Tuesday 31 December 2013

Farewell 2013, Hello 2014!

Hard to believe that in just a few hours we will be starting 2014. 2013 has been a great for us, especially with the exciting launch of our Steam Greenlight campaign.

We have been on Greenlight for a week and so far the campaign is going really well. The gif below shows you the progress of the cumulative Yes votes Time Rifters has received over the past week, and as you can see we have been tracking along the top games on Greenlight.


Thank you to everyone for your support so far. The latest screenshot of our campaign shows we have received over 6,700 yes votes which puts us 77% of the way into the top 100 on Greenlight. The next 5,000 votes are going to be the hardest to get, but we are really looking forward to being able to post that we have broken through the top 50.


Happy New Year eveyone, see you in 2014!


Monday 30 December 2013

Time Rifters in the Media!

Time Rifters has been receiving some great mentions in the past couple of days.

We are featured on Kotaku in the article Colorful Indie Shooter Lets You Play with Yourself.

We were discussed on Sunday nights The Bobby Blackwolf Show (podcast should be posted in a few days).

Cymatic Bruce, played Time Rifters on his Sunday Stream. Video should be posted on his YouTube Channel soon.

Doug (Proton) was also interviewed and quoted in the Verge article All jacked in and nothing to play: Chasing the perfect VR game.

Wednesday 25 December 2013

Time Rifters 0.5 Demo & Greenlight Launched

Happy Holidays!

Time Rifters Demo 0.5 and Greenlight campaign are officially launched!

Try out the Demo & Vote for us on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=193620967

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=193620967

Changelog:
- Added weapon shop
- Added lightning gun
- Each weapon has 5 upgrades
- Created 4 new levels
- Balanced 2 existing levels
- Save player progress
- Added award badges progress widget
- Added gold & silver loot from destroyed enemies
- New movement method (no yaw drift or mag correction anymore)
- Added non-Rift support (Standard monitor)

Monday 23 December 2013

Christmas Day.....

Time Rifters Demo 0.5 & Steam Greenlight Campaign Launch - Christmas Day!

Our new teaser trailer shows a glimpse of what the new demo has to offer:


Wednesday 18 December 2013

Steam Greenlight & Demo Announcement

Really excited to announce that we will be launching our Time Rifters Steam Greenlight campaign on December 25. The new Time Rifters demo (version 0.5) will be released as part of the launch.

This means that all you current Rifters (especially those with Rifts waiting for them under the tree) and even non-Rifters will have a new demo to play on Christmas day!

Tuesday 10 December 2013

Floating Gold & Super Jump

Although our focus has been on polishing, tweaking and bug fixes, we did take some time this week to add a few new features into the game.

Each character now has a glow around them, which should make it easier to spot your past lives in the levels, especially on some of the new darker maps.


The gold/silver now floats in the spot where the enemy was destroyed instead of falling to the ground. This produced a really cool stereoscopic effect, but also introduced a new challenge: how do you collect the gold/silver when an enemy dies in a higher up place? Our solution: give the player the ability to super jump.


Tuesday 3 December 2013

Calgary VR Meetup

On Sunday we took part in a local VR meetup. It was great chatting with similar minded people about VR, games and anything else that came up. Opportunities to test out an Oculus Rift in Calgary have been pretty rare, which means we got to have a lot of fun watching people try it out for the first time.


As part of the event, we test drove the new Time Rifters demo. We received lots of positive comments as well as some great feedback on ways to enhance some of the features.

Caine (Tales from the Rift developer) and Flake (the Oculus Rift Guinea Pig) also came out for the event. They posted an awesome hi-light video on their YouTube channel - Channel Caine.


Thanks to Redditor legsbrogun for organizing such a great afternoon, we can't wait to take part in the next one.

Tuesday 26 November 2013

Options Menu

Here is a look at the Options Menu that was introduced last week.


Tuesday 19 November 2013

Where It All Starts

Since the start menu is the very first thing the player sees we wanted it to be memorable and functional (especially in the Rift). Our initial thoughts were to have the player spawn in a walkable area featuring a 3D Time Rifters logo, the game credits and 2 doors that would lead you to separate options and level selection rooms.


One major improvement that was made to the original design is that the options and level select are no longer in separate rooms,  instead we have created interactive platforms where parts of the floor are buttons that when stepped on activate holographic walls.


