Outlaws VR beta v0.96

Outlaws VR is a fan-made mod that lets you play Outlaws Remastered (Steam or GOG) in virtual reality, on the Meta Quest 3, Quest 2 and PC VR. It loads the levels, art, sound and cutscenes from your own copy of the game, so you need to own Outlaws Remastered, and none of the game's files are included. Under the hood it's a new engine built in Unreal Engine 5.1 that runs the original levels the way the original engine did.

This is the second public beta. It brings 19 community multiplayer maps, a new lobby, an auto-updater and a long list of fixes.

Watch it in action

▶ Watch: Historical Missions Gameplay The Historical Missions, played on a Quest 3

▶ Watch: Multiplayer Deathmatch Gameplay Deathmatch against bots, played on a Quest 3

What's new in v0.96

• 19 community multiplayer maps built in, on PC and Quest, with their authors in the credits and the manual.
• A new multiplayer lobby, laid out like the original's, with big names split red and blue in team games.
• An auto-updater: from now on the main menu offers new releases, on PC and Quest, and keeps your saves, theme and maps.
• Faster multiplayer fights: two punches, a stab, a thrown knife or a scoped head shot kills. The host can turn it off.
• The match scorecard under the weapon wheel, with pings and mute, instead of in the pause menu.
• Closer to the original: slopes, jumps, fall damage, pits, stamina, blasts and the lantern's reach now behave as they did in 1997.
• Bosses shoot and react at the original speed, and Handful of Missions levels end when the boss goes down.
• Revised swimming: hold jump to rise and crouch to sink, smoothly. Holding jump at an edge climbs you out.
• Separate autosaves for the story, Historical Missions, Handful of Missions and custom maps.
• Brighter by default: the old 1.2 brightness is the new 1.0, and the slider runs 0.6 to 1.3.
• On a PC without a headset: Esc opens the pause menu to save and load, and holding the left mouse button skips a cutscene.
• Every fix from the v0.95 known issues list, plus many more. The full list is below.

Full list of changes

The big ones

• 19 community multiplayer maps are built in, with their authors in the credits and the manual. A host and joiner need the same network version: a different one is refused with a message asking you to update. 0.95 and 0.96 can't play together, so update first.
• A new multiplayer lobby, laid out like the original's: a big title, a Players panel with large names (split red and blue in team games), and a few big items: Enter Game, Character, Options and Quit Game.
• An auto-updater: the main menu offers new releases, on PC and Quest, and keeps your saves, theme and maps.
• Bosses now shoot and react at the original speed and move at 60% of it, including Tim Bloodworth, Bill Morgan and Mary. Bob at his curtain keeps the old pace.

Multiplayer and co-op

• Co-op: the "Last match" lines on the multiplayer page no longer run off the edge with long player names.
• A new Gameplay option, "End historical mission on boss down", ends Historical and Handful missions when the boss goes down. It is off by default.
• Co-op: the dynamite and knife throwers work for everyone in the game, not just the host.
• Multiplayer: the match scorecard now hangs under the weapon wheel, tilted up toward you and big enough to read, instead of sitting in the pause menu.
• Multiplayer: bots no longer vanish mid-fight. A stuck bot is now only moved to a spawn point no player can see.
• Multiplayer: fights end faster. Two punches, one stab, a thrown knife that hits, or a scoped rifle head shot kills, even through armour. The host can turn this off under Host Game > More options (on by default).
• Multiplayer: bots drop some of their ammo when they die, as players do.
• Multiplayer: single sticks of TNT made by the map can be picked up, including by players who join late.
• Multiplayer: the pause menu has a Change character row, worn from your next spawn, and a team switch in team matches. The Players page is gone: ping and mute are on the scorecard under the weapon wheel, and the player count and host address are on the lobby page.
• Multiplayer: the host sets one movement speed on Host Game, and every player and bot in the match is held to it. The pause menu's speed row shows it greyed out, and your own setting comes back afterwards.
• Multiplayer: the rifle does double damage in matches as in the original, and hits count by where they land on all guns: 1.5x in the chest, 1x further out or low, 0.5x at the edges.
• The score card at a level's end fades in on your hand after a second. X or A on the holding hand hides it, grip passes it between hands, and hold to skip waits half a second before it starts.
• Multiplayer: other players' pings show on the scorecard.
• Multiplayer: for 3 seconds after you spawn you flash, take no damage and deal none.
• Multiplayer: Ashika replaces Nuketown in the built-in maps.
• Co-op: New Game goes to Story or Historical, then its levels, or Load Game loads any save. There is no co-op autosave slot now: the host saves to the mode's usual slot, and competitive matches never autosave.
• Multiplayer: the join page has a Recent button with a drop-down of your recent addresses. Picking one fills in the address, and Join connects.

