Almost a year later eleven months later finally ready to show bone works again, the Steam page is up We've been hard at work at everyone's like oh, did you stop making it's like no We've been making it for the past like seven days a week for the last eleven months. Here it is You'll be playing on the knuckles today games also able to be played with touch Vive wands. Everything that's out there, right? This is an exclusive sneak peek of this hardware, huh? These are the knuckles. Valve has been talking about these for a couple years These are new VR controllers they've been working on for a couple of years and the what makes these special it's worth showing them what it does It straps to your hand And so the way you grab things in it is you grab the controller and it takes a little bit of getting used to it because it's like it's not in your Mind to ever like let go of your controller But that's how you grab things in our game on top of that if you want a force grab You grab and do trigger and you could like grab stuff at a distance Something else be conscious of is there's a force sensor in here So not only does it track your fingers like this But it knows how tightly you're squeezing it so you can use that for like friction and stuff in game You'll see while you're doing that without further ado. Let's put somebody in uh Boneworks. Brandon I think I feel like you're kind of underselling This a little bit because this is what I would consider to be the forefront of VR gaming. I haven't seen finger tracking since the Control VR days. So wait, what are you doing with your fingers right now moving them? I'm just flicking everybody off because that's what freedom means in video games guys. Hold up your pinkies Can you flick us off with just pinkies? Yeah, that is crazy. It's not just me making it there's like on any given day There's eight to ten people over there that's working with me that are all talented folks if you want to meet just watch the office versus office Smash Bros video They're right over there Literally past this door But we don't get to play any of the games we could if we wanted to but we really haven't seen any of this There's actually there's a bunch of little details here that I think people would miss like for example the way the arms Actually match the way my arms move in real life with the proper twist here. Yeah. Oh Whoa, it's Jimmy Jimmy. That's so weird. It's Jimmy Wong doing Steve (indistinct directions) Is that face capture iPhone, yes that's captured with an iPhone So it's basically captured with an iPhone and using the same tech Apple graciously spent probably twenty million dollars paying engineers to develop Handheld facial capture for us. So all we had to do is uh the rest of the hard work Implementing it. Oh that's so nice So basically I always complain a lot about what the Triple A Developers have been doing and what they've been making they kind of make the same thing over and over again They iterate a little bit and there's a reason for that because they're trying to keep the shareholders happy but they leave it to guys like us to actually innovate they leave it to guys like us to Invent something new because they wanted to be proven before they're gonna invest their money in it. So, that's okay We got you triple A's since we wanted to show VR anyway. That was something we felt would get showing video to you guys So we needed to have a body. I wanted to make a rule that everything was physics No matter what. So anything you see moving in this demo including Nikko. The player is hands everything He grabs is being moved entirely with physics So the goal is that anything you see you should be able to interact with and touch the way you think you could With a few exaggerations of like forced pull, etc like that to make the virtual world better Let's say I want to slide my right my right hand down and grip hard with my left hand and slide my right hand down I can grip harder with my right hand whoa What's in there Whoa. Whoa, that's so cool. That's Crazy, yeah, everything got mass. Niko's a weeb. Wow Force pull that thing Niko. Wow that works so much better than it did Together VR What! It's cheating you man. Oh, that's so nice, it's weird holding on to things by actually holding onto things. Yeah, you got used to it really quick I'm glad nice Throwing items in VR is always difficult because you're never sure what the release points gonna be You don't know if the angle of tact is and it's all like calculated when you let go of a button. Where is this? It's that natural throw which is weird I noticed Nico's first throw was like exactly on point the coolest part about this throwing knife is force pulling it in with one hand tossing it catching it with the other hand and hucking it into a target. Wow Oops, dude busted that plant rude. Alright, it's my best friend I need a mag. grab the other way you go flip your hand upside down like this Recoils a lot better than it was last time. Oh shit. I see You know how you reload a real gun yank the mag out put it back in this was before we had all the body slots and stuff all in this so it's like we just had gold mags unlimited ammo basically bone works to give a little context bone works is the what we've been working on for the last two years now And it's sort of built started this like this core technology and has evolved into a title that we're gonna be shipping this year So it's basically gonna be it's a it's a narrative thing, but I'm not gonna go too much of the story That'll all be that'll all be teased later. There's a there's a more teasery trailer that shows a lot more. That's up on Steam right now Where you can see like some of the combat stuff and then we'll come back and play combat stuff