Waltz of the Wizard News

Today is the day. Waltz of the Wizard has now been updated with our first major expansion - Natural Magic. Now live on Steam!

[h3]The road so far
[/h3]This is the largest production in our long history. We founded Aldin in 2013 to create believable reality experiences — worlds that are truly designed around the concept of you physically being present in them, as if they are reality. We are proud to have come so far, and we can still hardly believe that we have the privilege to help pioneer this amazing new medium.



This is in no small part thanks to the wonderful VR community of early adopters and users of Trial of the Rift Drifter, Asunder and lastly Waltz of the Wizard, who have supported us throughout the years. This is why we are giving Natural Magic to all our existing users free of charge, while the base price of Waltz of the Wizard will now increase from $9.99 to $19.99 to reflect the scope and breadth of content we are adding.



[h3]A brief look at what’s included
[/h3]In Natural Magic, we pushed the limits of what is possible with current VR hardware (and ourselves as developers). Of the many new-to-VR features we are shipping today, here are few to mention; New magic physics engine which uses natural user motions and mic input to simulate magic and make it feel real, using an advanced particle based approach. This allows us to deliver never-before seen dynamics in interactions between the user’s presence, magic particles and the virtual world, to deliver an extremely diverse simulation of fun situations and events to enjoy over and over again.



This is just the first step in exploring the entirely new territory of simulated magic and we are very excited to keep developing it with more advanced gestures, interactions and overall functionality. We’re also introducing new advanced physical characters that can react believably in boundless number of ways to various situations and combat scenarios. Lastly we’ve created a new procedural based world-building system with believable reflective environmental lighting and immense flexibility going forward. All of these features and many more will be expanded on in upcoming updates.



[h3]We hope you enjoy
[/h3]We truly hope you find Natural Magic continues to deliver on making fantasy feel like reality—and we look forward to hearing from you. There are a ton of things in Natural Magic, including the natural magic system itself, and we’re sure you’ll both find a lot that could be better as well dream up countless ideas on how it can expand going forward. This is just the beginning and the future is bright—thank you all for the journey to date.

- The Aldin Team

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hey everyone! We are beyond exited to announce Waltz of the Wizard: Natural Magic expansion is coming in invite-only beta this Holiday season.

Natural Magic is the first full expansion for Waltz of the Wizard, adding new locations and new form of magic for users to control. Visit the new castle courtyard and find the mysterious ritual circle to travel to new worlds - starting with the labyrinth. Adventurous wizards will explore its depths to recover forbidden knowledge and artifacts of the Observers, a race of interdimensional beings that have learned to harness magical energies to power strange gadgets and modify the fabric of space and time.



[h2]FEATURES[/h2]

• Expanded activities & replayability — As a wizard you will master your skills in wizardry and explore new worlds to recover forbidden knowledge, encounter curious creatures, collect artifacts and face surprising challenges.
  
• New magic system — Magic flows through the world like a natural force and is connected to other natural forces like gravity and wind. Your natural gestures control those energies, making magic feel and work more as if it’s real. Only the most skillful wizards will fully unleash their mystical powers.
  
• Castle courtyard — The courtyard expands the castle where you’ll learn to harness magical energies, meet curious creatures and find the mysterious ritual circle to transport to new areas.
  
• Procedural world — Natural Magic introduces Aldin’s first procedurally generated world; a labyrinth that lives between dimensions, home to mysterious artifacts and prison to the most mischievous beings in the universe.
  
• Achievements & challenges — Challenges and new achievements let you compare your skills to other wizards in the community.
  

[h2]RELEASE[/h2]
Invite-only Beta - Holiday 2020.
Join our Discord community for a chance to participate. https://discord.com/invite/cxHB5zF

Launch - Q1 2021.
Available on Oculus Quest/Quest 2 and SteamVR.

[h2]MORE INFO[/h2]
Waltz of the Wizard website - http://aldin.io/waltzofthewizard

- The Aldin team

[h2]Lightning Update & Polish



[/h2]Today we are happy to release our Lightning update - available immediately! This time around we are introducing a number of improvements, along with the lightning hands power that lets you generate electricity by shaking your hands.

Along with the new powers there is a wide range of polishing improvements, eradicating bugs and issues that have been annoying us and you!

[h2]Community feedback
[/h2]We greatly value feedback and discussions on all Waltz and VR related things and anyone is always welcome to join our Discord!


[h2]What’s coming next?
[/h2]We have big plans for Waltz of the Wizard this year that we are very excited about. While we can’t share details just yet, let’s just say we are opening new doors for the future of Waltz of the Wizard — with our strong focus on VR design innovation, as always.



[h2]Release Notes[/h2]
[h3]New content[/h3]
- Added Lightning hands

[h3]Improvements and fixes[/h3]
- Updated Unity game engine version to 2019.4.9f1
- You can now grab with trigger on Oculus Touch
- Improved Reach Assist highlighting and functionality
- Improved lighting in Main Room
- Improved armor catcher
- Magic ring from The Cell now respawns on desk in Main room after being unlocked
- Fixed lightning hands not working when wearing magic ring
- Fixed Teleport scenes in rare cases not unloading properly, leading to them being overlapped with the main room
- Fixed bug in Teleport locomotion where the screen sometimes went completely black if you teleported too quickly in succession.
- Fixed bug in Teleport locomotion where you were unable to locomote over the puzzle floor in Labyrinth
- Fixed bug in Telepath locomotion where you were unable to locomote if physically standing inside an obstacle
- Fixed Scavenger achievement sometimes not triggering
- Added impact sound when cloth banners are hit
- Skully doesn't return anymore when you throw him out the window
- Added time-out closing to Menu UI
- Improved lip syncing of Skully

We just pushed out a hotfix patch fixing the following issues.

