v041 - Grips++

It's time for more street hockey!

Here's an update with more going on under-the-hood than meets the eye. You won't find new game modes or anything flashy (except an update to Lucy Mode). But what you will find is a better overall experience. A lot of it is thanks to your great feedback! Tons of performance improvements were made, and we're not done yet. Most of the work this time around was on experimental features. But we'll get to that in a minute.

Lots of work was put into improving the controls for this update. Our stick grip controls are even better than ever! Hands will now lock in place as you freely grip the stick at any point along the shaft. This gives you a sense of realism unavailable in any other game. Now, instead of being locked to your backhand, you can control your stick freely with just your forehand. Sure, this gives you the ability to make more mistakes. But it also affords you greater control, just like a real hockey stick!

We hear you. You didn't like the target that the ball would fall onto at the beginning of a round. Which, really, makes a lot of sense. The curves made the ball bounce erratically and made it difficult to position for the perfect shot. So, problem solved! Now, that target is just painted onto the ground. It looks cooler and it plays better. We also hear you about the ability to recenter your room. This was especially a problem on Oculus, with a two sensor setup. So, we now offer a way to easily recenter your player. It doesn't work on SteamVR setups yet, but we'll add that soon. And for those of you with motion sickness trouble, we added a few additional speed lines, which are more visible while looking down.

There are some fancy new visual additions, too. Because, come on, we couldn't let an update slip by without you getting something new to look at! We added a weight, which appears randomly like the bomb. Why? Because lulz. We also improved the laser pointers, because the old ones were kinda boring. The stick blade now sits flush with the ground, shadows have  been overhauled, and the grass got an upgrade. Lucy Mode got... weirder.

You don't have to thank us. You're welcome.

Finally, a brief note about the updates you won't notice immediately. We've been experimenting with some improvements to performance and the results are staggering! We've got it working, mostly. When it's ready, we'll push it out to everyone. Be excited. In the meantime, you'll just have to settle for a native Windows Mixed Reality version. Oh right, and Knuckles support. Shhh! Don't tell anyone.

Enjoy the update, everyone! Drop by the Discord and tell us how we can make it better.

v041 - DevLog
Gameplay Adjustments
+ Stick and hands positions now update according to grip
+ Adjusted stick collision to sit flush with ground
+ Removed mesh under Ball spawn location
+ Reduced likelihood of Bombs
+ Reduced likelihood of multiple Bombs in a row
+ Added Weight ball type
+ Added ability to reset Room Center (Oculus only, for now)
+ Added Discord Link

Performance
+ Reduced landscape triangle count dramatically

Graphics
+ Enabled RayTraced Distance Field Shadows
+ Adjusted Cascaded Shadow Map distance
+ Added Target Decal under Ball spawn location
+ Added Weight model
+ Improved laser pointer appearance
+ Increased number of speed lines above/below the player
+ Added Desktop Display resolution settings (disabled for now)
+ Made Lucy Mode a little bit crazier

Audio
+ Added Weight Clank sound effect

Bug Fixes
+ Ball hidden before it drops (broken in v040 by Lucy Mode)
+ Quality Settings load properly
+ Menu vibrations work again
+ Windows Mixed Reality hand offsets corrected
+ Knuckles hand offsets corrected

Other
+ Adjusted Random Ball type odds
+ Expanded Shadow Quality settings
+ Expanded Foliage Quality settings
+ Added Mask-Based Foveated Rendering (Disabled, Breaks Post-Process / Oculus only for now)
+ Windows Mixed Reality controls improved (WMR build only)