The developer behind Townscaper, a quaint city-building game, shared footage of him experimenting with VR controls, teasing a potential VR release.
Oskar Stålberg is the sole developer on Townscaper, which he describes as an “experimental passion project” that’s “more of a toy than a game.”
There’s no real objectives or gameplay, just building quaint little towns in various colors, shapes and styles on an irregular grid. The game has an underlying algorithm that turns your block placements and configurations into auto-generated city objects, like houses, arches, stairways, bridges and gardens.
Looking at basic VR design. Current idea is to use a point on a stick for interaction (rather than a raycast) so that you can build in the air. Those points also serve as grabbig points for grab-navigation. Feels tactile. pic.twitter.com/QvqoJzkn9y
— Oskar Stålberg (@OskSta) March 3, 2022
The game was released last year on several platforms, including Steam, Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. However, a new tweet from Stålberg, embedded above, shows that is he is experimenting with VR support and playing around with methods for control and block placement.
As you can see in the footage, he’s using two Touch controllers with Quest 2 skins. Given the game has already released on mobile hardware, a Quest 2 release seems possible. Fingers crossed it comes to PC VR on Steam as well.
In his tweet, Stålberg discusses using pointers with set lengths — like a stick — instead of the traditional VR pointer method, raycast –shortening or lengthening the cursor stick to the nearest object, according to the direction it’s pointing.
Stålberg says this allows you to build in the air, while raycasting does not. He also noted that in VR, some users want to zoom in and look at the models from street level, while others prefer to admire them from afar, and accommodating for both “will be a design challenge.”
While it’s not exactly confirmed just yet, here’s hoping we get a full announcement for a Townscaper VR release soon. You can check out the PC version on Steam here.
