Dev Q&A:AMA No.13

Rec Room AMA 13

YouTube video by Rec Room Inc

Introduction to AMA #13

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HairyManLegs: Hey, guys! How's it going? My name is Harry, and this is:

Gradient Blur: Gradient Blur.

HairyManLegs: And we're back answering your community questions, guys. And this room is called ^RecRoomBirthday4. So, if you guys haven't checked it out, make sure you guys do to celebrate Rec Room's birthday. So, what do you thing about this room overall?

Gradient Blur: It makes me feel very celebrated.

HairyManLegs: So, I thought it'd be a really cool room to start off the AMA with you guys and if you guys don't know: Radiant Blur is one of the cofounders of Rec Room. And how are you doing today with everything going on? Are you doing good?

Gradient Blur: Doing as well as I can. Excited to talk about some creative features - UGC features. It's been a while since I've done one of these; so, looking forward to getting into some of these great questions that we've got.

HairyManLegs: Yeah, there're some really great questions; and, yeah, let's get into it. Are you ready for this?

Radiant Blur: All right.

Dorm Room Customization

(00:00 in ^RecRoomBirthday4)

HairyManLegs: Our first set of questions comes from Meta0_ and LazySealSuccnt. They ask: "When will we have the option to change our dorm rooms more, such as changing the skybox, sunlight or adding smoke and the option to have AI in the dorm rooms. And will we have the option to save more than one dorm room?" And then the other question is: "A option to recolor dorm room walls."

Radiant Blue: Oh, yeah. Okay, that's a good one. It's a little bit happy and a little bit sad. It's good because it's a reminder of just how much pride you all take in the decoration and personal style of your dorm rooms - I'm thinking of the dorm room tour videos that you guys do.

HairyManLegs: Yes.

Radiant Blur: So, that's really awesome to see. The bummer part of this is that back when we were first building all those moods chips for Sunset Drive-in, we had planned to go back and update the dorm room to support those chips, but shortly after we shipped Sunset we got so busy with circuits and AI that all that stuff went into the backlog. There's a lot of really good suggestions here being able to recolor, put smoke in your dorm room, have AIs running around. Certainly, when you can do more with AIs, like build a little Roomba or your own friendly little companions, it's going to be important that we support that stuff in there. So, I think the team will ... we'll take a look into what it might take to do another pass on customized ability for the dorm room, and that could be a future update that we would focus on. So, great suggestions and ideas there.

Controllable Radio for Quest Music

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HairyManLegs: Our next question comes from forbym. He asked: "Can we please have a radio that plays music without the roll-off and with controllable volume? And maybe even a possibility to switch between clips with chips, e.g. between the Golden Trophy Explore and Golden Trophy Combat?"

Radiant Blur: Oh man, that's such a good use case. Something that we talked about on the UGC team quite a bit is ... kind of the dream is that you as creators could build something of a fidelity like the quests that we've shipped. And we're moving in that direction. We're not there yet, but that's a really good example of one that is something that you just can't do. So, we have our "explore" music that runs as you're walking around, and when you encounter enemies, it switches over to "combat" music. That's something we've talked about internally and something we're looking at right now. I really like the suggestion though of handling it via the radio, and putting an extra parameter on the radio to have it be 2d vs. 3d and adjust the volume, because radios are something that creators are already familiar with and comfortable using. Feels like a really natural place to add some of that flexibility in there. Imagine there's like a boom box playing the music in the background because, you know, you're in the theater department doing a quest.

More Font Options for Text Tool

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HairyManLegs: Snox_RR asked: "Hello! Is it possible to have more than one font in the text tool, for example Western, futuristic or fantasy?"

Radiant Blur: Oh, that's a great question, and, honestly, I'm not entirely sure how to answer it. I can see a couple ways to approach this one. One way is that, you know, the text tool as is provides a nice simple way to communicate, but like you pointed out, it doesn't offer much in terms of style; it's just very basic. So, I could see us giving some more alternatives for you to work with, but another part of me wonders whether that would really scratch the creative itch. At the end of the day, whatever we choose for us a futuristic might not be a great fit for the futuristic room you built. And some of the coolest font work I've seen in Rec Room is when creators highly personalized their own signage to fit their own style. Honestly, not quite sure how to do this one. Even if we did provide some alternatives for people to work with, that wouldn't stop you from making your own style anyway. So, I'll get this in front of our art director to ponder, you know. It's a really good question.

HairyManLegs: It is a great question thank you so much for that question, Snox.

Camera with Screen

(00:00 in ^MoonFlowersRamenShop)

HairyManLegs: Our next question comes from LazySealSuccnt: "Will we ever get something like a live camera that we can place in the map and place a screen somewhere to watch what the camera is seeing? It would be so useful for a lot of maps like Five Nights At Freddy's or prison role plays. It could be a great replacement for the very limited and expensive in ink [RC car technique]."

Gradient Blur: Oh, that is such a cool idea.

HairyManLegs: Yeah, that's such a unique idea.

