Hello everyone! We had a target to get our new patch done before Holiday/Christmas but in the end we did not make it... booho. The biggest reason for this was that we got creative and came up with quite a lot of stuff to add to it! We are close and the patch will most likely be done in the first half of January.

Here is the list of major changes and current status:

• Upgrade Unreal Engine from 4.11 to 4.17.
  
• Player capsule properly follows player/HMD instead of staying in center of play space. This means for instance walking in room scale up a slope will move character upward as is expected. A whole lot of gameplay is improved because of this.
  
• Holster and eat-drink is now activated by physical interaction rather than button presses. Long term we want to move more interactions to this type.
  
• Teleportation is now an arc instead of a trace line and is also more stable and has more checks (it works with stairs and you can't teleport through walls). The player move with teleportation defaults to a very quick dash instead of an instant blink. Feels more immersive.
  
• Right controller are replaced by The Hand in game. The Hand is missing a new texture.
  
• VR Tutorial at start is replaced by non interrupting in-game tutorial system. This is not finished but works ok already. Non VR game will also get something similar.
  
• Controller haptics added to most gameplay actions where one would want this. Still a few cases missing here and there.
  
• Translocator/teleporter disc now travels based on how long button is pressed.
  
• Peeking through intersecting geometry by moving head/camera now activates a black and blue overlay. This is almost done but has some missing checks.
  
• Inventory wheel with motion controller is now attached and toggled to the PDA so it follows the players left hand. We also made a new sexy backback model which is shown when inventory is active. Drop items can be done directly from inventory. Drop items from inventory is complete for motion controllers and planned to be implemented also for Non VR and other controllers.
  
• Read mode added: When PDA is displaying a story text, it will continue to do so until you take the PDA away from your face.
  
• A few controller rebinds for motion controllers: Drop item is now at right grip button. Jump is top trackpad button for Vive and right stick on Oculus Touch. The control layout images are not updated but in-game tutorial should show the correct buttons.

The new patch is available in beta branch named experimentalvr. Password is experimentalvr. We think the VR experience (especially with motion controllers) is improved a lot and recommend to run the game with this already now even though there are a few rough edges.

We are continuing to improve the VR support in TSP.

Version 1.031

• Now supports Oculus Touch! Functionality wise it should be very similar to Vive, apart from a different button layout.
  
• On Vive and touch pressing down is now walking backwards instead of resetting the camera. Cam reset is moved to R on the keyboard for now since we assume not many use it a lot (do you?)
  
• Game now defaults to following the orientation of the controller and not the headset. This can be changed back in the options if you prefer.
  
• AA now defaults to extra sharpened Temporal AA in VR, giving the best possible combination between AA and sharpness we could accomplish. There is some ghosting using this technique, but it looks better than before.
  
• Extro has significantly improved cameras in VR, along with additional VR bug fixes and polish
  
• Because of Oculus Touch, some options in the menu have been reworded to sound more inclusive (the same options now covers Touch + Vive controllers).
  
• Missing voice acting in the intro fixed when playing in VR.
  
• Presumed fix for the VR ladder teleport spot for the long ladder down into the Ice Path not triggering.
  
  Known VR issues left:
  
• You can cheat yourself past a door in the Library using VR teleport.
  
• VR tutorials are a bit rough right now.
  
• Main menu is a bit cluttered options wise and could use a redesign and introduction of templates.
  
• VR loading screens still missing.

As you may have seen in the patch update notes we put 1.03 up earlier today with a whole range of VR fixes and improvements. New is the Explorer Diary, which allows you to re-read and examine secrets found, and can help you figure out what you are still missing.
Another cool new thing is that on Vive you can now control the menus directly with the controllers, instead of relying on Oculus style head aim. The PDA has significantly less latency too now, and you now have the option to enabled Temporal AA too.

It took a while to get this one out, but we are still dedicated to move further ahead with the VR implementation. Our biggest to-do's are:

• VR loading screens - We spent a lot of time on this but keep hitting problems, especially on Vive. We haven't been able to make this work correctly yet so far, though the Oculus ones seem more promising so we might release an update with Oculus only loading screens first.
  
