PanopticVR

Hey there, masks of all shapes and sizes!

We have been in stealth mode for a while now, working on the promised last major demo update as well as continuing development on the full game. We are excited to share our plans for that, but it will have to wait a bit longer!

But on to the content on this update! The star of the show: Oculus support! Oculus support Panoptic is now fully playable using Oculus Rift (CV1). Since the VR gameplay of Panoptic is gaze-based, and only requires one button, we feel that the Oculus Remote, the small controller that comes with the Oculus Rift (CV1), is the best input for the Overseer. But you can also use an Oculus Touch controller, if you so prefer. Do keep in mind that the game was designed from the core as a 360° room-scale game, with some gameplay taking place low to the floor. The original Oculus Rift (CV1) single-camera setup will simply not work, and even the standard "2-point forward-facing 180° standing setup" that is recommended for Oculus Touch may not always function correctly. Please make sure your Oculus Rift (CV1) is properly set up for 360° room-scale, before playing Panoptic.

Those of you who have been asking for Oculus support can now finally enjoy the game, and hopefully this will also help the game reach new players.

NPC behaviour Aside from the Oculus support, we have also been tweaking the NPCs behaviour. Now, you are able to push them away as the Challenger, making it a little easier, though riskier, to traverse the level without getting stuck. We are still on the fence about that change, so we decided to put it out there for you all to test and tell us what you think!

Changelog

Oculus Rift (CV1) is now a supported platform

using the Oculus Remote is advised, but Oculus Touch controllers are also supported

make sure your Oculus Rift (CV1) is properly set up properly for 360° room-scale

The Challenger now pushes the NPCs away while walking

Some navigation bugs where NPCs would suddenly jump were fixed

And that is it for now! Thank you for your patience. We hope you will feel rewarded when we have more to show on the full game later on!

Here is a summary of the changes you will find in demo version 0.12.0:

Level design changes!

While the Panoptic demo still currently has one level, we have modified it in order to improve the balance of the game.

The very beginning of the level now has 2 entrances to the cathedral, and both are completely hidden from the Overseer’s view, helping the Challenger enter the first open space unnoticed.

The areas visited by NPCs have been expanded, removing some empty spots that were a big giveaway of the Challenger’s position.

The top section of the first building, while still having no NPC, is now filled with pillars to help ensure a better gameplay in that hide-and-seek portion.

The glass hallways have been altered to hide the Challenger better, while at the same time having narrow slits for the Overseer to try and shoot through.

The towers at both extremities of the staircases have been modified to help the Challenger hide and blend in a bit better.

The paths of the NPCs on the stairs have been tweaked to offer a more natural progression.

PC Options

Often requested, we have included some options for the PC player to change.

Fullscreen toggle, which lets you switch from fullscreen mode to windowed and vice-versa.

Brightness modification slider (only applies to the PC player, not the Vive).

Sensitivity slider for gamepad joysticks as well as for the mouse.

Toggle for look axis inversion (X and Y).

Control remapping menu.

Other changes

Here are some of the other changes that have been included in the update:

Steam Controllers should now be supported (as a normal gamepad)

The Overseer, in addition to having its vision clouded when clipping through the walls, is now incapable to shoot in those situation.

The collider for the Overseer has been adapted to more closely reflect perceived clipping from the Vive viewpoint.

Various small bug fixes.

What is next?

In short? Oculus integration (via OpenVR).

To be more precise, this is probably the last feature that we are going to implement for a little while. Before you grab your pitchfork, this does not mean we are giving up on Panoptic, on the contrary!

The game has, we think, some very promising potential. But the initial demo we are still updating today was first created under a very specific set of constraints (a 48 hour game jam, for instance). We want to make sure we make Panoptic the very best game it can be. And so, we have decided to, once Oculus support is in, focus on really giving the design of Panoptic a close look and really define what we want the final game to be.

So while we will continue to communicate about the development of the game, the demo itself will likely not be updated for a while. For instance, we have said we want to add online multiplayer to the game. This is something we are indeed working on at the moment, but shoehorning it into the demo as it is now would take much more effort than including it from the get-go into the full game. That kind of realisation made us see that the best course for us is to focus our energy on making the full game the best it can be, even if it means not implementing every change we wanted for the demo. Hopefully, you will agree with us and be glad when you see the end result!

That is all for now. Hope you will all enjoy these changes, and feel free to give us your thoughts about our plans and your experience with the new version! And as always you can reach us through the Steam forums, or through Twitter or Facebook! Till next time!

Here is a summary of the changes you can expect to find in version 0.11.4:

Game Modifiers! We have implemented several optional modifiers that can be toggled from the Vive player's Main Menu screen. This is a first step towards letting you customize the difficulty level, and the first three options are:

Setting a limit to the number of "innocent" NPCs the Overseer can shoot and kill before losing the game. Make sure you know who you are aiming at!

Setting the reload time between consecutive shots. This can be made less than, or more than the default value.

Choosing whether NPCs should respawn when killed. This avoids just killing all NPC’s in specific areas; which made it way too easy to spot the PC player.

Analytics In order to let us gather as much feedback as possible, we have implemented some analytics reporting. In the interest of transparency, here is the (anonymous!) data the game will report back to us:

The values of the various game modifiers selected

The number of games during each play session

The duration of each game

The winner (Overseer or Challenger)

The number of shots and kills made by the Overseer

We plan to use these data points to further balance the game as best as we can. Again, we stress that the data is completely anonymous, and we will do our utmost to communicate appropriately if we need to add more data to the reporting. We know data collection is a sensitive issue, and we take it seriously, but the game will benefit a lot from it!

Other balance tweaks Since game balance is something we really need to improve, we have included a number of smaller, but important changes:

The vision of the Overseer is blocked when peeking into buildings.

The walking speed and patterns of the NPCs have been tweaked to match the Challenger speed more closely, making it a bit easier to blend in.

NPCs will be a bit smarter and try to avoid the Challenger, making moving around easier.

There is now a roof on the starting elevator...

Controller support Controllers are now fully supported. While you cannot yet reassign buttons, but the setup is fairly standard:

Left stick for moving around (+ navigating menu’s)

Right stick for looking

Any face button (A/B/X/Y or equivalent) to jump

Any shoulder button to sprint

The underlying input code has been completely overhauled, and this should hopefully also solve the problem with constant rotation certain users were encountering. And there is more! We also have some other tweaks and fixes for you all:

Pressing the ESC key (or Start on a controller) will no longer dump you back in the main menu. Rather, it will bring up an in-game menu on the Challenger's screen with options to Resume, Restart the level, go back to the Main Menu, or Quit the game. Be warned though: the game is not paused, so you are still vulnerable!

Some NavMesh bugs have been solved, removing some "jumps" from the NPCs.

That is all for this update! We hope you will enjoy these new features, and do not forget that you can reach us through various means, like Twitter, Facebook, and the Panoptic Steam Forum! Talk to you all soon!

Footsteps echo in the empty room, bouncing off the distant walls in the blueish light. Then, a voice is heard…

Hello? Is this thing on?

Hi! Welcome to the Panoptic Development Log! We have been keeping our heads down, while working on the game, but since we have a big new update to announce, we figured this would be a good time to properly kick off this dev log, where we will share tidbits about the development of the game, and basically keep you updated with what the team is up to!

So, as we mentioned, a new update has just been released on Steam and ITCH.IO, ready for your enjoyment! It has been informed by all the feedback we gathered on social media, Reddit and the Steam forums, and while there is still a lot to be done (online mode, anyone?), we wanted to get this out to you as soon as possible. Now, the goal is to achieve a faster release cycle, so you should see the next update in a not-too-distant future!