Gradient Blur: You know, we already have something conceptually similar to this with the paintball rifle scope. So, the idea that we can expose something like that as a more flexible UGC feature isn't crazy.

HairyManLegs: Oh, really?

Gradient Blur: That said, it would likely come with some limitations on resolution and framerate, but all that is stuff that we'd have to work out through prototypes. At a high level though that seems like a really cool, creative tool that people could come up with lots of fun mechanics for.

HairyManLegs: Yeah, you guys are really thinking outside the box this time on that one.

Gradient Blur: Yeah, I think, yeah, the RC car controller uses a screen with a camera on it. So, there's something there.

HairyManLegs: Oh, my gosh, yes. Well, guys, thank you so much for the creative questions. Yeah, keep them coming; we really love hearing about them.

alright next question comes

from for beaume he asked when circus beats who comes out a lot of existing rooms circus would benefit from upgrading to a circus B - is there any hope for a semi-automatic system for converting existing circuits to a circus version - cool so the honest answer on this one is we we don't know a hundred percent for certainty yet the current plan to roll out circuits v2 is to make it a parallel version that works independent from v1 so if your rooms are built on v1 those rooms will continue to function and you can continue working with v1 if that's all you need but we want to utilize if you want to utilize v2 functionality specifically you'll have to build with those chips that said we're not hard locked into this approach and if there's a specific area of implementation where you feel that a semi automatic conversion might help you out a lot we'd love to hear about it but as a general rule out approach not planning to have any semi-automatic conversions alright our next question is from twisted bagels hmm are you a fan of bagels by the way radiant I've really only done the store-bought stuff so I feel like I should probably experience some real bagels when will hand-holding come out oh yeah hand holding wow that's so awesome that got put on hold a few months back since we're currently working out some updates to how hand controls work for our non vr players specifically hand holding started out as a passion project for one of our programmers and she really still wants to get it to happen so stay tuned once we wrap up this next phase of of hands for non VR players and think it'll be into a point where we can get it ready to go another forum question there are many semi-transparent props that are used in strange ways glass will and water so we have an option to color the invincible collision gadgets in a similar way oh man thank thanks for being so patient on this one I know this comes up at every AMA and I've said many times that we really want to build the future it's clearly something that creators get a lot of value out of even though they have to use some pretty inventive workarounds to get it giving creators a supported way to use transparent materials is still high on our list and the supported version is likely to be a material in your palette that you can apply to shapes and then even tint with a recolor tool I know where our team is really excited to build it still no dates to announce yet though unfortunately so thanks again for being patient until then gigantic martini glasses and one of those the person's 23 ask okay two questions I've been hearing rumors of an infinite Inc update I'm waiting to hear if that's true and will we ever get something like transparent textures like glass and semi-transparent water textures okay so if you've been hearing about an infinite Inc update that's definitely not something we can deliver on anytime soon well we will say though is that we will continue to push to find ways that we can reduce in cost of various features in your rooms and effectively give you more ink to work with overtime so what you might be thinking about that we've talked about before is a change we're making two circuits v2 and their ink footprint today in circuits any time you add a chip into your map it has an ink cost associated with it but a change that we want to make with circuits v2 and that where we're implementing right now is that just adding chips and hooking up your logic doesn't actually have era has near zero ink cost there and instead we represent that cost as a runtime cost of executing the chips and that's just a limit on how many things you can run at once rather than a limit on how much logic you can have in your room at all so we're expecting a substantial bump to ink participa CLE for people who use a lot of circuits in their map and that'll be in the near future and then in the not-too-distant future we're also looking at reworking and optimizing the way we're rendering shapes and we hope to get another substantial bump out of to the ink limits there but that's more speculative and farther out yeah definitely no infinite ink coming anything but will be will be continually working to increase the amount of ink that you have to work with in your rooms for sure the better Isaac gasps I'm not completely sure if this fits a theme but are there plans to upgrade to the ink gadget possibly giving it the ability to link to content outside rec room like websites or songs on Spotify that's something that we'll continue to evaluate as rec-room grows and evolves and we see more ways in which people want to integrate the app into their social lives I know there been times after intense couple hours playing where I just kind of want to unwind and do something more low-key but maybe I'd turn rec-room off yet listening in music is a great example there sometimes when we feel like a feature or a category is something that we want to learn about and see where it provides value we'll do a limited minimal version to let users test it out and give us feedback so pretty recently we've we've put out a pretty bare-bones way to share your desktop screen or audio through a speaker and we're still looking at what our next steps are there so nothing to announce on that one but it's something we'll continue to to look at awesome thank you so much for the question there Dean boys is 0-1 he asked will the oculus quest ever support the community board in dorm room and the rec center this one is cheerful and unknown we currently have a team working on updating our new UI system and you can see early versions of it in the club section of the watch and will be slowly rolling that out to other areas as we develop features this new UI is a lot more performance specifically not having transparency like the watch does so we will be able to reevaluate the community board once that tech is ready no promises but it's definitely good to know that people on Quest want the community pour heads Rozelle asked to we please have the ability to use the internet radio feeds in our rooms you can insert the feed address as in a sampler and the streaming would happen in client-side meanings so no extra strain