‘Red Alert 2’ In VR Is Historical Fiction We Can Control Directly

‘Red Alert 2’ In VR Is Historical Fiction We Can Control Directly

Released back in 1996, Command and Conquer: Red Alert is set in a universe predicated on the idea that Albert Einstein went back in time and eliminated Hitler before he could do damage, altering history in such a way that Russia rose to power in Germany’s absence. It was an exaggerated world in Red Alert and its sequel, released in 2000, which offered players both an escape from the real world combined with a satisfying feeling of control over their destiny in the game.

Roughly half of the voters who are disappointed by the turn of history in last night’s election are probably looking for an escape right now, and longing for that feeling of control. Video games are often ways for us to escape reality for small chunks of time and strategy games tap into that in different ways. On a base level, these types of games are ways for us to flex our tactical prowess. On a deeper level, they fulfill power fantasies (as many games do) in different and fun ways while some even let us shape our own historical fictions. Red Alert 2 is one of the most popular strategy titles, a real-time strategy game that had an incredible historical fiction of its own for us to navigate, and it’s being recreated in a VR environment.

Ádám Horváth and Sly_Fox (there may be others involved in the process as well) are using the Unreal 4 engine to update Red Alert 2 and they’re bringing VR immersion to it as well. The original game only had 2D assets, so Sly_Fox is using those as the basis to create 3D units and buildings. The video shows the game being played in room-scale mode with HTC Vive. The player’s left controller serves as a pad showing building and unit types to build. You select and place those choices on the map with the right, which is also the controller you’ll use to direct units and set rally points. Having such a fluid perspective on the battlefield while being able to quickly place buildings and direct units is something the strategy genre can build on with VR devices, and this sample is hopefully just a sign of things to come.

Much like Red Alert and its sequels redefined the RTS genre, virtual reality has the potential to change strategy games in a big way — with games like AirMech, Tactera and Quar leading the way — while offering a complete escape from the real world for just a little while.

Watch: 12 Minutes of ‘Robo Recall’ Gameplay with Oculus Touch

One of the flagship announcements at last week’s Oculus Connect developer conference, Epic Games’ Robo Recall is a slick, polished first person shooter built for Oculus’ forthcoming VR motion controllers Touch. Here’s 12 minutes of raw gameplay from the Connect 3 demo to give you some idea of what to expect when the game lands early next year (see embedded video at the top of this article).

Road to VR‘s Ben Lang described Robo Recall as “satisfying action-packed fun” after spending time with the game at this year’s Oculus Connect 3 conference. The game, which evolved from the extremely well received tech demo for Touch, Bullet Train, retains a lot of the same core mechanics as it’s predecessor but polishes and hones them.

SEE ALSO
Hands-on: Epic's New Action-packed 'Robo Recall' FPS is Beautiful, Brutal Arcade Fun

Now however, the premise is that you, the protagonist, are out to ‘recall’ hordes of malfunctioning, beweaponed mechanoids with brute force – i.e. your fists and a selection of guns. Ben had this to say about the title in his recent hands on article:

The sum of the experience is satisfying action-packed fun. Grab a robot, rip the gun out of its hand, then blow its head off and use the corpse as a shield.

The game isn’t just fun, also impressively beautiful. That’s the norm for pretty much anything Epic has set their minds (and their impressive Unreal Engine) to, but Robo Recall in particular uses some new tech from Epic to look extra sharp in VR.

The title will be made available for free for Oculus Touch owners with three environments each sporting three missions each. The title will appear some time in Q1 2017.

SEE ALSO
'Bullet Train' on the Latest Oculus Touch Makes You a Bullet-Catching Badass

The post Watch: 12 Minutes of ‘Robo Recall’ Gameplay with Oculus Touch appeared first on Road to VR.

