A Fisherman’s Tale Out Now: Step into a world where physics are broken, and your every move is infinity replicated...

A Fisherman’s Tale Out Now: Step into a world where physics are broken, and your every move is infinity replicated...

Innerspace VR and Vertigo Games are proud to announce that A Fisherman’s Tale, the mind-bending & multi-dimensional VR adventure is available from today for VR headsets for $14.99/EUR 14.99! And this week only we offer a 15% launch discount.

https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/app/559330/A_Fishermans_Tale/

A Fisherman’s Tale traps you inside a replica where you will need to work with infinite, ever smaller and bigger replications of yourself to find your way out of a world where physics are utterly broken.

Seeing is believing, so we’ve created a live-action launch trailer for you guys to check out! ==>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0cxBlKK8c

• In a nutshell, A Fisherman’s Tale will have you:
  
• Break more than a couple laws of physics in mind-bending VR puzzles!
  
• Team up with yourself in revolutionary multi-dimensional single player co-op!
  
• Meet some of the quirkiest sidekicks to have ever set foot in a VR game
  
• Use your hands to pick up, throw, combine, and use all kinds of things in glorious fully immersive virtual reality!
  
• Toy around with your tiny little model lighthouse, inside a lighthouse, inside a... is that another lighthouse?
  
• Uncover the truth at the core of an unusually tall tale, exclusively in VR

On top of that, A Fisherman’s Tale is a journey of both introspection and extrospection, asking players to both reach inside and outside of themselves for answers. What does it mean to reach the top of the lighthouse, and turn on the light?

Without VR, there wouldn’t have been an A Fisherman’s Tale. Our goal was to bring the adventure game genre to VR in a way that is meaningful to the genre. We hope you’ll think we succeeded!

We’re extremely excited for you to discover the game, and can’t wait to read your comments online!

Changes:

- The grip button is now used for interaction
- Added snap rotation
- Fixed a bug where the Steam save data was sometimes cleared when starting the game after a crash
- Fixed a bug where the under water effect would not be visible in some areas when rolling the Vive HMD
- Fixed not being able to teleport onto the pier and houses in Okavango Delta
- Fixed not being able to move while holding the inflator
- Fixed interactables depending on hand direction instead of hand position
- Added support for Oculus Touch controllers
- Fixed some items not being collectable in Okavango Delta and Bonaire (reported by community member Phaota)
- Fixed a collectable in Okavango Delta flickering
- Fixed sharks in Brazil spawning on top of each other
- Fixed object missions not having an objective indicator
- Fixed buddies not being enabled in VR
- Fixed reflection not working on some machines
- Fixed not facing the spawn direction when teleporting back to base
- Fixed the controller with which you opened the settings menu being deactivated when changing the input device setting
- Fixed the objective indicator pointing towards a school which had all its members photographed already
- Fixed the 'press any key' dialog responding to almost no keys
- Fixed Trewavasase cichlid red and orange not having preview objects
- Fixed a crash when starting and completing daily missions
- Fixed daily missions being completable more than once per day
- Fixed website profile view no longer being functional
- Fixed the horizon line flickering in some levels
- Added extra oxygen tanks in some levels
- Moved the NPC spawn point in Bonaire to a more convenient location
- The tablet is now smaller on remote players

We hope you have enjoyed the improvements to the game in the updates over the summer. It’s been fun for the team to move the game closer to release and to receive the positive feedback from the community. We are planning to make another major leap forward. In fact, we are planning to leave early access in Q1 of 2017.

In our review of the outstanding tasks on Trello and additional features that we want to add to the game, we have decided the best approach would be to put our heads down and work on a single large update. This will allow us to build out new features and take more time to polish the game. 

This update will include these new features or key improvements (in addition to the other Trello tasks):
- Two new levels (Flying Dutchman & Community levels)
- Re-launch of the mission editor
- New capture & tag missions and storyline
- New map area missions and storyline
- New collection missions
- New location based missions
- New cosmetic peripherals
- Adding passive tools
- Adding flora & dive sites to the Oceanopedia
- Art improvements
- Improved daily mission spawns
- Re-launch of the equipment shop

This development approach does not mean we will not be publishing updates to the game until this major update. We will continue to publish bug fixes similar to the fix of the Sharks mission two weeks ago. The next update is scheduled for next week. These continued fixes are required to improve the game’s stability and improve your experience with the game in early access. It is also a critical step in finishing the game.
 
We are still likely to be addressing a number of bug fixes in the next major update, so we want to make sure that we have identified all the bugs we can. You have been a tremendous help to us in this regard. We only ask that you keep it up. We will be adding these reports to Trello as you submit them.
 