• Oculus Touch - Still on our list.
  
• Start game tutorial - Still a bit crude. It is on the list but it is not the most entertaining thing to re-build.
  
• Haptic feedback - Currently not being used for the Vive controllers. Shouldn't be too hard to add.
  
• Hands instead of Vive controllers - On the list, but we are not 100% sure that just having hands is the way to go, not least because the hands wouldn't be able to correctly hold most items. The current idea is to show a hand only when you hold no items, but to hide the hand/controller while an item is held, and instead replace it with a simple sphere or such. Feedback on this is welcome.
  
• Anti Aliasing - This one is very challenging. We now added Resolution Scaling up to 200% as well as Temporal AA, and we might improve it further in the future by having TAA also automatically resharpen the screen to combat the inherit blurryness, but beyond that it will be hard to properly fix the AA issue. The only real option we have is to add SMAA, but that might not even work well.

Thanks for your continued support everyone!

The Solus Project is currently 50% off during the Autumn sales!

Please also consider us for The Steam Awards. Your support would help a small team like ours hugely!
If you'd like to support us please vote for "The “Whoooaaaaaaa, dude!” award, so that the votes are a concentrated on one category.

That aside we are working on a new patch and hope to have it out later this month. We are fixing a number of smaller bugs, and are putting some further work into VR. On the list for VR are the loading screen improvements, and we are experimenting with the diary menu being accessible in VR.

We are happy to announce that the The Solus Project has sold over 100 000 copies since its release in summer. To celebrate we released the soundtrack, and the game is currently 40% off on Steam.

As a small indie studio we are very pleased to see that the public has recognized the amount of content, depth, and polish of the game that we put years of work into. Thanks everyone!

To celebrate this Jonas "Wrench" Kjellberg, our composer, has released the full Official Sound Track for TSP. 44 tracks worth of 96 minutes of the Solus atmosphere!

You can listen to it for free on Jonas' website https://wrench.bandcamp.com/album/the-solus-project-original-soundtrack - or you can purchase the full quality downloadable files as a DLC here on Steam

http://testx-steam.c5game.com/steamstore/app/532850/

Or listen to it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx1mhpud7WI
https://play.spotify.com/album/5UTIS7bo3tIPNNpWzO6q1r
https://soundcloud.com/wrench-se/sets/the-solus-project-original-soundtrack

As you may have already noticed TSP is part of the special VR Weekend Sale here on Steam. During this weekend we are 20% off!

http://testx-steam.c5game.com/steamstore/sale/vr_weekend

This sale obviously includes the non-VR game too. Since we are both a non-VR and VR title at the same time, the same game can be experienced either way.

In VR, presumed fix for spawning way up in the air or below the level on reloading a save game/level.

In non VR, fix for gamepad not receiving focus on the explorer diary menu.

We continue to have one particularly annoying VR bug where some people, apparently in particular on Windows 10 and when having the PC connected to a TV, are not able to click things in the VR main menu or inventory menu. We are still trying to figure out how and why. A work around was posted in the Steam forum for now, but if anyone suffers of this please let us know your system specs and any other information that might help us pinpoint the problem.

We've just released version 1.02 featuring some major new VR features and fixes, alongside a few more minor general changes.

We now have a VR inventory and crafting system on both Vive and Oculus. This makes the experience a whole lot smoother, and easier to understand. You can now craft items without having to first change to the item required for the crafting.

Also on Vive, the PDA now has actual buttons you can press to access the various different PDA modes.

A number of additional tweaks and fixes were made too. Please see the full changelog for details: http://testx-steam.c5game.com/games/thesolusproject/announcements/detail/588101927543567313

We've had a bit of radio silence left and right in the past weeks due to needing to take some time off after the intense crunch brought along in May and June. We are commited to continue our work on the VR functionality in particular, with plans for Oculus Touch, VR loading screens, and various continued improvements to things left and right.