Epic’s New Action-packed ‘Robo Recall’ FPS is Beautiful, Brutal Arcade Fun

It was back at the end of 2015 that Epic Games Founder Tim Sweeney teased “something much bigger” than the VR tech demos the company has done in the past. Now the company plans to launch Robo Recall, the evolution of their critically acclaimed Bullet Train tech demo. We’ve played it and it’s awesome (and beautiful).

Last year at Oculus Connect 2015, Epic revealed the Bullet Train tech demo for Oculus Touch. Now at Connect 2016, the company has revealed Robo Recall, an Oculus Touch exclusive arcade FPS and spiritual successor to that tech demo. In Robo Recall, you’ll be blasting robots left and right right, tearing enemies limb from limb, and generally wreaking satisfying arcade FPS havoc.

Robo Recall is built entirely around Oculus Touch and will be exclusive to the platform; Oculus funded the title and plans to release it for free in Q1 2017.

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With Touch, guns are a natural gameplay mechanic, and Robo Recall is full of them. With Epic’s characteristically impressive design, the weapons you’ll wield in the game are satisfying from their look to their sound, right down to the way they blow enemies to pieces. Waves of killer robots will be on the receiving end of your firepower, but this isn’t the gritty serious action of Call of Duty, it’s an arcade slugfest where a high score underlines the action.

To get a sense of the sort of arcade styling of the game here’s an example: You start with two basic pistols holstered at your hips; once their clips are spent, instead of reloading with a new magazine, you’re encouraged to simply throw them aside, as a new pair will simply be teleported to your holsters. It’s virtual, wasteful, debauchery of the best sort. Then there’s the flashy points that pop up over enemies’ heads when you blast them apart, and a narrator highlighting moves like “headshot!”.

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And there’s more to do than just shoot. If a robot wanders close enough, you can reach out and grab it, then proceed to tear it limb from robotic limb.

Holding on to one part of the bot, you’ll see white dots appear on other vulnerable parts, with you off hand you can reach out and just shear the piece off, then of course use it to beat the rest of the thing to pieces. And when you’re all done, don’t forget to throw that sad, lonely limb at another robot for some juicy points. Developers behind Robo Recall told me that this feature came directly from people’s natural reaction to reach out to grab or punch enemy robots when they got near in Bullet Train.

Returning from Bullet Train is the bullet-dodging functionality where the world will go into slow motion when incoming bullets are about to hit you. And yes, you can still grab a bullet out of the air and launch it back at your assailant like a superhero.

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In the Robo Recall demo I got to play with Oculus Touch at Connect, I tore through enemy robots with guns, fists, and even a giant mini-boss-bot that I was able to board and control, using it’s huge arms to grab and smash enemies and the laser cannon on its right arm. At one point I nabbed a robot who strolled too close, launched it into the air, and then proceeded to blast it out of the sky like laser skeet.

Navigation is handled with a teleportation mechanic where you point to where you want to move to and then use the Touch controller’s left stick to rotate the teleportation cursor to the direction you want to face when you move. When it works, it works well, but there’s stuff some user-control related issues that sometimes get you turned around away from the frontal tracking cameras. It’s something Epic says they’re still working to perfect.

There’s no denying Epic’s game development talent, and their work in VR is no different. Across the board, Robo Recall is visually and sonically polished to a sheen (just wait until you see those pretty reflections), and the game oozes with feedback that elevates it from what could be a generic VR FPS into something much more visceral.

damaged-core-robots

The sum of the experience is satisfying action-packed fun. Grab a robot, rip the gun out of its hand, then blow its head off and use the corpse as a shield.

The game isn’t just fun, also impressively beautiful. That’s the norm for pretty much anything Epic has set their minds (and their impressive Unreal Engine) to, but Robo Recall in particular uses some new tech from Epic to look extra sharp in VR.

Epic Game’s Nick Whiting told me that the company wrote a new forward-renderer to eek out extra graphical detail in VR. Partly based on Oculus’ work, the renderer opens up the door to MSAA in VR which Whiting says really enhances the sharpness of geometry which is especially noticeable in VR thanks to stereoscopy.