Again, thank you for being part of the World of Diving community and participating in the early access program. We could not make this game without you.

A new update is out for World of Diving. In this update, we've added some new fish, improved the 'big fish' animations, added an update notification to the tablet and did some more bug fixing. We've also added sounds when surfacing and submerging. These were long overdue and add some extra immersion.

Please note the divegame.net profile settings have been moved to the settings menu. We've replaced the divegame.net profile button in the main menu with a button which directs you to the EUCL3D 3D printing service to print out your avatar.

The complete list of changes:
- The following sea life was added to the game: Lionfish, Orca, Red Rockfish, Rockfish, Sperm whale, Great white shark, Tiger shark
- Big fish trailing animation is now smoother
- An icon is now displayed in the tablet when it is updated (ex. when a story mission is completed or an Oceanopedia entry is updated)
- A sound effect is now played when surfacing and submerging
- The little hercules buddy's propeller now rotates when swimming
- Moved the divegame.net profile settings to the main menu settings menu
- Added a button to the main menu which directs you to the EUCL3D 3D printing service
- Fixed a bug where buddies were not removed when players disconnect
- Fixed a bug where dolphins would sometimes swim upside down
- Fixed a bug where the mask overlay effect was visible in the edges of the screen in VR

New menu layout:Tablet updated icon:

We hope you are enjoying the recent updates to World of Diving. There were a lot of changes in the last update, and while we do our best to test all of these changes, some problems might still arise after a new build is live. This update is primarily focused on improving stability and fixing bugs.

We really appreciate all of the feedback we get from you guys. This feedback helped us a lot in identifying some of the problematic parts of the game (ex. not being able to interact with objects with your right hand while you have the tablet equipped in your left while using a Vive).

New Feature: You can now print a 3D model of your in-game character and have it shipped to your front door through our partnership with Eucl3D. These models are available in three sizes and can be ordered directly from the customization screens in the game.

The complete list of changes:
- Ray now looks at you when you are close to him
- You can now interact with objects with your right hand while the tablet is equipped in your left on the Vive
- You now run faster on land
- Air no longer depletes while the tablet is opened (except for the photo camera view)
- Improved performance so all areas are now rendering at 90 FPS on VR on an Oculus minimum spec PC
- Created a new quality level 'VR minimum spec' which is configured so you get 90FPS on VR on an Oculus minimum spec PC
- Texts like the 'Leaving the area' message are now displayed in world space instead of being stuck to your head in VR
- The player nameplates are now displayed in world space instead of at a depth that was right in front of you in VR
- The inflator is now more to the side in VR
- There is now a fade to black after loading
- You can now also skip the splash screens with the Xbox controller B button
- The Vive now has its own control scheme image
- You now see other player's tablets on photographs you made
- Going one level up in the Oceanopedia now selects the item you previously had selected
- Pressing back or escape in the 'view picture' mode now takes you to 'take picture' mode
- Increased the size of the Xbox controller back icon
- Some sequential settings now cycle
- Fixed linking to divegame.net
- Fixed a memory leak while the Oceanopedia was open
- Fixed a bug where opening the tablet for the first time displayed a message about keeping the current settings
- Fixed a bug where typing 'w' or 's' in the account link screen caused another text box to be focused
- Fixed a bug where the mission bubble showed the interaction help when you couldn't start the mission
- Fixed a bug where a photo would be taken while clicking a tool in the tool selection while the photo camera was equipped
- Fixed a bug where some message boxes could not be closed with the escape button
- Fixed a bug where the first button of message boxes would not always be focused
- Fixed a bug where the captured photo displayed in the game was too bright
- Fixed a bug where you could not use fast swim when the fast swim setting was configured as 'toggle' and you were playing with a gamepad
- Fixed a bug where a part of the tablet interface was visible in the loading screen
- Fixed a bug where the loading screen did not take account the roll of the player, causing the loading screen to visually rotate slightly
- Fixed a bug where the loading screen position lagged behind the camera position
- Fixed a bug where the disclaimer was displayed in the main menu when coming back from a level
- Fixed a bug where the new under water color extraction effect showed a seam at the horizon when the flash light was on
- Fixed the low pass audio filter when going under water
- 3D printed models of your characters are available for order in game

The new WoD version is live. There have been a lot of changes (and a lot of time..) since the previous version.
We have made some really big improvements performance wise. All levels are now running at a solid 90fps on an Oculus mininum spec PC in VR mode.
For this, almost all art has seen a complete overhaul which you will be able to see once we put the new build live today.