I didn't think we would top the Caves level so quickly, but this is definitely our newest favorite area.

Tuesday 12 November 2013

The Caves

Here is a sneak peek at our newest arena (which just happens to be our current favorite)


Tuesday 5 November 2013

Tunnel Vision

We wanted to have at least one level where the world moves around the player (think of the original Half Life tram ride). This brought up the question, is it possible to make that experience comfortable in VR?

In theory it's the acceleration that causes some simulator sickness, not velocity. So if the platform is always moving at a constant speed in the same direction, then perhaps your brain will accept it.

Our first test started with just a platform that moves forward through a large tunnel. Then we added pillars to anchor the player's virtual body to the platform (preventing your entire FOV from being consumed by moving walls). Tinted glass panels were added to push the tunnel walls into the background. Finally, particles were added to provide additional visual cues for the movement.


This level is still an experiment in progress, but at least for now it seems like it is possible to have a moving level while maintaining a comfortable experience.

Tuesday 29 October 2013

Player Movement Experiment

Here is a new video where we discuss recent changes to the player's movement.


Tuesday 22 October 2013

Designing a New Enemy

We wanted some bigger enemies and saw two directions we could go in:
  1. Large enemies with a lot of health (like the boss sphere thing)
  2. Large enemies composed of lots of smaller enemies
We decided to try out option 2 for a few reasons:
  • More explosions are more satisfying
  • The entire body being destroyed acts as a natural progress indicator
  • Different types of blocks can be used to make some parts easier/harder to destroy
Before starting we came up with a list of questions, here's a few:
  • Will it look as cool in-game as it does in our imaginations?
  • How many blocks are needed in order to make the object identifiable?
  • Can we still use the same pool manager to optimize spawning of these larger creatures?
  • Would we be able to animate these enemies to bring a bit more life to them?
We decided our first experiment would be a dragonfly. We came up with some 2D concept block configurations, then came the fun part of turning the pixel art into an actual 3D enemy.


So far the experiment has been successful which means you will hopefully see some cool enemies in the full game.


Thursday 17 October 2013

Time Rifters VR Jam Demo on Oculus Share

Happy to announce that the Time Rifters VR Jam Demo is now available on Oculus Share. https://share.oculusvr.com/app/time-rifters


Tuesday 15 October 2013

Acid & Lightning

We've had lots of positive feedback on the weapon upgrades, and decided to keep pushing the upgrades further/crazier. Here is a sneak peak of two new ones that have been added to Time Rifters.


One shot of acid and the chemical reaction begins. The bubbles caused by the Acid Bullet upgrade, which can be purchased for the Flak Cannon and Pistol, will slowly remove health from affected enemies over time.


It's extremely satisfying watching enemies explode from bursts of lightning. The new Lightning Gun discharges an electric spark causing a chain reaction with surrounding enemies.

This is just a glimpse at some of the new features we are adding into Time Rifters. What upgrades/weapons would you like to see?

Tuesday 10 September 2013

Time Rifters 0.4.0 - Optimization

Try it out now: http://www.protonstudio.com/p/time-rifters.html

Check out this video where we discuss a few of the changes for Time Rifters 0.4.0:


Changelog:
- Tripled the frame rate on some computers
- Removed dynamic lighting & shadows (adjusted art to fit)
- Added MSAA & downsampling (crisp anti-aliasing)
- Added analytics to help gauge difficulty
- Changed from deferred to forward rendering
- Adjusted HUD transparency and colors (more transparent)
- You can always progress to the 2nd level
- Hold start or F1 to reset entire game
- Optimized CPU usage of music visualizer
- Made visualizer have more accurate representation of the music
- Hide/show geometry at the correct times (small optimization)
- Remove all gold that was not picked up at the end of a round
- Texture resolution reduction via memory profiling

Monday 26 August 2013

Time Rifters 0.3.2 - Dubstep

The Oculus/IndieCade VR Jam is officially over and the full demo of Time Rifters has been submitted.

Try it out now: http://www.protonstudio.com/p/time-rifters.html

Changes for 0.3.2
- Added Time Rift effect (like water ripples) to the exit of the Time Clone room
- Added music visualizer to the clone room
- Added 3 music tracks
- Created a title screen widget
- Added the logo to the level complete widget & changed text
- More accurate replays of enemy positions
- Fixed horrible Rift tracking bug introduced in 0.2 (only seen if you didn't try 0.1 first)




 For more updates please follow us on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and/or Google+

Monday 19 August 2013

Time Rifters 0.2 - Boss Battle!