SEE ALSO
'Bullet Train' on the Latest Oculus Touch Makes You a Bullet-Catching Badass

The free Robo Recall, which will be released in Q1 2017, will have three environments with three missions easy. The game isn’t so much campaign as it is a score-attack and wave-like shooter, but Epic promises we’ll see mini-bosses and mini-events (like ‘kill the most enemies in 2 minutes’) to spice things up. The company is aiming for two to four hours of gameplay with Robo Recall.

The post Epic’s New Action-packed ‘Robo Recall’ FPS is Beautiful, Brutal Arcade Fun appeared first on Road to VR.

Unreal Engine 4.13 Brings VR Templates: Here’s How to Get Started on Your Own VR Game

The recent launch of Unreal Engine 4.13 brought significant changes for many areas of videogame development, not least virtual reality (VR). However, arguably the biggest change for VR developers is the inclusion of a VR Template: made entirely in Unreal Engine 4 Blueprints, this VR Template allows any keen VR developer to jump straight in and create projects of their own, for free.

Unreal Engine 4 Header 2

The VR Template has been designed for development with Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or PlayStation VR (mobile formats have been omitted from this release, though many of the lessons that can be learned may be applicable). To begin, developers must first download the latest complete build of Unreal Engine 4.13, via the Epic Games Launcher, and create a new project through the Project Wizard.

The VR Template is located in the pre-constructed Blueprint section, labelled ‘Virtual Reality. Two maps are included as standard, designed specifically for different kinds of locomotion depending on hardware features, which can be found in the Content Browser.

Once the developer has set their scene through these basic steps, they should refer to a handy VR Templates guide prepared by Tom Looman, Developer Support Engineer at Epic Games. The guide includes a brief breakdown of each of the aspects of the template before diving into the details of control input mapping, rendering and performance settings and how to transfer the lessons learnt into your own project, allowing you to begin developing from scratch.

Unreal Engine 4 VR Template

Unreal Engine 4.13 is available to download now for free. VRFocus recently hosted a special event in London, UK, called the Virtual Reality Challenge (VRC) in which four teams went head-to-head to produce a VR videogame in just 24 hours utilising Unreal Engine 4. Many of the teams had no prior experience with Unreal Engine 4 yet created some fantastic videogame experiences. A testament to what is possible with a little imagination and a lot of patience.

Star Wars ‘Mos Eisley’ Realised in Staggering Detail on UE4, VR Version Coming

An environmental artist with a passion for Star Wars has realised the iconic location of Star Wars’ Mos Eisley space port in jaw-dropping detail via Unreal Engine 4. What’s more, it’s coming to VR soon and you can download the demo now.

John Lewis is an Environmental Artist for Obsidian Entertainment, developers behind games such as Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fallout: New Vegas. On a whim and as a Star Wars fan, he decided it’d be cool if he could a virtual build the docking bay (No. 94 as any Star Wars fan should know) located in Mos Eisley, Tatooine, the “hive of scum and villainy” from the original (sorry, ‘fourth’) Star Wars instalment. That’s how it began.

However, Lewis’ his ambitions for the project soon expanded, and eventually he realised that he really wanted to wander beyond the docking bay into the rest of Mos Eisley and visit the other iconic movie set, the Cantina where Luke Skywalker, Obi-wan Kenobi meet the Falcon’s owners, Han Solo and Chewbacca, for the first time. He needed help, so he enlisted his co-workers from Obsidian, quite rightly all Star Wars super-fans too, to the point where up to 17 people have now contributed.

