Wrench Laboratories

Even for non-social VR, we used the trackpad as a great immersive thumb action for flicking lighters, sliding flashlight switches, swiping an in-game phone, etc. It'll be a loss for developers that were using every trick on the Knuckles (along with grip strength which seems to also be absent).

If we can get our hands on a Steam Frame, I'd be more than happy to make sure that Diode City also works on it and because of the style the game has, might even be able to make it run standalone with no compromises.

I really didn't like how many NextFest demos I played for VR games this year and last year and just how broken they all were in various ways.

We've applied for a Steam Frame developer kit. Since we don't have a lot of money, whether we get one or not is going to change the trajectory of what we do for Diode City. Original plan was to release flat first, then add VR support for Valve Index only (GOOD VR support, top quality interaction).

-Killers vary in their effectiveness at hiding their tracks, but there are a lot of different kinds of evidence you can use to learn the truth in alternate ways in case the killer has cleaned up the scene. Sometimes they even leave evidence *because* they tried cleaning up the scene...

-No music yet. In terms of hiring outside help, Amon Tobin is my first and only choice. I assume I can't afford him though, so I'm prepared to have to settle for a plan B.

-Analytical work takes place in your apartment. Analyze DNA, fingerprints, inspect possible murder weapons against wounds, etc.

-It's heavily inspired by "job simulator" type games that let you get absorbed and sidetracked like VotV, minus the slapstick comedy.

-Cases are procedural, but the city is hand-crafted. Early on I wanted a procedural city (like Shadows of Doubt), but it made the city feel "meaningless."

Still plugging away at our procedural murder detective game Diode City. I have some random tidbits to share about what I'm doing and what I'm thinking about lately.

His work has had a permanent impact on how I view art and creativity in a way that has colored everything I do.

Always do what's true. Catch every dream and every idea before you forget it forever.

Most importantly, never watch a film on your fucking telephone. (Get real!)

I hope that we never find concrete answers to the most interesting questions he left us with. He poured his dreams directly into our minds so that we could experience them for ourselves. It was weird and it was wild.

Today has been a bit emotionally rough. David Lynch has been whisked away to the White Lodge after a display of perfect courage and fierce love.

What's "high" anti-aliasing? Who knows! Is it FXAA? TAA? MSAA 2x? MSAA 4x? Whatever the designer's personal preference of "high" means is usually the answer. I've turned anti-aliasing to "high" in games and had it mean TAA, which in my opinion isn't "high" because it's temporal and yucky.

Most players don't know what most of the graphics settings in their games do (whether you label the settings correctly or not), but labeling all settings as low, high, ultra, very ultra... this ensures that even the tech savvy won't know exactly what the settings do.

When we have obscenely goofy settings like "Very Ultra" (as if Ultra wasn't ridiculous enough) I think it might be time to have a big sit-down regarding graphics settings and how they're being conveyed to players.

I like the idea that fans are doing detective work to find THE answer. The journey to solve a mystery is great, but empty and meaningless (for me) if there is no solution because there is no right answer.

... its intent is NOT to be interpreted differently by different people. There is a "right" answer to the questions raised by the abstractions. Personally, I don't like "it's whatever you make of it" in art and so I don't really engage in it.

From an artistic perspective, I wanted to offer a little disclaimer for the future to avoid any possible arguments among fans:

In many of my games to come, there will be things that are strange and abstract. None of it is random, it's thought out, it means something, and most importantly...

Even just a full screen effect taking the enlarged pixels and shading them with a CRT phosphor array would be a big change.

Even the re-branding I did to Wrench Laboratories a few years back was partly inspired by Valve (in ways that are obvious, ways that are not obvious, and ways that are damn near abstract).

Valve and Half-Life are one of the biggest influences on me as a gamer and a game developer, and continue to be. Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, which is nuts. It's also likely to coincide with the ray traced version of Half-Life 2 being released, which I will of course try.

When those VR features come, they will still be focused on Valve Index owners. So that bit hasn't changed.

VR will be in the back of my mind as I create the game though, and the ambitious and detail-oriented VR systems I've been working on won't go to waste; we may still add full VR support (that doesn't feel tacked on) to the game sometime later.

In order to include more players in the detective game we're creating, and because of the strange limbo VR is currently in, I've decided (for now) that it will be firstly a flat screen game. So anyone without an Index can now look forward to it.

Again, you won't be locked out, but you will probably not be able to bind all functionality required to any other controllers due to simple lack of input functionality on Quest, Vive, etc.

There are more than enough VR games already that cater to the Quest crowd and few, if any, that cater squarely to the Index. We want to encourage the growth and use of boundary-pushing hardware like the finger tracking and grip strength sensors so that VR isn't a race to the bottom.

As a heads up, all VR projects for the foreseeable future are Index-only (or a future Index 2, if it maintains the functionality of the Index knuckles).

You're not locked out, but almost all other VR controllers have more simplistic inputs that don't have like-for-like binds with the knuckles.

@crtpixels.bsky.social Hi, we thought you might be the right guy to ask. Do you have any photos that show the pixel/phosphor arrangements on a Sony Trinitron somewhat clearly?