later, but I'll slowly start to show you guys what we've been up to It's pretty great. Okay, I really really am excited to try these controllers that I've been seeing for a while But never actually used them yet. Wow Woah This is incredible. This is this is the coolest VR experience I've ever had I think when a lot of people started looking at VR. They originally thought that they wanted like hover fingers so you know They want to be able to grab at the air and stuff like that And what we found is that the controller itself is like the proxy for whatever you're grabbing, right? So you grab the controller and you grab the item you synchronize that the hand it feels really good You get like that sort of like tactile feedback of like, oh my hands on the controller right now did all your things in order Oh! that's D's move Sam He can borrow it for now Sweet That is so great, I'm gonna try a melee weapon quick. Oh wait wait. Yeah. Yeah pump some iron man. Yeah, I guess we see if we can get stronger (sounds of awe) Get shredded man. Yeah. Yeah. you need to get big muscles in VR to get big muscles in real life Alright, so we're just gonna try some boxing here. Oh nice we've seen glimpses of this and VR over the last couple years and it's like we've seen people trying to do the body and we've seen people Trying to do like melee like GORN we've seen people trying to do guns. We've seen people try to do climbing with like Climbey Like all these different things and it's been done well, and we've seen like all these ideas are kind of conglomerating into one thing where people are like oh this is what will be good VR but nobody's really put it all together at once yet and then put it with like a little fidelity And so we wanted it like we wanted to get it all working at the same time It turns out there's a reason why people don't do that. It's cuz it took us two years now Look at those hitboxes Wow I like how it kind of gets stuck in it. Hey Sam if you hit it hard enough. Does it get stuck? Woahohoho Dude Brandon coming in with those details. Oh it this is like why we got lost in it like we've gotta keep going we gotta keep doing details. Throw feel really good. Yeah, throws feel great We took it kind of personally we kept on seeing everybody like Like all the all the venture capital and in Silicon Valley last year wanted to be like Oh ARs gonna be the big thing We're like, hey, we're gonna chance ya. We're gonna chance you show you what we got in mind. I'm just gonna try and throw this accurately Okay I suck. The last thing after test here whoa, that's so cool. How high are you Sam? I've never been this high before. Holy shit, man, I'm just so impressed This is like all the mechanics of all the best VR games in one game and then also a little bit better Do you have to make a climbing part? Oh Oh don't you worry oh my god Wow Just holy Wow. Oh my god. Holy Wow. Unless you get acquainted in there Holy shit My mind is so blown right now through the early days of VR We were kind of with a lot of the other developers like it's like I don't know if we can build or do these different things Things I don't know if we're gonna be able to do locomotion I don't know but there's like this vision of like what you thought VR could be like that like yeah that like You know like what you want that Hollywood sold to you right with like Ready Player One when you see stuff like that in you're like yeah just Make it like, you know real life, but just a virtual world. We start to realize that that real world is thousands of facets There's thousands of details and thousands of things and most of it just comes into like how you interact with the environment Picking things up dropping things grabbing things touching things shooting guns And then also that concept of your body that physical form like that That's I mean the guns are great. The throwing is great. But the moment you start grabbing stuff and It counts for your body like the climbing element yeah, that's that's next level You stab it and leave it in that bean that punching bag. Yeah it started all coming together to complete thought where's it's like it's like in order to make it so the hands have like there's weight So like if you tried to pick up something too heavy you just can't move it we couldn't do that without a body if I like try to grab something that weighs a thousand pounds and I just go like this with My hands in real life My hands will stay down there and it's like if you don't have arms that disconnect is weird But as soon as you have the body in there, it's like well this makes sense It's like that's because in this world I'm this person and I have this strength I can't just like, you know do whatever I want I like how your holographic sight actually works like a holographic sight and also your stock stops against your face so your guns not just like willy-nilly moving through and it's on the right eye. That's nice. That's good future so yeah there's cylinders there there's like target grips like the like the guns using Their specialty things and then you have you got the sphere grip which you can go round on and then we like a soft grab which is kind of like for grabbing like, uh, Like if he grabs like the zombie that's over in the corner there You can see the soft grab. and it's really refreshing to see somebody do VR guns correctly, you know granted that gun looks like it has a suppressor on it, which would mean no muzzle flashes Yeah, it's really crazy. How loud the gun is with the suppressor on it. Wait. Oh shit. I see what's going on here. Oh Dude I think you missed a lot (sounds of realization) You're gonna need a box That thing looks heavy It looks heavy in the game like how do you even achieve that? How do you make something look