Hey VR devs, if you missed the news — Oculus updated its SDK this month with a sample application that showcases 8 new (to Oculus, anyway), experimental methods of moving comfortably through VR environments.

Oculus’ recent blog post highlighting the new movement methods makes for intriguing reading, especially if you’re a VR game dev grappling with the problem of how to build a virtual world players can traverse without feeling ill.

This SDK update follows a pair of rundowns Oculus posted this year from collaborators at Crytek who have been experimenting with different methods of VR locomotion.

Some of the new, experimental movement methods seem logical — giving the player “ski poles” with which to move the game world relative to themselves, a la The Climb — while others are a bit more thought-provoking: poking holes in your game world to show a static world “behind” it, for example, or overlaying a parallel world that moves in reverse (see below).

“Another approach to eliminating the apparent locomotion is to provide equal and opposite visuals to the ones generated by the locomotion,” reads an excerpt of the blog post explaining “Counter Optic Flow” locomotion. “Hence the VR world is moving, and a second version of that world is overlaid, and forced to move in the opposite direction. It is tinted another colour to avoid confusion over which world the user is operating in.”

Examples (with source code) for each of the 8 movement methods are now available in the Oculus SDK for Windows, which devs can find on Oculus’ developer hub.

Many games have some portrayal of death, but not many games examine it too closely. So if you’re a game developer interested in the subject, you should know about Laundry Bear Games’ first release A Mortician’s Tale. It’s a small narrative game set in a funeral home that presents players with a view on death from the perspective of a character deeply entwined with its effect, but not its victims. 

Today on the Gamasutra Twitch channel, we were lucky enough to play A Mortician’s Tale with lead developer Gabby DaRienzo. Joined by her compatriots in Twitch chat, we sought out to learn more about the game’s development, and what other indies hoping to find success with niche games can learn from A Mortician’s Tale. 

The sometimes blunt conversation is worth a full watch, and we’ve archived it for your viewing up above. If you’re in a rush though, here are a few quick takeaways from our chat with DaRienzo. 

Engines can be a foundation for aesthetics

A Mortician’s Tale was originally conceived in the PICO-8 engine, which has an extremely limited color palette. At the time, DaRienzo and her cohorts were trying to figure out a reliable aesthetic for portraying death, and stumbled on a purple color that could be easily displayed in PICO-8. Though the final game uses a few more colors to depict certain inputs and characters, it’s a strong lesson in how your game-making technology can provide a foundation for your game’s aesthetic. 

Even small games deserve fair pricing

The Laundry Bear Games team decided to price A Mortician’s Tale at $15, a choice that some Steam reviewers have complained about due to the game’s length. Since game pricing is an important conversation for many indies right now, we asked DaRienzo how she and her colleagues arrived at that price point. According to DaRienzo, they decided on the (arguably not that high) price as a way of maintaining the value of her team’s polish, research, and craft about a very specific subject. It’s a strong argument for other developers working on small games to defend their worth, even as prices are pushed down elsewhere. 

There’s a method to linear-ness

On a spectrum of games that exist, one could imagine a mortician simulator game that allowed players to make all kinds of screwups on the way to preparing a body for a funeral. But DaRienzo explained they didn’t see that realm of possibilities as something they wanted to explore, and that the game’s linear nature forces the player to spend time with an idea (in this case, a dead body) that they might otherwise not be willing to face. 

There’s a lot more keen insight into the design of A Mortician’s Tale in the video above, so be sure to watch that and follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel for more helpful developer interviews. 

This past weekend in Toronto, over 12,000 sneakerheads packed the Enercare Centre for the “Greatest Sneaker Show On Earth,” Sneaker Con. A big draw of a show like this, aside from being able to cop rare Yeezys, Air Maxes, and Jordans, is Ace of Customs. These shoe artists transform rare pairs of kicks into a one-of-a-kind show pieces.

No stranger to unique, themed pairs, Team Xbox handed Ace of Customs some Xbox One S systems for them to go wild with. The best part is, they’re not staying in Toronto – you can win one! To enter to win the Middle-earth: Shadow of War themed console, head over to Sneakercon’s Instagram, and follow the instructions on the #xboxsneakercon post.

Good luck, and have a great #FreshKickFriday

With just days to go until Super Mario Odyssey hits the shelves, there’s a lot of excitement and buzz in the air. While most of the game will be kept under lock and key until 27 October, Nintendo has made a few things public. One of the bigger revelations made earlier this year, when Odyssey was unveiled, was that Pauline would be making a return. Not only would she be featured in the game, but will fill the role of mayor of New Donk City. Many gamers were surprised at the news. Pauline had stayed in the Donkey Kong series of games, but had never been seen in the Super Mario series, where Princess Peach is the main lady in need of rescue.

Pauline has been featured prominently in marketing for Super Mario Odyssey. Most notably, as the vocalist for the theme song to the game, “Jump Up Super Star” which has even been released on the iTunes Store. It’s funny to think about, but really, Pauline has been around just as long as Mario. They were first both featured in Donkey Kong – all the way back in 1981. Donkey Kong has served as a cornerstone for Nintendo with so much history and lore packed into one game. It was the start for Mario, Nintendo’s first true hit and even resulted in a lawsuit over whether or not the concept of the game was public domain or not. 

There is, though, even more history that has been overlooked, at least in my opinion. While the history and development of Donkey Kong, Mario and other characters have been well known and documented in interviews and publications, very little was ever mentioned about Pauline. There is a theory though that she was inspired by a series of films in the early 20th Century.

“The Perils of Pauline” were a set of serial films from the mid-1910s that featured a young woman, named Pauline, falling into all sorts of danger. The dramatic ending of each instalment would always result in her rescue. Though the film looks simplistic today, 100 years ago they proved to be extremely popular. The actress who played Pauline, Pearl White, soon became the most famous silent film star of the day, save for maybe, Lillian Gish. The “Pauline” series was so popular it was remade over and over again, using the same “Perils of Pauline” title. Some of those films made their way over to Japan, where the road to all things Nintendo eventually go. Could these films have influenced the naming of Pauline? It all could be a crazy coincidence, but if that’s all it is, its a rather noticeable one. 

To see some of the different “Perils of Pauline” films and determine for yourself if that’s how Nintendo named the character, check out the video below. It’s also filled with some other trivia you may or may not know. 

For more things Nintendo, retro or Japan, be sure to check out GTV.

A Mortician’s Tale is Now Available on Steam and is 20% off!*

A Mortician’s Tale is a narrative-driven death positive video game where you play as a mortician tasked with running a funeral home—preparing the cadavers of the deceased (via embalming or cremation), attending their funerals and listening to their loved ones’ stories, and running the business.

*Offer ends October 25 at 10AM Pacific Time

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