on your servers yeah this is a lot like the the link buttons idea it's definitely a cool idea and we might eventually evolve the the audio sharing speaker to include a more variety of sources but still no concrete plans to share there certainly seems cool though thank you so much for question Rossdale kim gamer zero success will we ever be able to give proper rewards with rooms there's a good one not sure what this person means by proper but there's a ton I could say on the on this topic because it touches on a really large category for creators so I can at least share a bit about what we're doing in the near term and then where we hope to take things in more long term so as you might have noticed we started recently a program for a limited ability for creators to accept tokens in exchange for their inventions this is starting with a very small set of creators with curated inventions but the idea there is that we eventually want to shore up that system well enough that we could expand it out to something that any creator could use in their rooms it's been incredibly we started with inventions because they're incredibly flexible in terms of what they are and creators themselves can decide what they want to sell in the near term those exchanges only involve tokens and only for inventions but we want to broaden that range to include even more flexible pieces for creators to work with over time so as an example as a player in rec room tokens are something that you really only get from us and creators will have the option to accept tokens in their rooms but they might want to offer their players an alternative to spending tokens in their room just like we do in some of ours so a small example of this would be in laser tag it takes time and dedication to earn enough tickets to complete a laser tag set quests are another example is like even if you had tokens coming out of your ears the only way to get the high-end gear is through time and dedications and the players that unlock that stuff take a lot of pride in having that unlocked so stuff like that is a bit of a longer way out for creators but it's exciting to think about I've definitely had creators mentioned to us like oh I wish I could have gold in my room or tickets or something like that so they can kind of dial in their own engagement loops for their rooms all that stuff is in the works but it's a lot more in the long-term plans where we're currently focused on selling inventions for tokens specifically learning what we can about that and folding those learnings into the more general things we want to do later oh and another important thing too is that these are all scoped within a room itself so currently this does not include if what they meant by proper is you know a item that you could wear anywhere in rec room that's currently not our plans we're always open to reevaluate that decision and it could change over time but for the foreseeable future these would be things that happen within the scope of your rooms and we was asking like what does that mean but you have to prepare that up and really that really means a lot thank you our next question comes from for blue mask textures our materials on tube scale with geometry is this intentional will they ever be fixed and will the fix effect already existing rims all right so I checked with our art director on this one and they confirm that it is indeed unintended but the important thing there as we look at this as a team is intentional or not we recognize that creators are getting it from this amount of value out of that behavior as it exists so the honest answer here is that when we set out to improve and expand what what creators can do with tubes we want to approach this one with care will it be fixed that's TBD but our general philosophy especially for something where creators really love and value what they have is to do our best to provide a supported alternative if if that feature were to go away and in the if the change we make has an impact on the visual outcomes we would strive to make it in a way that it doesn't change what creators have already done in their rooms this is another example of a specific way where we're trying to get better as a team to improve on how we roll out new UGC features and one of the principles that we say to ourselves is that hey our tools can change over time the things you can build with them might change but the content you've already built that's in your rooms that's yours and we really really don't want to mess it up we will always do that perfectly but it's something that we explicitly are trying to make true our last question comes from pigs and tuxedos that is such a great name by the way yes our vehicle is going to be added ever ever yeah certainly hope so we definitely hope so and I think it's gonna be a game changer when it happens honestly yeah for someone who just plays rec room it's really exciting to have those experiences with your friends and to get that kind of additional gameplay layer and then when I think about it from the eyes of a creator and what vehicles do and all the the possibilities that opens up it really starts to expand the scope of ideas that you can tackle the ability to cover a large amount of ground quickly has a big impact on how it feels to move around and the kinds of interactions you can create in a gigantic room and also you know crashing and going off of jumps it's looking over all that stuff this is gonna be awesome that yeah that's gonna be insane I seen people do their own like trick shot videos what vehicles oh my goodness oh yeah it's like a high-speed crash simulator oh my god recreation of speed oh my god please with the the bus physics-defying bus yeah I can see people just do some like that well we have yet to discover whether it's you know people talk about roller coasters as well or skateboards oh yeah is that vehicles is it not vehicles that's something we would learn as we build it but maybe some of these ideas are actually both like there's a film set that is the bus from speed and everybody gets on the bus from speed it's technically a roller coaster but you're in a vehicle jumping across the broken toilet alright well that concludes all our questions from the latest AMA from the community there any closing thoughts with uranium blur it's good to be back it's been a long time I do one of these and uh and we love our creative community and it's awesome to hear your questions we don't always have dates or times that you can get excited for new features but even then it's it's exciting to talk through all this stuff oh absolutely and we're so happy to have you back and again guys please leave a like comment subscribe for everything rec room please stay safe out there I know we're going through a hard time but make sure to watch it with my hands and we'll catch you guys later in the next AMA bye for now guys take care of a buddy do you want go fishing Rini blur that sounds good sounds good I'll fish with this giant sword here with a giant sword okay I'm going to take a swim instead [Music] you [Music]