JKQuest Dev Update #3

I thought it was about time I penned a new Dev Log / Update for JKQuest as I have been a little quiet since the last one (though I know a video got posted). Suffice to say things have been moving forwards very nicely indeed.. Last time I updated I had it just rendering to the headset with sound, but there were crashes and many things that needed fixing.
It wasn't actually long after I figured out why it was crashing (at the start of the first real-time rendered cinematic sequence when you begin the game) that I was able to make some pretty big leaps forward. This port has benefited greatly from the ports that have come before it, most specifically RTCW and Quake 3 (being the same engine helps) so as soon as I was in the game proper, things like the controller movement and head tracking were already working, bonus! adding some additional stuff to make it almost playable was then a reasonably quick exercise.
For example, it didn't take too long for proper stereo rendering to arrive, but it jittered/juddered like crazy and fixing that took me far longer than I intended (turned out to be a silly mistake that cost hours). So the head tracking is now pretty much "butter smooth" (apart from the sky box, but that is lower priority) and now it is at the point where there are no significant barriers left, only the number of hours I can commit to it.

Is it done yet?, can I lop arms and heads off yet?, what next?..
The following is on my immediate to-do list, so you can see what I am planning on tackling next (in no particular order):
* 6DoF - Only 3DoF at the moment.. need to figure out why that might be
* Motion controlled weapon alignments (the weapons are now already rendering at the location of the controller, but the models are not aligned)
* Motion controlled weapon aiming (at the moment it is "face aim" regardless of where you point your weapon)
* Option for 1st person light saber wielding - To be honest, this is probably not how most people will really play the game, 1st person is fine for the guns etc, but the real magic of the light saber battles is the massive array of moves combined with force powers that you can use in 3rd person. However, it will be a great deal of fun lopping the arms off storm troopers in first person, so it has to happen. Given the game insists on 3rd person for the light saber, this looks like it might be a good bit of work to get right without breaking something else.
* More work on the HUD (it's now visible, but is janky as hell)
* Weapon / Force selection - my plan for this is to do something similar to the Quake 3 weapon selection wheel.. but have it switchable to allow the selection of the active Force Power too.. I also plan to slow time down whilst it is active, but need to figure out some way of preventing this from being a way to cheat for the player.. but it should be pretty slick once it is working nicely
* Rudimentary button mapping - some actions aren't mapped to the controller at all yet, I need to get the basics in place to at least be able to try stuff out. However controller mapping is always a bit of a contentious subject.. so I expect this is where input from patrons will be useful once there we start dropping betas. Particularly as this game has _so many buttons_ .. I think there will be a need for some creativity, because there aren't enough buttons for everything and it shouldn't be completely unintuitive how to perform certain things, but at the same time I don't want this port to get stuck in development hell whilst all manner of motion controlled work-arounds are implemented. So some happy middle ground will have to be sought.

There are probably a few other things I have forgotten, and a crash that Bummser and BaggyG identified that I need to look into, but I actually don't think it is going to be too long until we can drop a very early, heavily caveated and probably restricted (to one level) beta for Patrons only.

Right now, what with having a family and a full time job, I'm spending every evening until pretty late on this (and I am sacrificing precious sleep) because I just can't put it down! so at some point I might give myself a couple of evenings off.. but it has been a while since I got obsessed with a port like this one!

Anyway, one last question, I think we might run a poll: at the moment I've not done too much game specific stuff.. but am fast approaching that.. so it would be good to know which of the two JK games ought to get the VR mod for first.. Outcast or Academy?

- Dr Beef