Hello! Welcome to A Little Help From Above’s fourth devlog. We haven’t posted in a while, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been active! We were able to have a private playtest session with 8 people who discovered A Little Help From Above, and gave us a bunch of essential feedback.

Along with working on the feedback we got, we got to work on learning some new skills, namely shaders. Very basically, shaders are bits of code that run on the GPU, and they handle everything that’s to do with 3D rendering in general. They allowed us to spice up certain visual elements of the game.

Features

We added a new interactable for VR : a platform with a handle. This one moves along one axis, but we also have one on 2, and one on 3 axes.

We added projectiles that make the player respawn if hit, but VR can block them with their hands.

We added a mystical jammer that stop VR from locking their hands when nearby. Notice the animation change if it’s active or not.

Visual changes

We changed how the forbidden zones look, making them feel more natural and intuitive, as their appearance reacts to the players’ positions. We think this helps make the zones more understandable to new players.

The PC player can now ping locations or objects of interest to communicate with VR. Pinged objects are highlighted.

Objects that PC can interact with are highlighted when nearby to make interactions more intuitive.

We added a checkpoint marker to make it clearer when you reach a level checkpoint.

We also worked on a bunch of new models to make the levels prettier, and added a skybox to make the environment more vibrant.