Hi everyone!

Cell Sword (my comedy scifi shooter) is OUT NOW and I have snuck in some Liberation time to push a new release.

This update I am pleased to add basic VR support for Liberation! Tin Man Games, a game studio in Melbourne, have loaned me a VR kit (a HTC Vive) for a little while. I was unsure how difficult it would be to retroactively add support for PCVR but the game was largely architected with this option in mind so the main hassle has been the HUD and stuff like pop up windows. I must admit it is super cool to fly around a retro space adventure in 3D (I am feeling a bit queasy as I finish up this coding session however).

Please consider this experimental VR support and not a full finished release. Here are the limitations at the moment:

• the game CAN NOT be saved in VR mode

• some parts of the interface may be unreachable (eg news articles)

• the only inputs are keyboard/mouse and gamepads. I recommend gamepad when using VR

• the on screen targeting is wonky in VR (it also doesn't show ship names)

I am pushing it out to get early feedback from people who have more experience with VR than me. Please fly around the first few systems and then add your feedback in the forum on what you'd like to see. I will not turn on Steam's "playable on VR" tag until a minimum quality threshold is reached (and we may never reach it -- I can never promise future updates). To use: turn on SteamVR, start Liberation, enter the menu, turn on XR and restart the game.

BUT enough about my magical adventures in a whole new dimension of amazing gameplay... you, the common flatlanders, are still my people and I haven't forgotten about you. This update includes some tasty treats too.

The big one is that gamepad input has been polished. I gained some new experience from Cell Sword (available now!) and have fed it back into Liberation. The gamepad deadzones are more reasonable and the input is now logarithmic, which means small movements on gamepad mean much smaller movements in game. This provides a much MUCH better experience on gamepad.

If you play Liberation on a portable device, you can now cap the framerate to reduce battery drain.

Finally, in my quest to make the star systems each more unique and interesting, there's a few new cosmetic things in the game for people to discover.

Thanks for playing Liberation (and your future purchase of Cell Sword (have I mentioned it's out now?)).

As always, any shares/boosts/reviews you can throw towards my games really helps me make more of them.

Regards,

Luke

PS. Tin Man have made a couple of table top VR games and the classic Warlock of Firetop Mountain which I recommend people check out

Add

• Mouse button can be used on title screen to start game

• Add FPS capping. Players can now force the game to target a specific framerate. On a Steam Deck on a long trip? Cap the frames at 30 for a battery saving. Really want to recreate the Acorn experience? Cap Liberation at 12fps for a good time

• Add framerate cap slider to menu

• Add anti-aliasing options to menu

• Add controller deadzone slider to menu

• Some new dialogue for Galfed Broadcasting Corporation host

• The algae bubbles on Algaeus now bounce when fired on

• Add ground telescopes to Bellian

• Add basic OpenXR support for headsets. NOTE: This is an experimental draft. The game can not be saved in VR mode and some parts of the interface may be unreachable

• Add VR submenu with some configuration options

Change

• Changing resolution now forces the UI to refresh, this is better in most ways

• Update to Godot 4.4.x

• Reduced controller deadzone to 0.16 by default (it was 0.5 before ewww)

• Gamepad inputs are now logarithmic

• Final switch over to my current universal build pipeline

Fix

• Fix to loading on faster computers

• Algae bubbles on Algaeus sit better on surface