“In addition to myself, the other artists working with me on this project all currently work for Obsidian as well, from additional senior artists, to mid-range and junior artists as well, ” says Lewis, writing for 80.lv, “We even have someone on the QA team contributing some artwork as well. In total there are 17 people contributing to this project in varying capacities. This is a just-for-fun personal project that we are all contributing to for no reason other than we are all a bunch of super Star Wars fans and with all the Star Wars awesomeness going on these days, we all thought it would be a good time to jump in and produce a quality fan art project. In addition to just being a bunch of super Star Wars nerds, several of us have been wanting an excuse to learn Unreal 4 for some time now, so we figured that this was a perfect opportunity.”

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The resulting environments, rendered capably using Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, are some of the most detailed and realistic recreations I’ve ever seen. Indeed, Lewis admits that his ambitions were lofty on this front.  “… my goal was to build the most highly detailed real-time Falcon that anyone has ever seen, and I think I have pulled it off, except for maybe the Falcon model from the recent ILM X-Labs VR demo …”. Tie fighters, X-Wing fighters and an Imperial Shuttle are all to be found whilst wandering around the environments.

You can find download link mirrors in the description of the video over on YouTube. I’ve included them below for reference, but it’s likely that (being Google Drive links) these will hit limits soon enough.

Mirror#1 – https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B48A…
Mirror#2 – https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzdD…
Mirror#3 – https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9zH…
Mirror#4 – https://drive.google.com/folderview?i…
Mirror#5 – https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwT…

The icing on the cake of course is that, being built in UE4, the demo should be relatively easy to add virtual reality support to, and indeed this is next on the horizon for the team. “We are also working on a VR version as well as several people in the group have been playing around with Occulus and Vive VR kits,” says Lewis, “and we thought it would be cool to have a version that runs in VR, so we are currently trying to get that finished as well.”

The team have made the demo available to the public to download now. Although be quick, this kind of super-high quality work will likely draw the eye of new Lucasfilm (and therefore Star Wars) owners Disney. In the mean time, checking out Lewis’ full blog on the project is highly recommended.

The post Star Wars ‘Mos Eisley’ Realised in Staggering Detail on UE4, VR Version Coming appeared first on Road to VR.

VRFocus to Host UK’s Biggest VR Game Jam

VRFocus is proud to announce the upcoming Virtual Reality Challenge (VRC), a new event taking place 3rd – 4th September 2016, London, the UK’s biggest ever VR Game Jam. Offering fantastic prizes to the winning team, applications to participate in the VRC are now open and are free to all. 

VRFocus' VRC logo

Game Jams are a prominent part of virtual reality (VR) with numerous popular videogame titles, including #Selfie Tennis and Final Approach, having originated from such humble beginnings. VRFocus is ready to aid developers looking to create their next entertainment masterpiece through hosting the UK’s biggest ever VR-only Game Jam, VRC, in London next month. Participants will have just 24 hours to develop something unique, with the winning team set to receive a HTC Vive head-mounted display (HMD) for each team member, courtesy of Valve.

Partnering with Epic Games for the VRC, the event will feature numerous mentors from established UK-based VR development studios on-hand to offer advice and guidance to participants building in Unreal Engine 4. The full line-up of mentors will be revealed in due course, however VRFocus can reveal that Climax Studios, CherryPop Games and Supermassive Games will all be lending their support to the prospective jammers.

The VRC will begin on Saturday, 3rd September 2016, at 10am BST. Participants will have time to set up their gear and get to know one another before the theme of the event is announced at 1:15pm. The teams will then be given an opportunity to brainstorm and come up with a unique VR experience based around the given theme before the VRC officially begins at 3pm. From then on the teams have just 24 hours to create something exciting, innovative and inherently unique in the VR space.

Organised in collaboration with Thomas Gere, the event will be held at Campus London, 4-5 Bonhill Street, London, with Climax Studios providing light snacks and dinner on Saturday, 3rd August 2016. Interested parties can apply to participate for free at the official VRC Eventbrite page. Of course, VRFocus will keep you updated with all the latest details on the VRC, including further details on the available mentors and how to be a part of the event if you can’t attend in person coming soon.