Hi everyone,

today we are releasing another update with a number of bugfixes, but also a couple new major features.

Teleport movement

We are happy to finally be able to add a teleport movement option to the game. This has been in the works for a couple of months and proved a significant challenge - as the game was never built for teleport movement, there were countless edge cases to overcome to build a robust pathing system for the teleport as well as a number of gameplay elements that needed special care to work with teleport. The end result is by no means perfect - in fact, we consider it experimental at this time - but it should perform reasonably well for the majority of the game.

You can enable teleport movement in the controls options. You can either choose teleport movement exclusively, in which case both the movement stick as well as the jump key will instead be used to select a teleport target. Or you can choose to retain regular movement on the movement stick and only replace the jump key with teleport.

On land, teleport targeting should mostly work as expected. You may need to point upwards a little to "jump" onto obstacles, and you need to point downwards if you want to drop from greater heights. Note that you also need to crouch (either in real life or with the crouch toggle key) to teleport into vents and other places with limited vertical space.

In water, you can teleport in any direction. Point downwards to dive into the water, and upwards to return to the surface. Point upwards towards land to get out of the water.

For ladders, stand at a slight distance in front of them and point the teleport up or down towards the ladder. An arrow will light up and show you which direction you are going.



Important: please understand that selecting teleport movement will *not* eliminate any and all artificial movement in the game. Due to the game's design, the player is ultimately subject to events from the physics engine. Some enemies can push or even launch you back, and you will slide on certain terrain. So please be prepared for that. We do hope that the teleport movement will allow you to stomach these generally rare occasions.

Reworked water movement

For regular locomotion, swimming in water always was a bit of a sore point comfort-wise as the camera tends to bob severely when trying to stay above the water surface, and Gordon tries to leap high out of the water whenever you swim towards an obstacle. The water movement has been reworked now to feel more comfortable - there is no more bobbing on the surface and you will no longer automatically leap out of the water - instead, you have to press the jump key whenever you intend to actually hop out.

Movement in water will now also respect your chosen movement speed. Your oxygen reserve is adjusted accordingly - if you chose to play with reduced movement speed, your oxygen will last longer so that you can still safely complete any required dives.

If you do prefer the old water movement, you can restore it by typing hlvr_new_watermovement 0 in the console.

New and reworked vehicle modes

We have added two new modes to experience the vehicle rides in the game and reworked the steering for the third person camera. With these options, we hope that everyone can now find a mode that is best suited to their personal preferences and level of comfort required to get through the vehicle sections without any ill effects from motion sickness.



Directional steering for the third-person camera mode
Previously, up and down on the movement stick would always accelerate/decelerate the vehicle, while left and right would turn the vehicle. This could make steering the vehicle quite awkward in the third person camera where the camera direction can be quite different from the vehicle's orientation.
Instead, the stick positions are now interpreted directionally based on where you look or point and the vehicle's orientation. It is rather hard to explain, but you will understand when you try it for yourself. In our opinion, this makes steering in the 3rd person camera a much more pleasant experience and should thus make this mode a more viable alternative for those needing this level of comfort.

First person camera with decoupled camera turning
Some of you requested this mode, and here it is - in this mode, you will turn the camera independently from the vehicle's orientation with your right stick, whereas the left stick still accelerates and turns the vehicle. As with the 3rd person camera, the movement stick is directional.

Teleporting camera
Unfortunately, it is simply not possible to implement teleport movement for the vehicles. This presents a significant obstacle for those of you who need teleport movement to not suffer motion sickness, as the vehicle rides can be quite intense. We have instead added a mode where the vehicles still move freely, but your camera does not - instead, it teleports in regular intervals to a third-person view just behind the vehicle. It is our hope that anyone should be able to stomach this mode as there is no artificial movement or rotation of the camera at any time.

The downside to this mode is that steering the vehicle becomes harder - as your camera view remains stationary for brief periods of time, the vehicle will get a bit ahead of you and may be difficult to steer especially around corners where you might lose sight for a moment. We recommend a bit of patience to get used to this mode, and you don't always need to drive at full speed.

First time setup wizard

We noticed in the past that players were often not aware of the many comfort, movement and gameplay options we offer to shape the game to your individual preferences. We have now added a one time setup wizard that guides you through adjusting the most important settings to your taste. When you first launch the game after receiving the update, you will see this wizard once.
If you are already happy with your current settings, you can simply cancel the wizard.

If at any point in the future you want to rerun the wizard, you can launch it again by typing hlvr_launch_firsttime_wizard in the console.

No collisions with allied squad NPCs

Have you been annoyed by your NPC squadmates during the fight for City 17? We certainly have - they constantly push you around or block your way. That's why we chose to disable collisions between the player and these NPCs so that you can freely pass through them and not experience any pushback from them.

In case you prefer active collisions, you can restore them by typing hlvr_disable_player_ally_collisions 0 in the console.

Restored all menu background maps

Are you tired of constantly staring at the distant bridge from the tunnel when starting the game? We finally restored all of the original menu backgrounds and adapted them for VR. Depending on your progression, you will now see a different background when loading the game just like in the original game.

Radial fog implementation

You may have noticed on some of the outdoor levels - especially along the coast, that the fog in the distance does not look or behave too nicely in VR. Thanks to contributions by Joshua Ashton, HL2VR now features radial fog that significantly improves on the distant fog quality. Time for a coast revisit :)

Miscellaneous improvements and fixes

• Fixed a bug in the workshop support that required manual post-installation steps for some mods that replace models from the base game.
  
• The main menu now scales properly if the window resolution is changed. If you want to increase the mirror window's resolution (e.g. for recording), add -w 1920 -h 1080 to the game's launch options in Steam. If you prefer the window to go fullscreen, you can additionally add -fullscreen to the launch options.
  
• The super gravity gun no longer reverts to the standard gravity gun's effects after level transitions or loading a save.
  
• We now bundle prebuilt AI node graphs with the campaign maps and prevent the game from updating them - this should hopefully eliminate or at least significantly reduce the chance of the infamous "AI disabled" bug occurring in the future.