Just Push Start recently sat down with Philip Buchanan, Creative Lead & Programmer at Square Enix, to discuss the evolution of Hitman GO and its move into virtual reality.
Hitman GO: VR Edition has just been released for Oculus Rift and Samsung’s Gear VR, offering players a brand new way to experience all 91 levels of the original version. Speaking specifically about the differences between the two headsets, the Gear VR and Oculus Rift, Buchanan has given us substantial insight into how developing for the headsets differed and how he thinks the game turned out.
“Comfort is always one of the main issues in virtual reality. When working on the Gear VR version of the game we knew we had to make it a priority, in part because we don’t have head tracking like on the Oculus Rift. While designing Hitman GO: VR Edition we made sure that the controls and the gameplay were comfortable from a fixed point of view. We also spent time optimizing the game to get the highest frame rate possible on all devices.
UI is also often an issue in VR. We wanted to make an interface that felt like it was part of the Hitman GO world, but one that was also clear and readable for the player on low resolution devices. This meant reducing our use of text and increasing the scale of some objects to be clearly visible on the Gear VR. We also put a lot of effort into refining the controls for the Gear. At first we used swipes on the touch pad to control the camera, but later switched to a system using only taps and presses after finding that using your head to point gave much better accuracy. All that said, we’re really proud of how similar the Gear VR and Rift versions of Hitman GO are.”
