Sensing your surroundings in Heavenly Bodies, coming in 2024 – PlayStation.Blog

Hello there! Alex listed here, I’m a designer and the technological guide at 2pt Interactive. As a lot of of you may know, we’re the minor indie studio creating the hard, physics-based video game Heavenly Bodies.

Forward of our speedy-approaching 2024 release (put it in your diaries, folks), I desired to just take some time to share why we’re so psyched to be working with the PS5 to make our enthusiasm project.

A quick refresher

For those people who are not as acquainted with it, Heavenly Bodies is a video game about cosmonauts, the physique, and the absence of gravity. You transfer the limbs of a weightless, physically simulated area engineer (or two, in neighborhood co-op) to assemble and preserve buildings and techniques aboard a rickety space station. Your assigned tasks will generally look straightforward, but without having gravity to preserve you grounded, even the most mundane requests will involve wit and willful coordination to carry out.

Make perception? Okay, Welcome aboard.

Why we really like using the DualSense wireless controller

At its coronary heart, Heavenly Bodies has been designed with the adore for loaded element, physicality, and tactility. We have engineered a uniquely difficult motion plan which allows you manipulate just about every limb of your weightless entire body. Although (extremely) tricky at initially, these versatile controls paired with bodily simulated environments make for a globe that begs to be tinkered with.

With a video game that pretty literally necessitates you to feel your way via the environments, you can only imagine our exhilaration with the opportunity to use the functions of the DualSense controller. With the triggers utilised to grasp your cosmonaut’s hands and a chaotic, zero-g environment in which bumps and thumps are unavoidable, it made so considerably feeling for us to use the adaptive triggers and haptic capabilities to transport you into the floppy go well with you see on screen.

Really feel the palms of your hands… at your fingertips

The most effective way to engage in Heavenly Bodies is by making use of your cosmonaut’s fingers. You’ll will need to grip with the triggers to get onto objects and to drive yourself off walls. The DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers are impressive at speaking what objects and surfaces are in just your cosmonaut’s grasp.

For instance, when doing some weeding in the oxygen yard, you’ll really feel the fragile stalkiness of dry crops in comparison to the thick, really hard metal framework of the station.

And this scrunchy piece of paper? You can guess it feels scrunchy.

What is definitely great, and to some degree terrifying, is sensing objects and surfaces ripped from your grasp when your arms can’t fairly dangle on.

Sensing the bumps and thumps of the job as a result of your match

A whole new sensory dimension is extra from the DualSense controller haptics. To support the physicality of movement, it’s vital to us that you can sense all the bumps and thumps of your physique up against surfaces and objects. You can only think about what staying trapped in a soil centrifuge would really feel like, but shortly you will not have to:

We’ve also made a program which allows vibrations from all over the station to transmit throughout surfaces and into your arms. You are going to be capable to sense tools buzzing by the partitions, or pressurised fizzy drink cans blasting like modest rockets:

The appears of house, in 3D

Whilst house aficionados will rightly convey to you that there’s no audio in room, we have taken some guilty pleasure in filling our environments (air-pressurised, or usually) with the loaded sounds of room station tools. 

The PS5’s spectacular 3D audio operates to envelope you in the buzzes, beeps and groans emanating from around the station. A unique emphasize for us is when you are tasked to navigate a mineral extraction pod through a dense asteroid field. The violent, metallic thumps of the asteroid rocks bashing from the pod normally leaves a grin on our faces.

Which is all we have for now! Keep in mind, Heavenly Bodies is coming in 2024, so maintain your eyes peeled for launch bulletins quickly!