Icarus, latest title from DayZ developer, delayed to November
Icarus was going to launch on August 11 but will instead have its first beta session on the weekend of August 28.
DayZ creator pulls a 180 with Icarus, a new survival-crafting title
Icarus offers a challenging survival-crafting experience where nothing can be taken for granted, and everything can be lost.
Voxel Shooter Out of Ammo Hits PlayStation VR
Back in November Zen Studios and RocketWerkz announced that their hybrid tower defense/ first-person shooter (FPS), Out of Ammo, would be coming to PlayStation VR in 2018, having originally launched as an early access title for HTC Vive in 2016. Today, the two companies have rolled out Out of Ammo for both North American and European players.
Out of Ammo offers something for everyone, whether you prefer getting in on the action or a more lofty strategic approach, calling in airstrikes. The main campaign is a wave survival mode, where you play as a general commander their troops. You need to build a base, creating suitable defences to withstand the next incoming wave.
Once the battle is underway you can then artillery, snipers and airstrikes, or possess one of your troops and get stuck in. There are five different kinds of units with unique traits: the Rifleman, the Sniper, the grenade-launching Rocketeer, the Medic, and the shotgun wielding Engineer, mixing up the gameplay style when you need it.
Survival Mode features eight unique environments: Canyon, Forest, City, Desert, Alpine, Port, Beachhead, and the alien-themed Contact. Once you’re done there, there are three specialist mission modes take place entirely in first person. In Overwatch you are a sniper providing overwatch for a downed helicopter, protecting the evacuees from your position inside a clock tower; Icarus: after crash-landing in hostile terrain, you must scavenge for ammo by teleporting around. Use flares and torches to highlight inbound enemies. Survive until rescue arrives; and Vertigo: Atop a skyscraper can you hold off attackers with your shotgun while also finding time to hack a computer until a chopper comes to the rescue.
Out of Ammo is available now for £11.99 GBP or $14.99 USD on the respective PlayStation Store. For any further updates from either Zen Studios or RocketWerkz, keep reading VRFocus.
Out Of Ammo Shooting Towards PlayStation VR
Originally released on Steam for the HTC Vive by developer RocketWerkz, Out of Ammo is a popular virtual reality (VR) shooter that combines wave shooter elements with tower defence. The developers have now teamed with publisher Zen Studios to bring the title to the PlayStation VR.
The main gameplay of Out Of Ammo is ‘Survival’ mode, which involves the player acting as the general on a battlefield, co-ordinating the building of a base, placing buildings and defences in the right spots, issuing orders to troops and even calling in bombing raids. When the enemy gets too close, though, players can get right in on the action by taking control of one of the troops. Players can control a Rifleman and pick off enemies from a distance, a Medic to get troops quickly back on their feet, repair your fortifications as the Engineer or blow the enemy to bits as the Rocketeer.
The varied locations were a highly-praised aspect of the original title, so of course they make a return to in the upcoming PlayStation VR version. Players can try out urban combat in the City map, take on the harsh Desert, or test their skills on the World War 2-inspired Beachhead map, or the Alpine, Port, Forest or Contact maps.
For players who want a more intense experience, there are additional modes, such as Icarus, which is played entirely in first-person as the player is trapped behind enemy lines, forced to scavenge ammo and supplies in an effort to stay alive until rescue arrives. Or players can take on Vertigo, a cyber-warfare challenge where players need to hack a computer console whilst being under attack by guards. Or there’s Overwatch mode, where you take the role of a sniper, trying to protect the passengers of a crashed helicopter from encroaching enemy forces.
Out Of Ammo will be available for pre-order on the PlayStation Store from tomorrow. Users who place a pre-order will get a free copy of CastleStorm VR. Out of Ammo is due for release some time in Winter 2018.
VRFocus will bring you further information on Out of Ammo as it becomes available.
Out Of Ammo Coming To PSVR Winter 2018
Out of Ammo from RocketWerkz is an odd little game that was originally exclusive to the PC-powered Rift and Vive headsets, but according to an announcement today on the official PlayStation Blog, the game is now making its way to Sony’s PlayStation VR (PSVR) during winter 2018 by way of a port via Zen Studios.
In Out of Ammo players take on the role of an army general that’s tasked with waging war on a variety of battlefields. In the Survival game mode, it plays out a bit like a hybrid between a real-time strategy game and a first-person shooter. You can plan your base-buidling from a birds eye-esque perspective and then take control of different units during battle to influence outcomes or swap your unit type at any time. Riflemen get fully auto rifles, Snipers attack from a distance, Medics can heal allies, Rocketeer blow up stuff, and Engineers can repair stuff and blast away bad guys with deadly shotguns. There are eight different levels in the game to explore and fight your way through.
Additionally, there’s an Overwatch game mode where you take on the role of a single Sniper in a clock tower that oversees a group of soldiers as they progress through a level.
