VRChat's creative community continues to impress. This is the trailer to a new survival horror game in VRChat that was co-developed by Lakuza, who also created a VRChat game with bullet-time effects earlier this year.
“It’s a 5-6 hour horror game essentially and we've modelled everything from scratch, including the music,” he tells me.
While the game is technically launching tomorrow, the lobby area is open now. They're even going to have a Hollywood-style launch party at 8pm PT today. If you already have VRChat installed, click the link here to join the fun.
"The Devouring" was created over the course of nearly a year by a four member team, who collaborated together in VRChat from around the world. (Lakuza doesn't remember exactly where in the real world his team is located.)
Finally opening to the public, Lakuza’s main feeling is “a massive relief”.
“At some points it felt like it was stuck in the ‘1 more month’ phase," as he puts it to me, "and definitely had stressful/burnout points throughout, since it’s a world we all worked on in our spare time after our real life jobs.” (So basically it sounds like crunchtime at an actual game studio, except without that little "getting paid to work" part.)
Developing it was no easy task -- and some potential game spoilers ahead:
"I think optimization was probably the hardest part. We hit the limits of what a VRChat world can hold, so everything was bringing performance down. We had to do a lot of work to get the frames stable, since we lack the freedom a world has with loading screens, and being able to load things in at a time. (VRCchat worlds can only exist in a single scene for example, no loading screens in between unless you split it across multiple worlds.)"
Also notable: The game was built on SDK2, VRChat’s older scripting system, and not its latest toolset, the noodly-named Udon.
CyanLaser, who scripted the game’s AI, had perhaps the most daunting tasks -- possible spoiler ahead:
"The water ghost is confined to water and will follow players and attack if you fall into the water… so not only does it get aggressive but it'll be a lot faster than you are once you fall into the water. So it can get really stressful with it catching up to you. Legends has done an amazing job on the music for this section too -- so we switch between safe music and chase music, depending on if you're in the water or not.”
Here's the direct world link too:https://t.co/RY6kLbRh1t
— Lakuza (@LakuzaVR) August 13, 2020
Assuming you're already not terrified to your limit by the real world, sounds like a fun night in VR. Share your reactions below!
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