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Manor Lords is one of the most immersive city builders to come out in a while. It didn’t take long after its arrival for the modding community to work their magic, and now an unofficial VR mod serves to enhance the game’s immersion beyond the original developer’s initial dream.
Developed by Flat2VR, the mod introduces basic VR compatibility to Slavic Magic’s game. While there was only one developer working on Manor Lords, it’s a different story with Flat2VR, which has benefitted from the nature of open-source development to create a community of committed modders.
At the moment, the mod only works with mouse and keyboard controls, though the development team have alluded to “Demeo / Little Cities-like motion controls” in their announcement tweet. If and when that’s coming is anyone’s game, though the soon-to-be implemented Xbox controls for Manor Lords will likely feed into that slightly.
We’ve attempted to capture a little snippet of what Manor Lords looks like from a VR perspective, though the limitations of virtual reality footage capture don’t really do it justice. You’d be better off having a go yourself, if you’ve a VR headset compatible with your PC.
Flat2VR are no novices to modding VR compatibility into popular games, having worked on previous projects including Borderlands 2 VR and even one for World of Warcraft.
The project highlights the power of open-source software, which is becoming increasingly important for game developers especially in light of Unity’s recent licensing fee price hike. For those who are unaware, Open Source indicates software that is developed by communities, for communities, and you will never have to pay a penny to use it. While Flat2VR has recently kicked off its own studio, all of the core software needed to reimagine a game in VR are readily available.
Slavic Magic, the one-man-band developer behind Manor Lords even chimed in on Twitter: “Wow I have no idea how it’s done but I’m impressed it works.” While nothing has been mentioned regarding official support for mods, the developer doesn’t seem like they have too much of an issue with them.
While the modding scene for Manor Lords is still juvenile, with most developers only having had access to the game for a few days now, the scope and potential for the game to see plenty of new third-party features is near limitless. Having been built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 4, the game builds on over ten years of game engine documentation. Expect to see big things from mods added to Manor Lords.
