Graffiti Bombing: Development News #4

It's been a while since the last update, apologies for the radio silence!

Rest assured, we are still alive and working hard on development for GB - however it's taking a lot more work to get ready for launching into Early Access.

Closed Beta Update

The first beta group started in May 2020 with a small group of testers. See the list below for some relevant details.

• Current build supports hardware for HTC VIVE, Valve Index and Oculus Rift.

• Testers have been doing graffiti, testing the tools and exploring environments.

• Providing valuable feedback for improvements on features and usability.

• Reporting bugs and glitches, that we have been able to track and fix.

• Providing valuable hardware specific feedback on controller configurations.

• Helping us to work through performance and bugs related to hardware.

• Contributing new ideas and suggestions that will make the experience better.

Thanks to all the beta testers so far - your time in testing, reporting bugs and sending valuable feedback is much appreciated!

Image above - very first GB piece from the amazingly talented -noRMSter-

Development Progress Update

After launching the beta it became clear how much work is left to-do before GB will be ready for Early Access. Considerably more than previously thought! However, this is a good thing overall - the feedback, bug fixes and improvements that we are continuing to work on now, will make the GB experience better in the long-term.

The current development focus has been adjusted to follow the beta feedback. More performance optimization and improvements are required - so the last 1-2 weeks have been spent working on that, with a goal of making the experience run better across all supported VR / hardware / platforms. Also reducing the memory footprint, and we've made some decent progress. In the next beta build the memory usage has been reduced by around ~40% which is quite a bit!

There are always trade-off's though in software development - you improve / change one thing and it can affect something else. This is true for performance too, as to reduce the memory overhead the only way to do that effectively, is to load / unload graphical assets and levels more often. This can result in some performance spikes when loading a lot of data, however overall I think the trade-off and performance gains are worth it.

Development tasks for the rest of June:

• Fix all bugs and feedback reported to-date by the first group of beta testers.

• Continue to improve World streaming - relates to scene and zone load / unloading.

• Add more configuration and performance options for graphics / quality.

• Minor adjustments to the V1 paint system, also add some more cap types.

• Improve interactions, add more grab options for different controller types.

• Add hardware support for Oculus Quest (link cable setup only).

• Add hardware support for Windows Mixed Reality setups (experimental support only).

• Improve the in-game tooltips system and add more help options.

• Finish the DLC integration and get the Early Access build ready.

What's Next

Well - we cannot delay things forever! So are continuing to work hard toward the next planned launch window, at the end of June 2020.

In the next 1-2 weeks we'll be announcing a second phase of the beta testing, and invite more people to join that and have a chance to try out GB. If you're interested in becoming a beta tester, you can sign-up using the Google form here. Please note, you'll also be required to join the GB channel on Discord, so we can set you up as a tester.

There is quite a bit of interest in the project right now, which is awesome! It's surprising how many people from all walks of life are interested in the graffiti / street art culture, and that motivates us greatly. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you all create, once we finally get GB launched into Early Access.

Community

As always - you can interact with us via the Steam community features. We do read all posts, and reply where and when it makes sense.

The Graffiti Bombing group on Discord, continues to grow. So you can jump on there if you want to speak with the development team directly, or meet other potential players and graffiti artists.

Discord server: https://discord.gg/ZVkByeVyQG

Thanks for your continued patience and support!

// Wildstyle @ Graffiti Bombing