Space Pirate Trainer 1.1 release

The culmination of a year of engine tweaks, bug fixes, and game play balancing, topped off with support for Valve Index and controller mapping with Steam VR 2.0.

The most obvious change for Space Pirate cadets will be the SteamVR2 hands for most controllers (You can toggle them in the options menu).

Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S and Windows Mixed Reality owners no longer have to jump through hoops to get Space Pirate Trainer working with their Touch controllers, just fire up the game and Steam VR 2.0 will get your controllers mapped out lickity split. Begone days of launch options!

If you have any issues though please let us know in our Steam forums.

We've thrown in a tips & tricks video screen to help show off some of the core game mechanics. Check it out right there on the platform! Shoot grenades at it if you want.

While porting Space Pirate Trainer to PlayStation VR and Oculus Quest, we squished *hundreds* of bugs of all proportions, and got the game running smokingly fast on even the lowest end of PC VR hardware.

In the coming months we hope to show off a little more of our work on a secret project from the past year, but in the meantime - charge up your lasers, strap on your sneakers and dance your way up the leaderboard hall of fame ;)

Happy training, Space Pirates!

QC

Arrr Pirates,

We've just released a big performance update. SPT should now run much smoother than ever before. Kudos to Microsoft, Intel, Unity and Valve for pushing this further than we thought.

In addition to this, we've added gun selection mapping for WMR devices to the thumbstick.
Haptics are unfortunately not available yet, but that's something MS needs to fix for SteamVR on their end.

Cheers!
QC

Main changes:

• Mothership: Our beloved Mothership had a rare bug that would block progress at the second weapon. We've taken the weapon in for a grease and oil change and it should now be in perfect working order.
  
• Achievement: Fixed the conditions for the "True Space Pirate" achievement. You might think you're a True Space Pirate, but only Space Pirates that can get to level 20 without a shield are indeed, True Space Pirates.
  
• Wave tweaks: Ramped up the mayhem for post mothership waves.
  
• UI additions: Slight change to the UI for selecting leaderboards, should be slightly less confusing zapping between arcade, oldschool and hardcore modes.

Dirk & Chris (QA)

Dearest Space Pirates,

The moment you've been training for is here - Space Pirate Trainer 1.0 is available now! Charge your lasers, equip your shields and tie up those laces as it's time to dance your way up the leaderboards.

We've added turrets, new enemies, upgrades, achievements, boss fights and just enough frantic mayhem to put any Space Pirate to the test!

In April 2016 we set forth to make the most kick ass room scale VR arcade experience possible, and today are proud to release the fruit of our endeavour. We've had such amazing feedback and support from the Space Pirate and greater VR community the past two years, and have been so blessed to have had you all along for the ride!

For the 1.0 release we concentrated on all of the things you loved about the Space Pirate Trainer alpha and beta releases - Instant action, replayability and deep gameplay.

So fire up Steam or Oculus Home, the Space Pirate Trainer 1.0 is waiting. It's training time!

Thank you so much for your support during the development of Space Pirate Trainer, we couldn't have done it without you!

Cheers,

Dirk, Chris & Wim

New enemies

• Hex Droid: Intense spinning shielded droid that can only be shot while it's shooting
  
• Rocket Droid: Slow moving, but equiped with an endless supply of deadly Space Pirate seeking rockets
  
• Swarms: Dozens of droids swimming through the sky - and at you!
  
• RayBoss: A huge beam shooting menace
  
• Mothership: The ultimate space pirate battle!

New challenging waves

• Dozens and dozens and dozens of new challenging handcrafted waves
  
• Intense boss fight waves

Turrets, powered by your Volton

• Tesla coil: Zaps enemies in range
  
• Auto Turret: Laser turret with auto-targeting
  
• Ray Cannon: Ray turret, manual control like a mixer

New Powerups

• Buddy: Your friendly hi-tech drone, battling on your side for a change!
  
• Super lasers: The most kick ass 80s style lasers money can't buy
  
• Super rays: Takes down *any* droid in seconds!
  
• Hexagon destructible shield: A shield that stays active so long as it's not shot down.

Other stuff

• Impact warning system (slows down more and added reticle around laser)
  
• General audiovisual improvements
  
• Added an "easy mode", for explorers (still not easy though)
  
• Wave unlocks
  
• Achievements
  
• Unlockable skins for your weapons
  
• Unlockable alpha ship environment
  
• 8 new awesome hyperactive kinetic tracks by the master producers James Marvel and June Miller

... there is a stack more as well, but we recommend you dive in and find out for yourself!

Hi fellow space pirates,

Some of you are still in training, some of you rocked the leaderboards, but most of you are ready for the next challenge.
Well, it is almost done, still boiling, but ready on the 12th.

Thanks again for all the continued support. Great reviews and positive comments are what gave us the energy to continue to work on this during the past year.

We are looking forward to seeing you battle the bosses, control turrets and cut through the new waves!

