corporation has resurfaced with stealth action game Budget Cuts, due for release on May 16th for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. We go hands-on with the latest build at GDC, which retains most of the core mechanics found in the impressive pre-alpha demo from 2016. The robots have been redesigned to be more imposing, and you have to be more accurate with your knife throwing if you want to take them down in one hit. Light and shadow plays a bigger role in the stealth system, and there are more objects to pick up and interact with.

Google highlights 4 ARCore apps

The ARCore SDK is enabling a wide range of AR apps on flagship Android smartphones, and Google highlighted two apps that launched this week and two coming later in the year. There is a new “which box?” feature on eBay’s app, which helps a seller calculate the size of packaging required for an item, and Google just launched mobile art app Just a Line, which allows video recording of simple spatial drawings. Planned for Q2 2018 is the Google Maps API-enabled The Walking Dead: Our World, and TendAR is a game arriving in July, involving a virtual fish that responds to facial expressions.

Google Maps API for game development

The Google Maps team has built an SDK that allows Google Maps geodata to be used in the Unity game engine. This allows for smartphone AR games to combine with real-world locations, taking the Pokémon Go (2016) style of game to the next level. The rich data available from Google Maps has incredible potential for game environment creation, particularly when combined with procedural rendering systems.

Squanch Games reveal exclusive Daydream game

Dr. Splorchy Presents: Space Heroes is the first in a series of games exclusive to Google’s Daydream VR platform from Squanch Games, formerly known as Squanchtendo. Little is known about the project so far, but fans of Rick and Morty will likely be drawn to its comedic style, as it comes from the mind of Justin Roiland, co-creator of the animated series.

Magic Leap talk on games and AI

Interaction Director Alessia Laidacker and Interaction Lab Director Brian Schwab from Magic Leap presented a talk on creating games for a spatial computing platform. It discussed high-level concepts relating to user context, as well as the important design elements for AR, and how AR characters need to behave. We expect a deeper dive into Magic Leap development on Thursday.

The post GDC 2018 ‘Day 2’ Roundup – ‘Budget Cuts’ Hands-On, Google Maps and ARCore, Squanch Games’ Exclusive, and More appeared first on Road to VR.

March 20, 2018

Budget Cuts Release Date, Price & New Screenshots Revealed

If it feels like it’s been some time since we’ve heard anything of virtual reality (VR) stealth-based videogame Budget Cuts, that’s mostly because it has been. Announced in January 2016, the title developed by Neat Corporation is the studio’s take on first-person sneaking around but in a VR environment.

Since a busy early period in that year though, things have been relatively quiet. Last year was devoid of pretty much any news on the title at all. Though that didn’t stop a number of outlets listed Budget Cuts among our ‘Most Wanted’ VR videogame titles at the end of 2017. As we put it at the time despite its absence from the VR stage its initial demo was such that it hadn’t dulled interest. VRFocus guest writer Stephen Davies noted that it was: “one of the best VR experiences available, at that point, the demo for Budget Cuts simply wowed everybody that it came into contact with.”

Budget Cuts sees you take on the role of a spy under the employ of a company specialising in space-time technology. Players are tasked with sneaking into rival facilities using a variety of hi-tech gadgets, including a short-range teleportation device that allows you to move around the environment (hopefully) undetected.

Despite the lull in proceedings Neat Corporation have been busy behind the scenes, and now at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2018 we have both new assets and news relating to the development of the title. Most importantly we at last have a release date – May 20th 2018, and confirmation that the title will be heading to HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, which is advised to be operated with two to three sensors set up. Support for two front facing sensors has also been confirmed. Being designed for room-scale VR there is, unfortunately, no version for the PlayStation VR.

Budget Cuts will run at around 7-8 hours of gameplay and, VRFocus is told, and will retail at $29.99 (USD). You can see additional screenshots below. VRFocus will bring you more details about the title as we get it and be sure to check back regularly for all the latest coming out of GDC 2018.

March 19, 2018

GDC 2018: Budget Cuts Is Coming To Vive And Rift In May

For more than two years Sweden-based Neat Corporation has been working to turn its robot-killing VR demo Budget Cuts into a fully fledged game with hours of entertainment.

We just left the first demo of the game at GDC and learned how close they are to releasing one of VR’s most anticipated titles. A complete play through of Budget Cuts is estimated at around eight hours — though of course that varies a lot depending how you play. It is planned for release on May 16 on both Steam and the Oculus Store, priced around $30.

The game features a collection of updates to all of the systems we saw when the original demo launched. In case you are unfamiliar, the Budget Cuts demo deployed an awesome teleportation system that, for me at least, didn’t break immersion because it showed a preview of your new location before teleporting there. You still fight robots. You still throw sharp objects to try to disable them (or blunt objects to temporarily slow them down). And you still try to sneak around and find your way around the most dangerous enemies. But now, it has all been refined and expanded.

Games Editor David Jagneaux and I tried about half of the second level of the game, each of us quickly punished by the robots we encountered. Though the office environment that we tried (seen in the screenshots on this post) resembles the original demo many Vive owners already tried, we’re told the finished game includes enemies, environments and puzzles that go far beyond what we’ve already seen.

The developers told me you can’t interact with everything in the environment, but everything you want to interact with should work. I found this to be true, from objects in drawers to cabinet doors to trash on the ground you can sweep with a broom.

At one point a robot spotted me, his light turned yellow, and I could hear it moving closer to me. When it finally emerged through the doorway I was hiding behind, I put a pair of scissors through its back, then immediately retrieved the weapon for further use. I was glad to see my training in the demo still worked, but I didn’t make it past the second robot because I accidentally put a dart in my own head.

Neat Corporation is being tight-lipped about what the later game involves, including what environments we might encounter. What I saw though in our tiny slice of the game was what I imagine most people who played the demo want — a deeper world with smarter, more reactive enemies and refinements to all of the game’s innovative user interface ideas.

We’ll keep you updated at Neat Corporation reveals more about Budget Cuts.

Tagged with: Budget Cuts, Neat Corporation

September 27, 2017March 6, 2018

‘Budget Cuts’ to Reemerge From the Shadows at GDC, On Track for 2018 Launch

It’s been more than a year and a half since I first stepped into Budget Cuts, an instantly promising VR title from indie developer Neat Corporation with a novel and efficient locomotion system that blends perfectly with the game’s throwing-knife stealth action gameplay. Though the studio has been largely silent since then, they’ve assured me that the game is being actively developed (“like, a lot”) and headed toward an early 2018 launch.

Update (03/06/18): Neat Corp co-founder Joachim Holmér recently tweeted that new ‘Budget Cuts’ content will be featured at GDC 2018. Holmér will also be giving a dev talk on the game’s portal locomotion.

Original article (9/27/17): If you’ve never played the free Budget Cuts demo, you have no excuse not to fire up your headset and give it a go. I haven’t heard of a single person who has played the demo and come out of it not genuinely impressed and ready for more.

Sadly, the taste of the demo is the last we’ve seen basically since it launched more than a year ago, with the studio offering no new updates into the state of the game’s development, not even so much as a screenshot.

After hearing recently from a few folks in the VR community who were wondering whether the game was still in the works, I reached out to get a pulse on Neat Corporation and make sure the development team hadn’t got lost in VR somewhere along the way. Much to my relief, the studio says they’ve been head down, hard at work on Budget Cuts, and confirmed the game is on track for an early 2018 release.

“We’re spending minimal time on PR in order to focus on development of the game, seeing as we are such a small team. This understandably leads to people wondering about the status. Just rest assured, we are working on the game, like, a lot,” Neat Corporation developer Marko Permanto told me.