Progress Report - OpenMW / Quake 4 / Battlefront 2

A bit of house cleaning before I tell you the progress on all 3 of these projects. We have decided that for future votes there will be a separate PCVR / Standalone question. We know that the Patreon (and probably VR in general) understandably leans standalone numbers wise. However we don't want to exclude anyone who supports us. Therefore going forward there will be 2 games chosen in future votes and both a PCVR and standalone title will be in development at the same time, so you all have something to look forward to and test. PCVR guys do keep reading as there is relevant information below.

Mod Progress

As was communicated after the vote we wanted to do the first stage on any VR mod on all 3 titles. We honestly weren't sure how possible each game was and we do this step on everything mod (just not so transparently).

Battlefront 2

Let's start with some bad news. I spent half a day getting this up and running, which was quite complicated. The project has some fantastic potential and very cleverly done, but is neither in a complete enough state to mod VR into or close enough where we could fix the missing parts without pretty much creating a new Battlefront 2 game. Most levels crash, there is no AI of any kind (although MP might have worked) and lots of graphical issues. 

See the attached video for the current state; a neat implementation with potential but nowhere near ready. So this will have to go back on the shelf. It’s definitely disappointing. Even without being complete I was hoping it would be at least close enough to add VR and to be fun, even in a limited capacity. This is sometimes the issue with suggestions and source code we are sent: it’s difficult to know what state the project / code is in and the only way to find out is to spend the time building it and testing, which we obviously can't do for every suggestion, else it would be all we do.

Quake 4

Let’s follow that bad news with some great news! Quake 4 development has started and going very well. We expect there to be something playable very soon. I've not seen anything that I would consider a problem as yet. Keep an eye on those inboxes!

Furthermore the code for this also contains proper dual builds for Windows so if the VR mod works as expected there is a very good chance we could also release a PCVR version in not too long a timeframe.

OpenMW

We've been in contact with the OpenMW team about bringing a VR version to standalone. Usually when we pick up a project it’s either a complete build (such as Doom 3) or a project where the library can be linked via sub-module so updates can stay separate and we can pull in the improvements (LZDoom / Xash Engine / Raze). OpenMW is a very different kettle of fish. The android version that was maintained until last year was done via a series of .diff file (basically something you could apply the patches the file from Windows build to an Android one), which is why it was also so hard to maintain.

The team is keen to get Android back and merged with their latest changes and they have no objections to a standalone VR version. However we are still in talks about how the best way to do this in keeping with their current work, as they'd rather not see a completely separate "snapshot" used that then becomes divorced from the ongoing improvements. We are also not clear on the current state of bringing the VR changes into the main 0.48 branch and have yet to be able to connect with Mads Buvik Sandvei, the creator of the VR branch, for clarification.

I did try the current PCVR implementation and it is a very good experience and something we think, if possible with the hardware limitations, would make an excellent standalone VR title. The thinking at the moment is to possibly use the existing, but feature-wise outdated, Android build along with the VR branch with standalone alterations, to first see how the game runs on standalone. If that is successful then to start a proper condition-based switching of the code so that Android builds are merged into the latest branch and either joining forces with the current VR stuff or having our own alterations as part of an API which can sit on top of the current code (again ensuring the possibility of a merge).

You will have to be a little patient with us on this one. The above issues was the reason it was given a "D" difficulty rating and it will take some time to ensure we are on the right path whilst remaining compatible with the OpenMW team’s ongoing work (so that future improvements to the engine can be incorporated into the VR version).

Until next time..... stay Beefy!