A full feature list will be available on release day, but in the meantime, here's a good overview:

https://uploadvr.com/space-pirate-trainer-launch-october/


Cheers!
QC - I-Illusions

Hi there space pirates in training!

We're happy to announce that we were able to add native Touch support just in time for the release of Oculus Touch. (SteamVR emulation was lacking force feedback and decent gun-selection controls.)

Also, we've created a new trailer for the current beta together with Kert Gartner. You can take a look at it here: https://youtu.be/xfa9Jqm34b0

The custom tools that we used to create this video will become available later this month. Note that we didn't use any fancy camera's or green key to create this video.

Features include:
* Stabilization
* Motion blur
* High Quality first person view
* High Quality 3de person view
* External camera offset
* FOV settings
* IK rigged Space Pirate
* Gamepad external camera controls
* and more...


That said, we're still working hard on SPT and our next big gameplay update will probably be somewhere at the end of Q1 2017.

Thank you all for the support! It means a lot to us!

QC - Team I-Illusions

#FreeKeyFriday is back! It's time to sharpen your robot zappin' skills and jump into the Survios masterpiece, Raw Data!

Starting from now and all the way to the the end of Halloween, if you can beat our Raw Data 'Dark Source' score of 28,520 - and prove it with a screenshot - you could win a free Space Pirate Trainer download key. We're giving away five of them!

To participate, Tweet us or post a screenshot of your score in the comments below. You just have to score higher than 28,520 to qualify, in the Dark Source level, with 'Normal' difficulty. Five winners will be chosen at random and announced Tuesday November 1st at noon (PST).

Good luck, Space Pirates - lets show those Eden Corp robots how well we've trained!

You can follow Survios at:
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/survios
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/surviosvr/

Space Pirate Trainer beta is out now, featuring new gameplay, graphics, weapons, powerups, and the revered Volton.

The Volton is a melee weapon that redirects pulse lasers back to their origin, and also includes a plasma-link that can pull droids towards you or smash them into the environment. It takes some practice to master, though once you do.. it opens up a lot of possibilities!

Other new weapons include the Ion Grenade Launcher and Shotworks - both incredibly powerful additions to a Space Pirate arsenal. Use the trigger to fire a grenade from the Ion Grenade Launcher, and hit the trigger again to detonate. You can take out a whole swarm of droids with just one perfectly placed hit. The Shotworks sends out a spray of plasma, perfect for taking out a close range enemy or deflecting a group of medium range droids.

After a successful droid takedown, one of five PowerUps may appear. Once activated PowerUps will greatly enhance your abilities for ten seconds. PowerUps include a shield, machine guns, homing bullets, a gravity field, and missiles.

Alongside the global Space Pirate Captain leaderboard are leaderboards for each weapon, so you’ll be able to dance your way up the charts dedicated to your favourite method of playing.

There are *lots* more updates in this release, so read on below for a list of some of the ones we remembered to write down these past few months!

We'd like to thank all the supporters here on the forums, Twitter and Reddit that have helped make this beta possible, your contributions have been invaluable! We've really enjoyed going through your feedback and are pretty certain you're going to absolutely love this update.

Thanks for your support!
I-Illusions

• Shotworks: Your very own space pirate shotgun. Really great for close range destruction, also pretty great for medium range scattered shots
  
• Ion Grenade Launcher: This is a whole bunch of 4th of July’s rolled into one gun. Shoot once to send out a grenade, and again to detonate
  
• The Volton: Brand new second option for the shield, turns into a laser-deflective bat that doubles as a plasma link! Try aiming the blue laser at a droid, pulling the trigger and lassoing that droid around like a space cowboy! All lasers deflected with the plasma-link will be redirected back to the location they were fired from

• Scout droid: fires a whole bunch of quick bursts, and then zaps as far away as it can
  
• Heavy: The Beta “big gun” - this droid fires *five* lasers simultaneously to ensure anything and everything is obliterated. The blue laser is harder to dodge because of its higher velocity

After every droid is destroyed there is a chance a PowerUp cubes will spawn, up to a limit of three PowerUps at any one time. When activated (by shooting, hitting them with your head or with your shield) a PowerUp will last for ten seconds.

PowerUps include:

• Machine gun (green): Quick machine gun fire if you’ve got your guns out
  
• Shield (blue): A temporary bubble surrounds you and no droid fire can break through. Perfect for those tender space pirate times
  
• Homing bullets (yellow): Need some help aiming? These guys will do the dirty work for you. Hit the yellow PowerUp and then push the trigger - bullets will find their own way to a droid!
  
• A Little Help From My Ship (red): If you see a red PowerUp, wait til there are plenty of droids, and then activate the upgrade. The skies will rain with missiles!
  