Additionally, the following major changes can be found in this update:
- A complete re-do of fish rendering
- Fish AI improvements
- Tablet for most interface interaction
- Story-mode which guides you through the game
- HTC Vive & Oculus CV1 support
- New fish density setting

You can find more information about the changes in the devblog below.
Let us know what you think!

Johann


It's been about 3 months since our last Development Blog. There's been a lot of developer activity on World of Diving in that time.

First of all; we've made some really big improvements on the performance side. All levels are now running at a solid 90fps on an Oculus minimum spec PC in VR mode. For this, almost all art has seen a complete overhaul which you will be able to see once we put the new build live today. We have also added HTC Vive support.

Personally, I've been doing lots of work on getting everything working again since so many systems have been changed to provide a smoother experience in VR. Next to the systems that have been changed, a lot of systems have also been added:
- A complete re-do of fish rendering. Small fish now all have trailing so their turing is smooth instead of jerky, as it was. Also, a lot of changes have been made to the AI so the fish appear more natural. The improvements for the bigger fish in the game will come soon.- A story has been integrated into the game. Instead of only the first tutorial mission being in the game, the game now guides the player through the game.
- A tablet has been added which now features a lot of the interfaces in the game which did not really have a good place.

Of course we're really excited to have you play this new version of World of Diving, and are eager to hear your thoughts about it.


Trevor


Over the course of the last couple of weeks I have been working on the finalization of features and bug fixes in order to get the game in a proper playable state.Tasks include the implementation of existing UI in the tablet, and the implementation of the redesign of most of these UI's. For this I have been working closely with Bjorn.

There were some interesting challenges with the implementation of the new UI on the tablet. For example, we display some 3D objects in certain interfaces, such as the Oceanopedia and the new mission view. If we were to display these on the tablet, they would appear pierced by the tablet's screen. I have worked on a few solutions to this problem and we finally ended up with creating custom meshes for the screen in the case there are 3D objects displayed on the tablet. Additionally I worked on the blur script which we apply on the screen to blur everything behind it.

I'm glad we have been able to work on the game as a team again during the last period. This has been very pleasant and inspirational for all of us and we are finally able to deliver more of the game we had envisioned to make.


Bjorn


Hi there!

In the past couple of weeks I have been working on the user interface of world of diving. I started out creating a Tablet for use in game to show all the menus, For this I used a concept from our concept artist Bang. Right after that I have been working on a completely new User Interface together with Trevor, one of our programmers. At first I drew some blockouts to get the ideas out of my head and on the paper. After that, I built the new interface while Trevor built it up in engine. We also did a lot of testing in-game to make sure the interface works on multiple platforms and controllers. I really like how the interface turned out and I hope you will enjoy it as well! Below I have collected some screenshots from the new items I made. I hope you enjoy!

Jeff


During my last crunch in World of Diving I have been busy with optimization of art, making sure the performance remains steady on 90 fps.This means setting up Levels of detail for models, culling distance, combining textures and efficiently use the amount of polygons where they matter most.

Something else I have done is placing mission items through the levels; Collectibles; Ocean garbage; mission markers.
In between tasks I have spent a few hours on setting up a block-out of the community shipwreck level that is going to be released in a future update.
U-boat new modular interior
Modelling various new items
Yorick


Hello guys,

So I’ve been working on optimizing the levels to get them to 90 fps. I’ve done this by combining rocks with each other and make LOD’s for them. The meaning of LOD is (level of detail). We work with lod models, because, if you see a model in the distance, you don't want it to have 10.000 vertices. You want it to have 2000 vertices. The closer you get the more vertices you can see. This is how the LOD system works. I also made a lot of LOD’s for the 3d models in the level. I added more fish for the people that have a good PC so they can play in high mode and see more fish. I’ve also been adding new mission markers, instead of the air tanks it became a starfish. We’ve been providing the levels with garbage, for clean the ocean mission, and we’ve been placing the collectibles.

Greetings Yorick

Johann

This week I've been sitting with the artists to do some much needed optimizations. These are mainly important for VR, in which you have to render at a very high FPS to reduce motion sickness. For example; for the Oculus Rift this is 90 FPS. We've began with the first level, Diving Base. We've managed to improve a lot, and after we do some code optimizations we'll reach the target FPS.

As for the GUI conversions; Now all of the systems are converted, I'm currently working on getting everything stable and ready for putting live.