If you pre-order Out of Ammo on PSVR then Zen Studios will throw in a free copy of CastleStorm VR. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
Tagged with: Out of Ammo, RocketWerkz, zen studios
Out of Ammo: Death Drive Offered in Discount Bundle
Developer RocketWerkz is best known for creating hit zombie shooter DayZ. Its first virtual reality (VR) project, Out of Ammo, was release last year. The standalone sequel, Out of Ammo: Death Drive is out now on Steam in a discount bundle along side the original Out of Ammo.
Out of Ammo: Death Drive is a hybrid between building simulator and first person shooter. Players will need to collect scrap to build defences and weapon emplacements to defend their base, but can also take over individual units to take down the undead monsters that roam the battlefield.
Weapons such as shotguns and assault rifles are available to use, or for those who prefer to get up close and person, melee weapons such as a baseball bat and katana are available. Base weapon emplacement come in varieties such as the expected turret gun, or rocket launcher for large enemy groups, or slightly more bizarrely, a magical healing dog called Alby.
The single-player campaign has seven levels to fight through, which will take the player through the desolate post-apocalyptic world to see the tattered remains of cities and shopping malls.
Out of Ammo: Death Drive is available on Steam for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The title is a room-scale experience, so players will need a play area of at least 2m by 1.5m and 360-degree tracking in order to play.
The title on its own costs £10.99 (GBP), or bundled alongside the original Death Drive, is priced at £17.58, a discount of 20%. Further information can be found on the Steam Store page.
VRFocus will bring you further information on Out of Ammo: Death Drive as it becomes available.
Out of Ammo: Death Drive Due for Launch This Month
Last year DayZ developer RocketWerkz released its first virtual reality (VR) project, Out of Ammo, for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. This month will see the developer launch a sequel in the form of Out of Ammo: Death Drive, mixing up base building strategy with first-person action.
In Out of Ammo: Death Drive players will need to collect scrap, build emplacements, possess individual units and make use of whatever they can find on the battlefield to shoot, crush and maim the zombies hordes.
A single-player experience with a campaign stretched out over seven levels, Out of Ammo: Death Drive’s defensive emplacements range from a grenade launcher to decimate large hordes, an automated turret, and there’s even a kennel to summon Alby, a magical healing dog.
For those that like to get into the action, there’s an assortment of weapons available, from shotguns and assault rifles to baseball bats and katanas for that up close and personal touch.
Out of Ammo: Death Drive is due for release via Steam on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive this month, although RocketWerkz has yet to confirm a date.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of RocketWerkz, reporting back with further updates.
‘DayZ’ creator’s ambitious space-survival MMO ‘Ion’ has been canceled
The ambitious collaboration between the creator of DayZ and the company behind the SpatialOS engine has effectively been canceled. Ion was one of the most intriguing projects shown at Microsoft's E3 2015 press conference.
The post ‘DayZ’ creator’s ambitious space-survival MMO ‘Ion’ has been canceled appeared first on Digital Trends.
‘DayZ’ and ‘Out of Ammo’ Creator: ‘Subsidies’ and ‘Exclusives’ Are Key To VR Development Right Now
Last night, Dean Hall, the original creator of DayZ and current CEO of RocketWerkz, the studio behind VR game Out of Ammo, took to Reddit to voice his concerns about consumers attacking developers in the VR community. There has been outrage periodically over the course of the year regarding timed-exclusives, subsidized developments, and closed platform ecosystems. Many of the games on the Oculus Home Store, for example, do not function with the HTC Vive unless you use ReVive to hack in support.
“Reading through this subreddit has, over the past six months, become difficult for me,” explains Hall. “Time and again people are ferociously attacking developers who have made strategic partnerships, and you hear phrases like ‘they took Oculus / Facebook money’, ‘they sold-out for a time exclusive’, ‘anti-consumer behavior’. There are some terrible assumptions that are constantly perpetuated here, and frankly, it’s made developing for virtual reality tiresome for me. I also feel weird about this because I will be defending others in this post, despite our studio not making any agreements regarding exclusivity or for the exchange of any money with either HTC, Valve, or Oculus.”
RocketWerkz’ VR title, Out of Ammo, is currently one of the most popular and well-known virtual reality games on Steam, currently with official HTC Vive and Oculus Rift support. The game’s been receiving steady, constant updates, all for free, ever since it released in Early Access. It’s now fully released as a completed title with an upcoming standalone expansion on the way.
In his post on Reddit, Hall is very open about the state of VR game development as he sees it. “From our standpoint, Out of Ammo has exceeded our sales predictions and achieved our internal objectives,” says Hall. “However, it has been very unprofitable. It is extremely unlikely that it will ever be profitable. We are comfortable with this, and approached it as such. We expected to loose [sic] money and we had the funding internally to handle this. Consider then that Out of Ammo has sold unusually well compared to many other VR games.”
This news comes as a bit of a surprise as the developers of both The Gallery and Raw Data have gone on record with us stating that they have each crossed the $1 million sales mark on their respective titles, although their studios may be much smaller in size — the financial dynamics are unknown at this time. nDreams also expects to break even this year as a VR developer, although they have multiple releases across every major VR platform to glean revenue from.
Hall explains that multi-platform support isn’t as easy as some consumers claim to believe, stating that HMDs are “very different and it is more expensive and difficult to support the different headsets” than people understand. As a result, he contends that partnering with publishers and/or platform developers is what’s been going on for years in the game industry. It cuts down on risks and costs.