Everything else

• Walls no longer stick up into the sky above bushes and fences in Civil War and a few other levels.
• Pushable crates keep moving on every push, not only the first (Civil War's Ash Engine Company crate, and every sliding object in 19 levels).
• Civil War 2: the cracked cave wall opens properly with a stick of TNT and its crack shows in full; the dam's crack goes when the dam blows.
• Sloped floors and ceilings show their textures the right way round and at the right size, as in the original (the Civil War 2 dam slopes after the blast, and a dozen others).
• On a plain install (GOG, or Steam without the HQ sound pack) the hideout's hidden box now appears, so every box can be found.
• Fixed a crash when changing graphics options after restarting a level (the wrist display).
• Grabbing: a dead body is only picked up with your hand down near it, so reaching for a bad guy no longer grabs the body at your feet.
• After a held bad guy dies and drops, that hand won't fire until you let go of the trigger, so no stray shots.
• Bad guys no longer go invisible from some angles, in Civil War 2 and in other rooms across the game.
• Max is a proper bad guy again instead of a frozen statue.
• The granary drip no longer hangs in the air above, and the Civil War 2 cannon faces the right way.
• Story, Historical Missions, Handful of Missions and custom maps each keep their own autosave, so one no longer writes over another. The Historical autosave keeps your Marshal session.
• No more "You captured..." or "Welcome back" messages on arriving at the office, as in the original.
• Dynamite Dick and the other dynamite throwers throw their dynamite again, and Two Feathers throws knives.
• Quest: if the headset stays at 72 Hz after you pick a faster refresh rate, the Graphics page tells you to check power saving.
• Slippery slopes slide the way they did in the original: you build speed, steer only a little, and crouching no longer slows you. The ice caves jump can be made again.
• Falling into a pit with a floor now lands you there as in the original, instead of the game pulling you out mid-fall.
• A lit fuse no longer stays on your hand after you die, and you can't throw more TNT or knives than you have.
• The weapon wheel opens without a stutter, and its counts update live when you pick things up with it open.
• A Handful of Missions: beating the real boss shows "Mission Complete!" and the level ends 5 seconds later. In the ice caves that is the Confederate boss, not Mary.
• Fall damage now matches the original: short drops are free, long ones hurt more, and a big enough fall kills, the same on desktop and in VR.
• The credits roll over the sunset background, and the credits and Historical Missions training text are bigger.
• The achievements box is smaller and no longer covers the menu art, and the "found in the town" line no longer overlaps.
• Dripping water and other spot sounds are only heard near their source, not across the whole level. The villa drip now stays underground by the boss.
• Stair walls and lift edges that could go invisible now show, including on Cliff, Ranch and Simms.
• Jumps keep their floaty, low-gravity feel with a small forward leap, so long gaps (including the ice caves slide jump) can be cleared at every movement speed setting, even 40%.
• Far wall tops no longer draw black in some levels (seen on Zeke's Cabins as a dark slab in the sky).
• Wall textures that sat too high or too low, like the cracked walls you can blow open, now line up as in the original.
• Gates that dynamite should blow open, like the ones in the mill, now do.
• The lantern lights about as far as the original's: bright close up, fading to dark by about 9 m, so narrow passages feel dark again instead of lit like a room.
• The Armadillo, Frostbite Acres and Isla skies no longer repeat up the dome: the land sits on the ...

Outlaws VR beta v0.95

Outlaws VR is a fan-made mod that lets you play Outlaws Remastered (Steam or GOG) in virtual reality, on the Meta Quest 3, Quest 2 and PC VR. It loads the levels, art, sound and cutscenes from your own copy of the game, so you need to own Outlaws Remastered, and none of the game's files are included. Under the hood it's a new engine built in Unreal Engine 5.1 that runs the original levels the way the original engine did.

This is the first public beta of the mod. Play it and tell us what you find. Feedback on the code is welcome too.

Watch it in action

▶ Watch: Outlaws Is Now a Full VR Game! An overview of the mod

▶ Watch: Deathmatch at Sanctuary Multiplayer with Dotard and bots

▶ Watch: Randomizer and 4x enemies A livestream of the Randomizer with four times the bad guys

What's in it

• The whole story and the Historical Missions in VR, plus a step-by-step VR tutorial.
• Runs natively on Quest 3 and Quest 2, and on PC VR over Quest Link, Air Link or SteamVR.
• Co-op through the story, and multiplayer with bots, over your network or the internet. Hosting can open your router's port for you.
• Full VR hands: draw, aim and reload with each hand, throw dynamite and knives, grab and throw bad guys, climb.
• The Randomizer and a Bad guys multiplier for replays (Options > Gameplay).
• The map marks keys, crowbars, shovels and more once you've seen them up close.
• Choose between the Remastered art, or the look of the original 1997 release.

Installation

Download OutlawsVR-v0.95-hotfix-0bbe48c.zip (281 MB), or get it from Assets below.