Jeroen

This week I've been working on fixing bugs for support of World of Diving on the Oculus Platform. Steam provides functionality for handling user lobbies, inviting users to a game and matchmaking. This is something the Oculus platform also supports, but in a different way. So another implementation of our networking system using Oculus platform had to be implemented to allow multiplayer to work. We would like to have the implementation and the interface to player to be almost identical between Steam and Oculus.

This is still work in progress, because there are slight variations in how the 2 platforms handle matchmaking and inviting other users. On top of that, there is not always a clear and good documentation on how third party code is designed, so often some experimentation is required to find out how everything works exactly. So the end goal of this is to have multiplayer while playing the game using the Oculus platform that gives almost exactly the same experience to users as multiplayer does in Steam. Please note that this means that matchmaking will therefore not allow a player from one platform to connect to a player from another platform. This is to allow for the functionality like inviting friends through Steam & Oculus.


Vincent

Hi there,

It has been a while since we did a blog. This reason behind it was that we felt the blogs didn't make sense when we don't have anything useful to show for. We are doing a blog right now to show we are still dedicated and working on WoD.

Last weeks I have been working on optimizing the game for VR. This should also be noticeable in the non VR version. I have redone most of the rock in the diving base. Right now there was a lot of 'popping' from LOD models and there were a lot of different materials on the rocks.Now every rock is done with a bigger rock so it are lesser seperate models. I also deleted all the polygons that are beneath the terrain. Normally this would not matter too much but because VR need to run on 90fps we needed the optimisation and it look better to. This is the same for the coral rock which are now grouped and have no more polygon under the terrain.

Hopefully you like it.
Bjorn

In the past couple of weeks we have been working on alot of optimization for the game and we have tried our best to make the game look better than it did before.

Below are a few screenshots of some of the new models in the game, After posting some work in progress shots off some collectables in the past Dev Blog I worked on a few more. Next to this I did alot of optimization work for the levels so the framerate should run alot more stable now.

I hope you guys enjoy and I will stay hard at work at some more stuff to make the game awesome ! :)Niels

Hello Divers!

My job has mostly been focussed on optimizing current artwork, and I have had the chance to get some work done on new models aswell.
I hope to be creating more visually appealing artwork in the future.

Jeff

I have been working on optimizing existing items, areas; making new items (collectables); Creating new textures; And also well on the way for the community shipwreck.

The ship itself is nearing completion after which it will be turned into an actual wreckage.
Also the environment is being blocked out and concept arts have been made for the look and feel.

Mermaid statue for the shipwreckYorick

Hello my name is Yorick. I'm one of the 3D artist at vertigo.

I've been working on some new stuff for World of diving. Mostly I was busy optimizing art.
I've been combining different assets so they use one texture, which is good for performance. I did this for the corals, seaweed and the assets that can be found in the Diving Base level.
I've been making new textures and new assets. If you scroll down you can see what I've been working on.

Johann
Like the last time; I've been converting several more small systems to the new UI system. This week, the following features were converted:

- The tour 'any button to close' message
- The 'open community mission terminal' button
- The 'loading community mission' message
- The community mission voting view
- The divegame.net profile window
- Fadeout view
- The loading screen
- The air refill point view

The current status of the conversion: There's about one more of these 'small systems' passes to go, after which everything has to be tested and bug fixed, and we'll have to make sure everything has controller support.


Bjorn
Hello guys, my name is Bjorn and i am the new intern at Vertigo Games. Currently i am studying Game Art here in Rotterdam and for the next six months i will work at Vertigo Games for my internship.

I'm excited to work on World of Diving for the coming months. It has been my first week at the office and i started working on some collectables for the game. My first collectable is a Ancient Pot, I made three variants of this collectable. Bronze,Silver and Gold. After finishing up the pot i started on the next one right away. A ship compass. I just finished op the model for this one and will unwrap and texture it in the coming days.

I hope you guys are excited for the new stuff and i am sure you will hear more from me in the upcoming months :)


Niels
Hello divers!

I would first like to introduce myself, I am Niels and I am one of the new interns at Vertigo Games.
I will spend my time at vertigo mostly on creating 3D models and textures.
For the last 3 days I have been working on some collectables together with Bjorn and Jeff wich will soon be added to the game for you guys to be picked up!
My time has been spent on creating a beer tankard wich is collectable in 3 different versions; Bronze, Gold and Silver.

Jeff
My name is Jeff,

I am a new visual arts intern here at Vertigo Games.
My first week here has been a lot of fun and I am looking forward to spending my time here.
Along with the other interns I am currently assigned to making Collectible items for World of Diving.
Below a sneak preview of a ship in a bottle. It features a Brony easter egg.