“Without the subsidies of exclusives/subsidies less studios will make VR games,” predicts Hall. “There is no money in it. I don’t mean ‘money to go buy a Ferrari.’ I mean ‘money to make payroll.’ People talk about developers who have taken Oculus/Facebook/Intel money like they’ve sold out and gone off to buy an island somewhere. The reality is these developers made these deals because it is the only way their games could come out.”
It’s a sentiment that rings true with what we’ve heard from other teams, such as Other Ocean, the developers behind Giant Cop. They’ve partnered with Oculus for timed-exclusivity after originally announcing the game for the HTC Vive. Conversely in the case of Croteam, developers of Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope, a team member went on record as stating that Oculus offered the studio a “shitton of money” for timed-exclusivity, but they turned it down.
With the announcement of the VR Association, a collective that includes Oculus, HTC, Sony, Google, and many others, we might be getting closer to that open VR ecosystem so many people desire. Using the new Oculus Touch controllers for example, along with additional tracking sensors, the Rift is capable of roomscale support, which allows users to enjoy the majority of the SteamVR library with few issues. Oculus Home still requires the hacking workaround — including for Touch games.
Tagged with: dean hall, development, devs, industry, reddit, rocketwerkz, VR
‘DayZ’ and ‘Out of Ammo’ Creator: ‘Subsidies’ and ‘Exclusives’ Are Key To VR Development Right Now
Last night, Dean Hall, the original creator of DayZ and current CEO of RocketWerkz, the studio behind VR game Out of Ammo, took to Reddit to voice his concerns about consumers attacking developers in the VR community. There has been outrage periodically over the course of the year regarding timed-exclusives, subsidized developments, and closed platform ecosystems. Many of the games on the Oculus Home Store, for example, do not function with the HTC Vive unless you use ReVive to hack in support.
“Reading through this subreddit has, over the past six months, become difficult for me,” explains Hall. “Time and again people are ferociously attacking developers who have made strategic partnerships, and you hear phrases like ‘they took Oculus / Facebook money’, ‘they sold-out for a time exclusive’, ‘anti-consumer behavior’. There are some terrible assumptions that are constantly perpetuated here, and frankly, it’s made developing for virtual reality tiresome for me. I also feel weird about this because I will be defending others in this post, despite our studio not making any agreements regarding exclusivity or for the exchange of any money with either HTC, Valve, or Oculus.”
RocketWerkz’ VR title, Out of Ammo, is currently one of the most popular and well-known virtual reality games on Steam, currently with official HTC Vive and Oculus Rift support. The game’s been receiving steady, constant updates, all for free, ever since it released in Early Access. It’s now fully released as a completed title with an upcoming standalone expansion on the way.
In his post on Reddit, Hall is very open about the state of VR game development as he sees it. “From our standpoint, Out of Ammo has exceeded our sales predictions and achieved our internal objectives,” says Hall. “However, it has been very unprofitable. It is extremely unlikely that it will ever be profitable. We are comfortable with this, and approached it as such. We expected to loose [sic] money and we had the funding internally to handle this. Consider then that Out of Ammo has sold unusually well compared to many other VR games.”
This news comes as a bit of a surprise as the developers of both The Gallery and Raw Data have gone on record with us stating that they have each crossed the $1 million sales mark on their respective titles, although their studios may be much smaller in size — the financial dynamics are unknown at this time. nDreams also expects to break even this year as a VR developer, although they have multiple releases across every major VR platform to glean revenue from.
Hall explains that multi-platform support isn’t as easy as some consumers claim to believe, stating that HMDs are “very different and it is more expensive and difficult to support the different headsets” than people understand. As a result, he contends that partnering with publishers and/or platform developers is what’s been going on for years in the game industry. It cuts down on risks and costs.
“Without the subsidies of exclusives/subsidies less studios will make VR games,” predicts Hall. “There is no money in it. I don’t mean ‘money to go buy a Ferrari.’ I mean ‘money to make payroll.’ People talk about developers who have taken Oculus/Facebook/Intel money like they’ve sold out and gone off to buy an island somewhere. The reality is these developers made these deals because it is the only way their games could come out.”
It’s a sentiment that rings true with what we’ve heard from other teams, such as Other Ocean, the developers behind Giant Cop. They’ve partnered with Oculus for timed-exclusivity after originally announcing the game for the HTC Vive. Conversely in the case of Croteam, developers of Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope, a team member went on record as stating that Oculus offered the studio a “shitton of money” for timed-exclusivity, but they turned it down.
With the announcement of the VR Association, a collective that includes Oculus, HTC, Sony, Google, and many others, we might be getting closer to that open VR ecosystem so many people desire. Using the new Oculus Touch controllers for example, along with additional tracking sensors, the Rift is capable of roomscale support, which allows users to enjoy the majority of the SteamVR library with few issues. Oculus Home still requires the hacking workaround — including for Touch games.
Tagged with: dean hall, development, devs, industry, reddit, rocketwerkz, VR