The Hunting Season VR

The first of its kind, The Hunting Season VR is a hunting simulator drawing elements from games like The Hunter Call of the Wild and Hotdogs, Horseshoes and Hand-grenades to craft an indepth simulator of the hunting experience in Virtual Reality. Built for Virtual Reality from the ground up to try and provide the closest experience to real hunting without having to leave your house, The Hunting Season VR offers an open world the player can freely hunt and track animals in and explore as they please.

This early prototype is mainly a proof of concept and a very early alpha, it is available for free to everyone and we are actively looking for feedback on what the community think of the concept, excecution and future of the project.

Currently in the early proof of concept stage, the download available currently includes: 

• Full VR intergration built on the VRTK plugin for unity.
• Player can store ammo and their weapon on chest pouches to allow for less cumbersome movement. Player speed effects how much noise they make, this does not have an effect in game animals yet.
• One "huntable" species (Deer) complete with basic AI, navigation, sounds and animations.
• One weapon (M24 Sniper Rifle) with external box mag, which is loadable. Complete with sounds, working scope, two handed weapon intergration for aiming and reloading.
• Small 500x500 map (roughly 250m x 250m) which includes minor terrain variations, trees and grass, rocks and highmaps. Complete entry level simulation feature, feeding zones, which the AI maps between.

The Hunting Season VR is an ambitious project, which aims to bring all of the wide and varied aspects of hunting together into a VR game. The list of intended features is long, so we have tried to summarise it as well as we can - 

• Many player weapons ranging from rifles to handguns to bows.
• Multiple different huntable species, immediately planned species are deer, bears, boars, wolves/coyotes and rabbits.
• An indepth animal behavioural system that will make species react to the players presence in the environment through sight, scent and sound, and behave in natural ways; Deer will form herds while Bears will be lone solitary creatures. Animal needs dictate where they will travel, so the player can choose to play the traditional hunting game or - 
• Detailed hunting and tracking features that will allow players to track animals, if they do not wish to sit in a bush for an hour. While this may be more difficult, it may be more rewarding and more immediate.
• Lures, baits, decoys, callers and other useful items that can be used to attract different animals.
• Stands and blinds that can be set up by the player to mask their presence.
• Several maps of grander scale than the one included in this prototype, hopefully at least 4x the size, each with an individual touch that will allow players to experience hunting in different terrains and seasons.
• Weather and time of day that can be set by the player before they set off for the hunt, to bring more atmosphere to the experience.
• Many options for the player to choose from on how they want to play the game, I.E. movement options, intelligence of animals, ease of tracking and lures, etc.

Many of the items on this list are a long way off, however semi regular updates will be published here as the project moves along, and eventually it will move to a funded method, once the experience is fully enjoyable and worth your hard earned cash. 

Please remember than this is an early prototype and is not complete or bug-free. As such, if you are looking for a great game or experience right now, this will not provide that. 

However, if you want to be involved early on in this project and help choose development routes, catch them bugs, and all round make this a better experience, it is much appreciated. Any bugs you find while playing, please report them in the bug catching forum post below. The more bugs we can fix now, the easier it will be later on.

Instructions for play:

Requires SteamVR to play, however can be used on either HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. Download the file from Itch.io, extract it to a location of your choice, open SteamVR, then run the Alpha 0.1.exe located within "The-Hunting-Season-VR" folder.

• Grab with grip buttons - the spherical object above the controllers indicates the best place to activate the grab.
• Trigger on controller holding weapon to fire.
• Right controller trackpad controls movement, click in the trackpad to sprint.
• Left controller trackpaf controls rotation, left and right on the trackpsd rotates you 45 degrees.
• Once the weapon has been fired, the bolt needs to be cycled, at this moment simply pulling the bolt lever on top of the rifle back and releasing will do the trick. If you have done it right a casing will be ejected.
• The rifle only has 5 shots, after this you will need to eject the magazine and insert a new one. Simply grab the magazine on the gun and pull, it will come away from the gun. Grab the new magazine and hold it where the magazine was, it should automatically enter the correct position. Remember to cycle the bolt.

Once again, please remember than this is an EARLY PROTOTYPE and is not complete or bug-free.

Thank you for your support, any comments, suggestions or bugs please feel free to post hem in the forum below.