Release notes:

• Fixed bug in 'dark creature once unfurled' Scavenger Clue where progression was impossible unless you restarted the game.
  
• Made some improvements to Wand projectile collisions and effects.
  
• Added twinkling stars to the night sky outside the Main window.
  

Good day fellow Wizards!
We are excited to release the Scavenger Hunt update to PC that includes brand new content, performance improvements and revamped effects. The core of it includes a scavenger hunt where you trace clues and use physical movements to unlock more secrets, an in-world gramophone with music, over 40 new items and more!

Find the full release notes below — but to an important announcement…

[h2]The future of Waltz of the Wizard - Announcement tease
[/h2]
We have been thrilled with the reception to the Extended Edition of Waltz of the Wizard. Over the past year, in addition to regularly updating Waltz and porting it to all major platforms, we’ve been working on new technologies and content prototypes for high degrees of natural interaction in VR. Some of those experiments have helped us understand what isn’t yet possible, while others have proven what is. First and foremost it’s given us an ability to take our VR content to the next level.



[h3]Waltz of the Wizard will grow this year[/h3]
Because of your response and support of the Extended Edition, we’re excited to share that we have big plans this year for Waltz of the Wizard. We are currently working on expansions that will bring Waltz of the Wizard into deeper realms with more advanced levels of magic and believable reality simulation. The expansions will alter the nature of the experience to the better, but Aldin fans will of course find the same atmosphere and dark humor they’ve come to love, as well as the advanced principles of believable reality design we’ve developed over the years. A big goal for us in Waltz of the Wizard going forward is simulation of magical forces and creating a believable virtual reality where magic is real.

We’ll have more to share in the very near future and we encourage all to join our new Discord community.

[img ]https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/35262568/908caa9c53f2681e50bd2b77080ca75b63defb49.png

[h3]PC remains a key VR platform for Aldin
[/h3]We believe VR offers exceptional ways to bring computing to a more accessible stage with standalone VR, yet we also believe that PC offers the greatest potential for pioneering designs and engaging content for advanced enthusiasts of the medium. Simulation fidelity matters a lot for believable virtual realities and is particularly relevant to us, since Aldin has always been dedicated to innovation and pushing VR towards believable experience of being in an alternate reality. We’ve just barely started seeing what PC VR is capable of and are super excited to take part in continued innovation for greater presence & immersion.

[h2]Scavenger Release Overview
[/h2]
[h3]Major optimizations
[/h3]Overall, we’ve spent heaps of effort taking what we’ve learnt developing for Oculus Quest and brought those improvements to PC. Waltz should now run on a broader range of low-end hardware, and on high-end gaming PC’s at higher fidelity than ever before.

Improved visual effects, particles and real-time lighting
Waltz has received big upgrades to particle effects and real-time lighting, giving the world more believable details and more satisfying effects for magic. In addition to real-time lights for things like explosions, you’ll find new layers of reactive particle effects.



[h3]Valve Index 144Hz optimizations
[/h3]
Those who follow us will know that we focus heavily on presence and immersion and an important part of that is high refresh rates and believable reaction times. VR is still pretty far from the timescale of reality, but we’re getting closer! Most Valve Index users can now run Waltz of the Wizard natively at 144hz for a stronger perceptual illusion of reality. This is, of course, in addition to the native support of natural hand interactions with Index controllers.



The new graphical options in the settings menu are simplified for low, medium and high — and the lowest setting should enable 144hz for a big portion of low-end hardware. In our internal testing we have run Waltz natively at 144hz on the highest graphical setting on a GTX970 GPU and i7-4790 CPU (~67% resolution in SteamVR). We’d love feedback on this so let us know what you think and what hardware you use to run Waltz at 144hz.

[h3]Lower end hardware & laptops
[/h3]
With the optimizations we’ve made Waltz of the Wizard should now be able to run on an even broader range of hardware at higher fidelity. For example, although this remains untested, even recent MacBooks should be able to run Waltz of the Wizard using dual-boot with Windows. We would love to hear if you try it on any type of laptop. While the early days of consumer VR weren’t very laptop friendly, we think the optimizations developers have made in recent years along with simplified setup with things like Oculus Quest and Link are making it a more viable option for a certain group of users.



[h2]Release notes
[/h2]
[h3]New content
[/h3]

• Scavenger hunt - Embark on a new quest to discover what Skully’s hiding.
  
• Experimental microphone input option (real-time echo for enhanced presence).
  
• Magical ear trumpet - Magical device that reveals secrets from cursed artifacts.
  
• Music box - Add some musical ambience to your magical journey.
  
• Wands - Cast magic with a flick.
  
• Wall Cabinet - Secret compartment that beckons to be unlocked.
  
• Multiple objects (Statues, individual books, spirit bottles, jars and hats).
  
• Added locomotion to all teleport scenes.
  
• Multiple new Skully reactions.
  
• Overhaul of impact audio.
  
• Added realtime lights to the lantern.
  
• Accessibility option added to menu for increasing or lowering player height.
  

[h3]Optimizations and other changes
[/h3]

• Major overall performance increase (144Hz on Index).
  
• Improved loading times.
  
• Overhaul of magical effects and particles.
  
• Environmental lighting and effects greatly improved.
  
• Quality settings added.
  
• Experimental modes added to the menu, containing: Troll mode (second screen co-op), mic input reverb, smooth camera mode (second screen smoothing for better in-game screen capture).
  
• Multiple bug fixes and improvements.
  
• Improved post-processing and enabled HDR.