Hi everyone,
Hope that everyone is still feeling good. We have been hard at work on Panther VR after its release nearly a month ago. After a bit of a rocky launch, we were able to resolve the major issues with 2 big hotfixes. But now we are steaming ahead on for the first big update for Panther VR: the Interaction update. We can’t wait to show you some stuff that we have been working on, and what the main direction will be for the 0.1.1 update. This update will include some big changes and improvements to the game, and we will be sharing these changes in the next few weeks with small dev updates on the discord, steam forum, and Reddit. So without further ado, let’s talk about the new update and what is to come! *
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The first update will be the interaction update. While Panther VR has a level of interaction, it is very rough and does not live up to the standards of current VR games. You were only able to grab a very limited amount of items, and even if you would pick them up, they didn’t fit well in your hands. The arms felt wonky, and the finger movement (added in a hotfix) still did not feel as good as it should be. The core of VR is player interaction. You need to feel your presence in the game, by grabbing and interacting with objects the way you would expect.
That is why we decided to focus our attention on the interaction system. The old system was an evolvement of the one in VRDK. But after a year of tweaking, it became a bit of a mess and it reached its limits. That is why we are removing the old system of the game, and are building on a whole new player and interaction system. This is as much work as it sounds. Everything related to the player needs to be rebuilt or reworked, but we believe that this will greatly change and improve the overall experience of Panther VR.
In this first dev update, we are going to talk about the hands. We’ve added some gifs to this post to showcase some of the changes in the new update. First let's take a look at the Arms, or better: the lack of Arms. While we really love to see the arms, the current ones felt really clunky and were more of a distraction than an addition. This is why we decided to remove the arms from the game so that we can add them back in a later stage, but only if we can make them perfect. So from update 0.1.1, we are using hands only. We’ve remodeled, reskinned, and adjusted the size of the hands. We also added a new finger movement system for better immersion. The finger movement now directly mirrors the one you might see in Oculus home.
OLD Interaction
NEW Interaction
Object physics
One of the biggest changes however is the item interaction. You are now able to fully grasp the items you pick up. Every item has its unique pose while grabbing, so no more floating items or strangely placed fingers. We’ve also added full physics to each item, so you will be able to knock stuff over or build small towers out of soda cans. It is still possible to grab objects once your hands are near them, but we also reworked the ranged system as well. Complimented by a GUI and hover over the indicator, items will now float smoothly into your hands once you grab them from a distance.
We have plenty of more stuff coming up in this new update, and we can’t wait to talk about them more in the next blog.
Thanks again for your support, You are all amazing!
- Jesse
Roadmap
For more information about upcoming content, updates, and latest fixes and features, you can check out our roadmap.
Discord
If you haven't already, don't forget to join the Panther VR Discord! Share your comments and suggestion with us and the community!
Socials
For more information about current and future updates, from Panther VR and other Wolfdog Interactive games, follow our Socials!
Developer page
Check out and follow our Steam Developer page for more news on our VR Titles. Wolfdog Interactive Developer Page.
Thanks
Thanks for all the support and feedback from our amazing community. This update is made possible by you guys!