Try it out now: http://www.protonstudio.com/p/time-rifters.html
- Area 2 - The boss battle
- New control schemes (head aiming, decoupled, keyhole)
- Reworked HUD for better visibility
- Moved the camera pivot to give a better view when looking down
- Each time clone now has their own unique color
- Integrated Oculus’ new SDK (0.2.4) which includes the automatic yaw drift correction


Smaller Changes
- Mag correction status widget
- Control scheme status widget (with input sensitive hint)
- Modified door sound effect to match animation better
- Darker lighting in the time clone room
- Pressure plates flash so they are easier to spot
- The target of the pressure plate shares color & flashing
- Added bridges with lights tied to pressure plates
- Added holographic resource cube to resources widget as a hint
- Created an earthquake effect
- New transition animations and sound effects for visor widgets
- Added level complete widget & level switching logic
- Added basic save state logic for level transition
- F4 will restart from the very beginning
- F1 or Start will restart the current area
- Changed wording from ‘Progress’ to ‘Remaining’
- Created the boss widget
- Extended shadow distance so the pit darkness worked
- Upgraded from Unity 4.1 to 4.2
- Added glowing effect to rifle
- Removed incorrect dynamic lighting from low & medium quality settings

We really appreciate all of the comments that we received on Time Rifters 0.1, a lot of the feedback was incorporated into this new version. We would once again appreciate any feedback on the new version.

For more updates please follow us on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and/or Google+.

Saturday 17 August 2013

VR Jam Week 2

What an awesome week it has been!

It started off with the first demo release of Time Rifters, which has received a very postive response.

A bunch of the feedback that we have collected so far will be incorporated into Time Rifters 0.2, which we are hoping to release on Monday. The best part about 0.2 is the awesome brand new level.

The week ended with us needing to submit a short video of our game's progress to IndieCade/Oculus in order to complete milestone 2 of the VR Jam. Our goal was to create a 30 second teaser trailer, however the video doubled in size, as estimations usually do.

Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and/or Google+ as there are lots of great things in the very near future: Time Rifters and beyond, plus we are considering doing a post mortem of our VR Jam experience.

In the meantime, sit back, relax and enjoy the Time Rifters Teaser Trailer:


Monday 12 August 2013

[Demo] Time Rifters (Single Player Co-Op FPS)

Ever wanted to play a multi-player game where you control all of your team mates? Now you can!


Time Rifters is a single player co-op game where 'time rifts' allow you to be your own team mates. Unlock upgrades and customize each of your time clones. Strategically plan your attack with yourself in the past & future.


Our game for the Oculus/IndieCade VRJam is progressing well, but we would love to know what you think. Feel free to check out the demo and leave any feedback/comments on our facebooksub-reddit or twitter.

Check out the Time Rifters Download section for the latest build.

Monday 5 August 2013

VR Jam - Day 4

Here’s the first look at our main character and one of the in-game weapons. We found both in the Unity Asset Store, and are using them as inspiration for the level art style.


This is an Oculus Rift view of the model:


The next couple of days are going to be spent focusing on expanding the actual gameplay logic, level art style, and control schemes.

Thursday 1 August 2013

Oculus/IndieCade VR Jam

We are officially signed up to be part of the Oculus/IndieCade VR Jam that starts tomorrow. Should be a fun and interesting 3 weeks!

We will be posting updates throughout the competition so stay tuned.


Wednesday 31 July 2013

And the Clan Wars Begin!

We just released the first Clan Wars update to BeGone. The main objective was to let players moderate servers without letting them just create them (leading to incredible amounts of spam servers). Now certain servers are dedicated to Clan Wars, the clan with the highest number of kills on that server will win control over it. If another clan gets more kills, then ownership is transferred.

The clan wars have begun! Congrats to Citrus & TK for firing the first shots in this war.


Tuesday 30 July 2013

Now on Facebook

Proton Studio is now officially on facebook.

Check us out at www.facebook.com/ProtonStudioInc


Sunday 2 June 2013

Gunpoint: Double Kill!

I was determined to get a double kill in the demo for Gunpoint.

Check the game out: http://gunpointgame.com/