One zip does both Quest and PC VR. You need Outlaws Remastered (Steam or GOG) on a Windows 10 or 11 PC.

1. Unzip and drag the OutlawsVR folder into your Outlaws Remastered folder (the one with olgeo.lab). Steam: Library, right-click the game, Manage, Browse local files. GOG Galaxy: the game, the settings icon, Manage installation, Show folder.
2. PC VR: start Quest Link, Air Link or SteamVR and make it the active OpenXR runtime, then run Play Outlaws VR.bat. The first start converts your cutscenes and music once (it downloads FFmpeg, about 190 MB) and takes a few minutes.
3. Quest 3 or Quest 2: turn on Developer Mode, plug the headset into the PC with a data USB-C cable and run Install on Quest.bat. The game appears under Library, Unknown Sources.

The player's manual is in the folder: open Outlaws VR Manual.html in any web browser.

If the game shows nothing or complains about VCRUNTIME or DirectX, run Engine\Extras\Redist\en-us\UEPrereqSetup_x64.exe from the OutlawsVR folder once.

Updating: delete the old OutlawsVR folder, drag in the new one, and for the Quest run Install on Quest.bat again. Saves and settings are kept. Never uninstall the game from the headset to update it: that deletes your saves. Coming from the original v0.95 zip, the first start converts stretched cutscenes again.

The road so far

Known issues

Fixed for v0.96 (these are in v0.95 and its hotfix)

• Civil War 1: the crate by the crowbar only moves on the first push. For now, crouch-jump onto the low crate beside it.
• Civil War 2: the cracked cave wall past the dam won't break with TNT, and the dam's textures look wrong after it blows. For now, use the other tunnel mouth off the lake.
• The ice caves slide jump can't be made at lower movement speeds.
• Stray walls show in the sky in some levels.
• Bad guys in some rooms can go invisible from certain angles.
• Dynamite Dick and the other dynamite throwers don't throw. Max is frozen like a statue.
• Bots in multiplayer can vanish mid-fight.
• Changing graphics options after restarting a level can crash the game.
• On a GOG install the hideout's hidden box never appears.
• Bunkers can come up in multiplayer even though it can't load.

Still to fix

• Invisible walls in a few Historical Missions and multiplayer maps.
• Thrown dynamite can look blue on a Quest, and a co-op partner's thrown items can look wrong.
• Two Feathers keeps his original sprite with Remastered art on.
• In multiplayer, dynamite going off right next to a bot sometimes doesn't hurt it.

Good to know

• Windows SmartScreen may warn on first run because the files are not signed. Click More info, then Run anyway.
• Unlocks and best times are tied to the player name.
• Internet play on a Quest needs the router's port open, or a VPN app such as Tailscale (see the manual).
• Co-op and multiplayer between real devices are newer than single player. Use headphones for voice chat (no echo cancelling).
• Historical Missions are less tested than the campaign. Expect oddities.

Coming in v0.96

Some of this is done, some is still being built.

• 19 community multiplayer maps built in, on PC and Quest, with their authors credited.
• A new multiplayer lobby, laid out like the original's, with bigger text.
• The match scorecard under the weapon wheel, instead of in the pause menu.
• Faster multiplayer fights: two punches, a stab, a thrown knife or a scoped head shot kills (the host can turn it off).
• Closer to the original: slopes, jumps, fall damage, pits and the lantern's reach now behave as they did in 1997, and Handful of Missions levels end when the boss goes down.
• Revised swimming: hold jump to rise and crouch to sink smoothly instead of bobbing.
• Separate autosaves for the story, Historical Missions, Handful of Missions and custom maps.
• Auto-updater: new builds offered right from the headset.
• Languages: the ones your copy of the remaster already has (thanks ertropy).
• Mods page: the HQ Sound Pack, Red Plus and the remastered cutscenes as optional downloads.
• More custom maps: downloaded for you when you join a host.

Found a bug?

Post in #outlaws-vr-bugs on the OutlawsTheGame Discord with:

• your device (Quest 3, Quest 2 or PC VR)
• the build line at the bottom of the main menu (v0.95 build 0bbe48c)
• the level and what happened
• the log: %LOCALAPPDATA%\OutlawsUE\Saved\Logs on PC, or see the manual's Reporting a Problem page for the Quest

Feedback on the code: open an issue.

Credits

Made by T4H_Dingle

Tested by Dotard and T4H_Dingle

Built with

• Unreal Engine 5.1 by Epic Games, with OpenXR for VR
• Claude by Anthropic for code and testing
• FFmpeg to convert your cutscenes and music on first run
• libsndfile and earcut inside the game

On the shoulders of

• The Force Engine by Lucius, a reference for how the Jedi engine behaves (no code copied)
• LawMaker, the original Outlaws level editor by Alexei Novikov and David Lovejoy

Full third-party licences are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Lucasfilm Games or Nightdive Studios. Outlaws is a trademark of Lucasfilm.