Climbing mechanics in VR

We've all seen the great vr climbing games across the various platforms and marveled at the awesome freedom climbing based locomotion gives you in vr. As such it was only natural to implement climbing mechanics into ESVR early on in the development process and so far the feedback we've got from our awesome alpha testers on the basic climbing in the firefighter career path has been amazing.

Personally I love "climbing" in vr and I feel like it's such a good use of the current motion controllers on the market, in addition to being a fun locomotion method it also plays a key part in many of the day to day tasks our EMS, Fire and LEO personnelle take on so it's a natural fit for the game and adds a bit of next level immersion to all career paths opening up new interactions and gameplay choices such as mantling through a window into a burning building as a firefighter or jumping over a fence to "head off" a fleeing suspect as a police officer for example.

When building the basics of the climbing system as it current exists in game we wanted things to make sense, our core approach was "if it looks like you should be able to climb it you should" so we took the basic fire engine and made all handles, ladders and railings on the rear deck "climbable", allowing the player to comfortably and realistically "climb" up to the rear platform of the ladder truck and mantle around using the railings as desired, the ladder itself is of course climbable to allow attacks on fires from above or entry into upper story windows.

As we move towards .3 we're looking at ways to implement this new mechanic to further expand all three career branches and add addition depth, immersion and of course provide additional gameplay choices to our players.

As always development is 100% open and community driven & funded so we welcome any and all constructive feedback, ideas, suggestions, witty banter, bug reports and input on the project via our official Discord

If you appreciate what we're doing here and want to see us do even better things in the future please consider becoming a Patreon

-Dave