The Next Two Heroes

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At least two more heroes are coming to Raw Data by the time the game launches, and possibly even more than that, says Iliff.

Street Mercenary – Shotgun

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The Street Mercenary will wield the deadly shotgun and also use his fists for brawling with enemies who get even closer. One of the mercs planned unlocks is a grenade launcher augmentation for his shotgun.

Rogue Hunter – Bow

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Then there’s the Rogue Hunter who will wield a bow. Iliff described him as an “older hooded guy with a beard” who has “lots of tricks with his compound bow.” The hunter excels at ranged combat and will be able to cloak to prevent enemies from targeting him. Iliff says that the team is experimenting with different types of arrows to give the hunter unique utility. One can imagine homing arrows, multi arrows, penetrating arrows, and plenty more.

Locomotion

[gfycat data_id=”NarrowRaggedHedgehog” data_autoplay=true data_controls=false]

Earlier iterations of Raw Data had players standing in one place as waves of enemies came to them. But Iliff says that movement is vital to Raw Data’s frenetic combat. For the Early Access launch, Survios has settled on a dash mechanic. This differs from a blink/teleport by letting the user see the world move around them (albeit quickly to avoid the potential for nausea). Iliff says that they picked dashing because it helps players maintain their orientation in the midst of combat.

“We experimented with blinking and fades but users would get confused,” he said. “[With dashing] when you’re in that combat, if you can dash across the map, you can time it perfectly and position it perfectly and teleport right behind a guy and take him out with a sword.”

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Players will only be able to dash a short distance at a time in most cases, though there will be beacons located on the map that can be dashed to at any distance, making for quick traversal to strategic points. Iliff tells me that they’re considering adding optional stick movement for players who don’t get sick from that type of locomotion.

Objective and Meta Game

The objective of any Raw Data level is to defend the data core from hordes of enemies. Players will do so across 4 levels in Early Access, and 12 levels when the game hits its full release. Iliff says that these levels are not merely different set dressing, but a campaign and story for players to experience.

While unlocking hero abilities will give players progression throughout the campaign, there’s also a meta game that happens in each round as players are able to purchase and strategically place turrets to aid in their defense of the data core.

Oculus Rift Support and What’s Next for Survios

suvrios raw data screenshot htc vive (1)

When I asked Iliff about whether or not Raw Data would see Rift support, he said “We’re a platform agnostic studio, so we want to support them in the future, but currently our focus is on Vive.”

As Oculus isn’t planning to ship their Touch VR controllers until Q4 2016, it’s understandable that Suvrios is focusing on the Vive when it comes to Raw Data. Once Touch does launch, there’s still questions as to if/how Raw Data could be adapted for the front-facing gameplay which Oculus is encouraging.

Iliff says that the studio hopes to have the full version of Raw Data out the door before the end of 2016. As for what else the studio is working on, he confirmed that other titles are in the works, but would only leave me with this tease:

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“We aren’t announcing [other titles] at the moment. But I think it’s going to be some really cool stuff, and we’re doing stuff that has nothing to do with guns and violence—as much as I like that stuff—there’s lots of other cool genres we can work on.”


For those of you that have read this far, you deserve to know that there’s two Steam keys for Raw Data hiding somewhere in the article above.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Steve Biegun

    Both codes are taken already :(

  • Pistol Pete

    Played about 2 hours so far. Best game I have experienced in VR to date!! Game is absolutely stunning!!

    • DougP

      It really is a fantastic game.
      Was just skyping w/friend who has a Vive, seeing if he’ll buy it so can try co-op play.
      This game seems ideally suited for co-op when you’ve got 360-degrees to cover & can go back to back in the thick of a battle.

      Re: graphics
      I think that it’s one of the best looking games out there, as well. Provided people have the gaming rig w/enough oomph to handle cranking graphics settings up to 11. :)

      • J.C.

        A friend and I bought this game specifically to play in co-op. That Early Access tag? Believe it. The game falls apart for the second player. We haven’t had a single session where someone was able to keep reloading their gun the whole time. If the game crashes, it kills Steam and sometimes Windows locks up.

        Maybe the game is cool but the second level, where you’re supposed to have a flashlight, doesn’t have one, so all you see is a vague idea of enemies in the dark.

        Game is fine single-player, but that’s not what I bought it for. I assumed EA meant “limited features”, not “completely busted multiplayer”.

        • DougP

          Wow – that does sound bad.

          Thanks for the info/feedback. Think we might hold off until some updates are made.

        • Karl Schmidt

          For what it´s worth, I have consistent and good multiplayer experience throughout about 12 hours of gameplay. Occasional crashes, but never got stuck or locked up or something. Perfectly fine for an early access title on an entirely new medium, I think.

          • J.C.

            I wonder what the difference is. We both live in the same city, using the same service provider. In most games we get pings of around 40, but this one was always showing pings of 250-300. The issues always hit the second player (can’t reload, or game crashing upon joining), the primary player would have no problems unless the second player crashed out. Then the host would generally crash out about 30 seconds later, and Steam itself would crash as well.

            Are you on Steam VR beta, or “standard”? That may be part of it, but games shouldn’t rely on users running the beta. I switched off of it after it caused all sorts of issues with booting up SteamVR and keeping it running.

          • Karl Schmidt

            “Standard”, just bought the game a few days ago and I have about 80% of my multiplayer games without problems.

          • J.C.

            Well, he requested a refund so I did as well. We had 100% of our multiplayer games fall apart due to show stopping issues. We gave up on it for now. Might look into it again after it’s cooked a bit longer.
            Our go-to Vive multiplayer game isn’t nearly as complex, but it’s way more fun than it has any reason to be: Cloudlands Minigolf, heh. Their netcode feels bulletproof, surviving usually-catastrophic issues (host machine crashes) without a hiccup. Hoping Raw Data eventually gets there. I’ve got no hate for the game, it’s just not quite ready yet.

  • JAMF

    Bishop??? Oooh, gotta practice my gunkata! (bad ascii art: m7Lm ) :D

  • Gaspar Ferreiro

    LOL. its amazing how every mechanic i am building into my VR game seems to appear 3 weeks later in raw data, at this point they should be offering me a job. The movement shift, and now the time warp make it into raw data too… and before anyone goes and calls BS… just check this article http://www.roadtovr.com/project-ghost-lets-you-bend-time-whilst-dual-wielding-lightsabers/ . That is the reason i stopped posting videos of my progress online.. and have remained quiet.. but damn, enough is enough :(