• Gravity field (purple): A purple wormhole will open in a random location in the playfield, sucking in any object (droid or otherwise) passing through the local area

• Hardcore mode: Real space pirates do *not* have time for bullet time
  
• Guns were slightly rebalanced
  
• Wave selection: Start classic or hardcore mode from wave 1, 5, 10 or 15
  
• Shield swapping (putting arm behind shoulder) more reliable than ever. You probably won’t need the grip button anymore
  
• Super slow down when hit by a droid, making it easier to dodge subsequent hits
  
• Bullet time now degrades as you progress. Super high at wave 2, super super low at wave 30
  
• Controllers vibrate when swapping between shield and gun
  
• VRSense: Screen subtly flashes when a droid shoots outside of your peripheral vision, perfect for that pesky droid just to your left!
  
• Game stats presented at end of game (waves survived, droids destroyed, longest combo, eyeshots, shots survived, dominant weapon - weapon used for > 90% of shots
  
• Gun-specific leaderboards: Your dominant weapon (the one used for more than 90% of shots) will indicate which leaderboard your score gets sent to. All dominant weapons though will also be submitted to 'mixed'
  
• Your position in global leaderboard is now shown for each of the leaderboards
  
• The two lasers (triple shot and automatic fire) have been rolled into one laser
  
• Droids hang out behind you a little less
  
• Now possible to make an eye-shot with the RailGun
  
• Controllers no longer blink all the time

• Decreased game load time significantly
  
• Temporary marks left on the platform when you shoot, scuff up the platform as much as you like!
  
• Optimized effects and shaders resulting in better overall framerates
  
• New animated gun models and textures - space pirates like to look good right?
  
• Updated and Streamlined menu - removed a lot of clutter to make way for all the amazing new stuff
  
• Particle and weapon effects updated
  
• Shield now comes in beautiful "space pirate" blue neon, which now also indicates when the shield has enough charge to perform a pulse blast using the trigger button.
  
• HMD & computer screen is now blackened when the pause button is hit (menu button on the controller) and Space Pirate Trainer sounds are muted
  
• Updated environment models and textures
  
• Optional “relaxing” fog setting in the options menu
  
• SuperSampling and Anti-Alias options menu (available options > advanced)

• Updated 3D audio
  
• Droids now clang when they collide with each other or the platform
  
• QuarkCannon (single shot) now makes cooler, futuristic shot sounds
  
• RayGun sounds absolutely devastating when combined with another RayGun (cross the streams! We dare you!)

Brand new mode made to turn your lounge room into an Arcade - perfect for playing SPT with your friends. Head to the the options menu and hit the ‘Party Mode’ button. Here you can limit gameplay to a number of games or minutes, and clear the dedicated party mode scoreboard. Once you then hit ‘Start Party Mode’ the game will leave the options menu and show a striped down Space Pirate Trainer interface, with just a ‘Ready to Rock’ button and a party mode leaderboard on the side. To exit party mode, hit the escape button on the computer’s keyboard.

To force Space Pirate Trainer to start in party mode, just create a text file called ‘partymode.cfg’ in the same directory as the Space Pirate Trainer executable, with the following text:

forcepartymode=1
forcecredits=5
forcetime=10

Be aware that you won’t be able to press escape to exit party mode until you change the settings in the partymode.cfg file and restart Space Pirate Trainer, or remove the file from the directory.

Creating a good game is all about choosing the right priorities. Instead of implementing every possible feature in a basic way, we are focusing on the stuff that makes Space Pirate Trainer shine, and continue to make them better.

In a few weeks we’re going to unveil the next major update: The Space Pirate Trainer Beta!

Here’s a brief list of some of the updates you can look forward to:

* Refined gameplay
* The Volton: a brand new melee weapon which includes the Plasmalink
* Two new gun-modes for the Bolton; the Ion grenade launcher and the “Shotworks” shotgun
* PowerUps (Machine gun / Shield / Missiles / Gravity field / Homing bullets)
* New droid types
* Balanced difficulty
* Wave selection / Party mode / Hardcore mode
* Graphical update
* Sound improvements
* ….


There are still plenty more things on our to-do list, which will be keeping us busy long after we’ve pushed out the beta.

Finally we must send out a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past few months. Whether you’ve been playing Space Pirate Trainer, posting a review on the Steam store, telling your friends about it, tweeting your highscores or posting videos on YouTube - we’ve absolutely loved your feedback and taking them all in for how we can better Space Pirate Trainer leading up to the final release.


Cheers,
QC - I-Illusions

---Update---
Short teaser of the MachineGun Power-Up: https://twitter.com/quarkcannon/status/767761152558391297

Hi fellow space pirates in training!

A quick update on the guns:

We'll have visual representation of the guntypes you are currently using in the beta.
I've teased the QuarkCannon, Raygun and Chargegun here:
https://twitter.com/quarkcannon/status/763483010528317440

The laser blasters (triple shot and automatic) have been merged, resulting in one mode with the best of both guntypes.

What's more, there will be two new types on the dial:
* Shotworks (shotgun-like)
* Ion grenade launcher

There are additional guntypes in the form of PowerUps, timed or one-time usage. More info on that soon.

We're still on schedule for a release before the end of the summer. (that's the 21st of September ;-)


Cheers,
QC