It wasn’t easy. Quite the contrary, it was really difficult. No guides, no tutorials, no know-how on how to develop in VR. But it was fun.

Fast forward four years – the passion project of a few VR enthusiasts is leaving Early Access today, and has been released on another popular platform: Playstation VR.
We can also proudly present our first in-house Steam bundle:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/12656/XREAL_Games_VR_bundle/

It’s quite unbelievable to be honest. The game’s success has far surpassed our initial expectations, which allowed us to grow as a team, as an independent studio.

In the last update we added Valve Index controller support and overhauled the game’s ‘Swarm’ mode.
This is the point where we can, and have to say: it is done, the game is finished.
It is not perfect, but it is ours. Ours and yours, since all this wouldn’t be possible without your support throughout the years.
We could continue developing the game for years and years as we’re still full of ideas, but it is time for the A-Tech team to move on, to concentrate on other very exciting projects at XREAL Games.
We’ll still keep an eye on feedback, and won’t abandon the game. It is our firstborn after all.

We have learned so much during A-Tech’s development – we’ll use this knowledge and experience to bring you even better, more exciting games in the near future.

Once again, thank you so much for supporting us throughout the years. You are the reason we can do what we love.
Virtual Reality is our passion, we strongly believe it IS the future of gaming and we’d like to think we’re significantly contributing to its popularity.

Be sure to follow us on Social Media, 2020 will be a very exciting and busy year here at XREAL!
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Youtube

Besides adding new content, we’ve fixed countless community-reported issues and made improvements on all aspects of the game.
You can check all the fixes and improvements in the patch notes below.

GENERAL AI FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS

• Improved Brute behavior.
• Improved accuracy and behavior for armed enemies – as a result, the game became a tiiiny bit more difficult.
• Various other fixes for armed enemies.
• Fixed a crash caused by zombies exploding.
• Fixed an issue with enemies changing colour before dissolving.
• General improvement of enemy performance and behavior.
• Polished enemy animations.

GAMEPLAY RELATED FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS

• Improved accessibility: a left-handed control layout has been added.
• Improved locomotion.
• Vive controller teleport fix: in turning mode, teleport is only activated by hitting UP on the touchpad. No more accidental teleporting while turning.
• Fixed a rare bug where the player could’ve gotten stuck when dying during hand scanning.
• Fixed the menu laser pointer.
• Revised checkpoints.
• New safety timers for objective triggers.
• Fixed teleports.
• Updated enemy encounters.
• Fixed an issue where the detonator didn’t disappear after the explosion.
• Improved navigation.
• Fixed a locomotion issue when playing while sitting down, or being really short.
• Fixed tutorial controllers not attaching to the player’s hand properly on the menu level.
• Temporary fix for players not being able to pick up weapon ammo during later chapters (if they skipped previous chapters)
• The flashlight can not be dropped accidentally.
• Melee weapons can be stored (one at a time).
• Fixed flamethrower.
• Fixed ladder static component.
• Weapon projectiles are now unaffected by gravity.
• General sound mix balance update.
• Updated objective markers.
• Updated chapter 2 “hangar fight” enemy encounter.

PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION

• Various skeletal meshes have been converted to static meshes.
• Fixed memory leak issue in Chapter 03: unused particles are removed.
• Updated level streaming.
• Added splash screen and credit roll.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Achievements are WiP, might not be unlocking correctly, or at all.
• The “turn music off” option is not yet implemented in the menus.
• There is a rare issue with HTC Vive headset audio output that might cause crashes. If this happens, please connect and set your audio device to the PC audio output port instead.
• Swarm mode is under development, will be reworked in the next update.

—

That’s all for now.
This update is an important step towards the game’s Full Release this year, so if you encounter any issues, or just want to share your feedback with us, please head over to the game’s community hub, or to our Discord server.
We read everything, even if we don’t respond. 🙂

Thank you for the continuous support!
XREAL Games Team

Background

When we’ve decided to include PSVR in our supported platforms, we knew it was going to be difficult… and we were right, it is a huge task for a small indie studio like us.
We’ve never done anything like this, we have to learn the limitations of the platform, then shaping and forming A-Tech Cybernetic to fit in those limitations.

The development process

In order to optimize the game for PSVR, we have to finalize the core mechanics, gameplay and content on the PC VR version. We’re doing this simultaneously.
It was the most efficient solution we could’ve gone with. While we’re exploring PSVR’s limits, we’re working on concluding the story, adding new weapons and fine-tuning gameplay mechanics.
With this method, we’re able to finish the PC VR version soon, and get the PSVR port done soon after.

When?

We’re planning to release the full version on PC (Steam, Oculus Store and Viveport) in 2019, probably late Q1, early Q2.
Unfortunately we can’t give an exact date for the PSVR release. The development is going well, even better than we’ve expected, but we don’t know what obstacles we’re going to face in the development process.

We won’t give ground to any difficulties, we’re going to work as hard as we can to bring A-Tech Cybernetic VR to PSVR as soon as possible!