Bonelab Key Cores

[Twyla Plack]

The BONELAB Hub, (also known as the Bonelab or the Special Projects Area) is the second, titular level of BONELAB and the main hub of the game. It serves as the access point to the six main gamemodes and a central turning point of the main campaign. It contains six modules, which allow the Avatar to access various themed maps. It also contains a Bodymall where various avatars can be set.

The level begins in the Conceptual Isolation Chamber after it fell in Descent. The Avatar exits the Chamber, either by prying open the doors or by escaping through the roof hatch. They find themselves in the Special Projects Area, also known as the Bonelab, as Would You Even Know plays. The bulletin board in the center of the area tasks the Avatar with exploring three modules.

Once three modules are explored, boxes containing energy cores will unlock above them, creating pillars of light. The Avatar must then progress to the control room. Here, they can pilot a BOSSCLAW using a series of controls. They are able to extend and retract it with a lever, as well as move it forward and side-to-side along its rails. A third button allows the Avatar to toggle the magnetic gravity field of the BOSSCLAW.

Using the minimap, the Avatar must pilot the BOSSCLAW to the unlocked energy cores and activate the gravity field, which causes nearby energy cores to snap to the BOSSCLAW. Once attached, the energy cores must be brought to one of the six tubes that flank the control room. The energy core will automatically snap to a pipe when it is close enough. To progress, any three pipes must have energy cores attached. Once done, the massive quarantine airlock to the right of the control room will be unlocked.

Once the game has progressed to the point where the player is returned to the Hub, they must explore the rest of the modules and retrieve their cores similarly to before. Once all six cores are attached to their pipes, the BONEWORKS door to the right of the control area will be openable.

Entering the metal vents underneath the lab, the Avatar can find a series of corridors leading to two different walls with hand-drawn doors. Using one of the keycards found in the Stress Level Zero's offices, they can cross one of the walls to arrive at a room connected to the Lab, but physically present underneath District 05 of MythOS City. The purpose of the second wall with a hand-drawn door is currently unknown.

The game is much more demanding the Boneworks. I just finished Boneworks and I could use res 500% and 2xMSAA, all other settings maxed, still got solid 90 fps. With Bonelab, it kinda feels like my oc'ed RTX 3090 is the bare minimum for acceptable image quality, lol.

So the "war" is ongoing, the SteamVR version is getting quite bad ratings. Many think it's a very bad Quest port. Some can't get their controllers to work properly, some think everything is severely downgraded especially for the physics compared to Boneworks.

Personally I neither dislike or like Bonelab - feels much like Boneworks on my rig, but about 2-3 times as gpu demanding without graphics looking significantly better. Still I'm using res 240% in bonelab, and res 500% in Boneworks, and even if res 500% is the max-deluxe-version, lol, then res 240% also looks fine. If I had a slower gpu, my experience might be a lot worse - but right now the RTX 3090 lifts the Bonelab quality to acceptable levels for the image quality.

Now, these numbers are interesting - seems Stress Level Zero may have underestimated the power of PCVR, right now the number of reviews for PCVR is very close to the number of ratings for Quest 2 standalone.

There are many harsh words about the Steam version, which some feel have been heavily Questified, and it may have been - but Boneworks was a very low-poly game too (that's why I can use an insane Index res 500%), although it did have more high-res textures. Physics also were bad in Boneworks, I finished the game this week, and the irritating physics and weightless easily-moving boxes did fuel some hypertension occasionally, lol.

I'm doing an experiment - I'm refunding the Steam version, and I'll buy the Rift version later today. Might not be able to play it as my OpenXR is bound to Steam (and being stubborn, I'm not going to reverse that just for Bonelab), so we'll see if I'll be refunding the Rift version too soon, lol.

It's my impression that Boneworks for PCVR is much better than Bonelab - also based on reading tons of posts and ratings on Steam. Bonelab feels like more of the same, for those on the fence maybe wait for a sale - and get or replay Boneworks instead. 2c.

Btw, note that the Steam version does not support native Oculus drivers. My OpenXR is bound to Steam and the Index. When trying to start Bonelab using the Rift CV1 from Oculus home then SteamVR constantly started - sadly.

There's potential for interesting mods, but otherwise I prefer Boneworks (better level design, better story, more environmental storytelling, less glitchy leg physics, more physics puzzles, less fog everywhere)

Also that crane puzzle was weird. I think the BoneLab Hub should have been the first level with no crane - and then you could choose between mini-games, mods and story/campaign.

I think many will arrive at the Hub thinking they need to complete the boring and tedious mini-games to unlock the story. You only have two hours to refund, and thinking you need to complete the minigames may cause many to refund (I've read about several thinking they needed to complete the minigames).

In fact you do not have to finish the minigames, but you have to visit some to unlock the ball for the crane. For example for minigame 4, I just went in and out, not finishing anything, and the crane ball was released.

But the devs don't tell you anything - given proper info these minigames would cause much less frustration.

Also having many textures downgraded is annoying. Boneworks had the most amazing ultramersion textures, and while some textures in Bonelab are great, many are not.

Devs also added dynamic shadows, but only in a few select locations - feels like shadows are deactivated in most of the story levels.

I don't think it's a bad game, it's more like average and more of the same, and a great value if it was priced at $20-25, but not $40. It's been 3 years since I started playing the first Boneworks levels - if I restarted Boneworks that game might actually feel more fresh to me than Bonelab, and that kinda says a lot.

Also it's very strange to me that I can run Boneworks in an insane res 500% + 2xMSAA + all other in-game settings maxed in solid 90 fps, while I'm down to about res 200% in Bonelab with 1xMSAA, no SMAA and several other settings reduced - now if then Bonelab looked much better than Boneworks then that would be fine, but it does not - Bonelab looks worse, much more foggy and many more low-res texures.

And it can't be that hard to make proper shadows all the way through the game, this is an example of nice dynamic shadows in Half-Life 2 made in 2004 - can't feel any performance impact of the shadows - and the shadows even look better than in Bonelab:

Btw, trying to share the pros and cons - found some more images on my drive. To me Bonelab for PCVR feels like a mix of high-end features and some very low-end assets and textures. It must be a very difficult job to make two versions of the same game, and I do get the feeling that Bonelab was made for the Quest, and then they made the PCVR version based on the Quest version.

All in all, Bonelab feels average - the best Quest port this year definitely is Red Matter 2, it's much better than Bonelab. I'd recommend getting Bonelab on sale - there are many other great games to play in the meantime, and I better get back to:

What is the setting "Screen Space Reflections"? - See how the monitor is reflected in the shiny surface of the table - here are medium, high and ultra settings for Screen Space Reflections - but I'm not telling in which order they are shown

The (more or less) fun thing about "screen space reflections" is that using ultra or high will cause a profound performance impact. If you can't see any great difference don't use tons of gpu resources on the High or Ultra setting - just use the medium setting. Low or off does reduce the quality significantly, but the medium setting looks fine to me.

Same with other settings - don't blindly think that Ultra or High is best - if you can't see any difference, don't push for higher settings (especially HBAO, MSAA and SMAA) - or you'll end up needing a RTX 5090 for features you can't see. 2c.

Most of it got better in the last scene. Suddenly there was environmental storytelling, avatars were useful, it was going through a building with a purpose. It felt like Boneworks again. Shame it took until the last part of the game to get its act together.

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Bonelab is a 2022 video game developed and published by American studio Stress Level Zero. It is a sequel to the 2019 game Boneworks. The player controls an outcast that escapes death and explores experimental worlds in a research lab in MythOS. Bonelab released for Microsoft Windows and Meta Quest 2 on September 29, 2022.[2]