heavy? you achieve it by making it it is it actually has a bunch of mass and then so your character has a limit in their Forces and the limits are basically in the space of their bodies. So relative to where their shoulder is they have a certain amount of push a certain amount of pull a certain amount of like left and right and a certain amount of Up and down and so it's all throttled and based on like a real kinematic model of a human here wanna jump in try it Yeah, so the interesting thing is like so you know because I'm scaling to the player So if I if I turn my height up to my height It actually makes me go down which is a bit of a different thing to get your mind wrapped around Whoa What's this Brandon of course knows all the Easter eggs, wait listen to that someone's watching it wait wait Watching Jimmy train. that's us. That's so cool. Little peeping, tom over here That's trippy, so this is basically gonna be a narrative game we're gonna bring em through a bunch of different there's going to be puzzles combat swords Climbing guns. I kind of you name it, you know everything's like just like unlike anything any of you guys have ever played before Here's the demonstration. What is that? you ready to see what a physics game can be Oh Balloon gun Wow put some on his hands so they come up too Let me see all the balloons Wait are those accurate as to how much lift a balloon actually has No Brandon can I hop in for one second and then try something with that. There's one thing I really really want to try it that gun Yeah, what's that magazine doing? Special purple Mag it'll be quick. Oh wait is this a balloon mag? (Excitement) That's really funny can you balloon the guns? can you balloon yourself? that's what I was gonna try Alright man. I won't disappoint. Look look it's like that one spell in Morrowind that let's you jump a little higher The balloons have physics too. Oh wow I have a lot of balloons on me. away! That's so cool. The real time shadows of the balloons too Into the fans so I can escape. Maybe shoot yourself in the head with the balloon mag gun instead That's working! That's working! This is incredible Wow. this a dream? Now this is the highest I've ever been Look up Sam I wanna see those balloons pop. Come on. Gotta get into the fan Okay, you probably can't go through the fan, right? Uh... I dunno I'm escaping! Oh my god you're doing it! I'm doing it! Woah No, No shoot the shoot the shoot the balloons down go run around up there I can't remember if there's a goodie up here Oh Dude he's up I can't remember if Alex left any goodies up here There might be a toy. I don't see any toys. That's so cool, man. Man. The fact that you guys even Textured up here. It's crazy. Ah maybe there isn't anything up here anymore? Cuz there used to be a lot more set up here then I think we cut it for performance Because we're all like ah it's rendering too much up here When you fall like that you get a bend your knees. Ya I forgot I have to land like this. Ya you gotta land like that or you're gonna snap those knees. I'd be like be like oh, there's a puzzle here. Oh I see. Oh man, little box puzzles. Oh, I can't wait to have little box puzzles in this game. That's going to be so satisfying. okay Oh. Uh Oh. Oh Snap Yeah, there's definitely something bad up in this area ooh Ooh nice that's a nice smoke pattern. dude look at that smoke getting illuminated by that flash light. Yeah, the smoke. Whoa, that's so cool Probably metric. I Mean you don't just have a Kevin around for nothing This is what VR Resident Evil would feel like What is this stranger things? Yeah All right, you're gonna need that where ever you're going let's go on some adventures And that's Boneworks. The Steam page for Boneworks is up now. Click the link in the description below head over there watch the teaser and then click the follow button below also subscribe to node I'm gonna be showing these guys combat in the next couple of weeks. You'll want to see it You gotta be careful about that old like reach over towards you. You better be pretty confident that bullets not going through. Like a Leon Scott Kennedy over here.
The Knuckles controllers are just the next iteration of the controllers for SteamVR, ie. the Vive. They aren't proprietary to this developer, they are exclusive to the SteamVR system due to the outside-in method they are tracked in a room. Developers have had them for a while now, but us plebs have to watch them with envy. Some games already work with them iirc, like H3VR, which has a lot of the features displayed here.
Can't wait for vr to become more mainstream.
I wish someone could make workable glove controllers already. Looks like that's the inevitable thing we're moving towards, possibly combined with force feedback or a physical handle to give the sense of objects.
Still this demo looks amazing! I could see this being a cool Portal/Stanley Parable style game.
EDIT: Replier linked this video and it's exactly what we need just commercial and smaller
Seems like a great physics engine. Surely there will be huge modding potential? I mean that balloon gun is straight outta Garry's Mod.
Actually insane
They're working on HL3
Is there anything Node doesn't do? Nerf wars, D&D (great campaigns btw), acting (VGHS), and now making games. I'm honestly impressed.
What would be really exciting is if they released their work as a package to buy for other game companies. This tech would be amazing in another VR games.
Not that I'm not excited, but these aren't proprietary controllers, i.e. StressLevelZero didn't make controllers specifically for their game. These are the Vive Knuckles controllers by HTC, and they also support all major controller types.
EDIT: Knuckles are made by Valve. Still not proprietary.