Rec Royale is now available to players on iOS and Quest 2! We’ve also added a ton of awesome new stuff to Rec Royale for the first time since its initial release!
We’ve added 15 new levels to earn!
We added six new Frontier Pass tiers - rewards include Scout Sashes, 5-Star Boxes, and new Butterfly Wings!
We also made it easier to earn Frontier Pass tiers - this means some existing Rec Royale players will jump up a number of tiers.
And we're doubling all Rec Royale XP for the next month!
We’ve also added six new weapons to the island!
The Beam Cannon power weapon from Laser Tag is a new Legendary weapon!
The Paint Thrower from Sunset Drive-in is a new Legendary weapon!
Paint Mines are a new Epic weapon!
The Deafening Boomstick (CotBM Blunderbuss) is a new Legendary weapon!
The Hunter's Dream Crossbow from CCC is a new Legendary weapon!
Last, and unfortunately least, the Goblin Annoyer Crossbow (from GT) is a new Rare weapon!
We’ve also done some re-balancing of existing weapons:
Flintlocks are more rare, but have increased damage.
Bows have increased damage and projectile speed, but are more rare and can only be legendary.
But wait, there’s more!
We have added 4 new body shapes to help players personalize their avatars even more! The new shapes are: Pear, Apple, Triangle, and Hourglass. The standard shape is now called “Square.”
Another new way to customize your look is with our new (and totally optional) ears! We have also included a few earrings to get you started with your new look.
It is currently expected behavior that equipping a costume will reset your body shape to Square while you are wearing the costume, and it will revert back to your chosen shape once the costume is removed.
Additionally, the HUD on screens buttons and control hints have a fresh new look and some exciting new features:
New Picture-In-Picture window for Screen players. Get a look at yourself at any time in the corner of the screen, and see how you appear to other players while you wave, emote, talk, and interact. Toggle the Picture-In-Picture in the watch menu, gameplay settings.
Room Chat gets an upgraded look & layout for all platforms. The message list is a bit longer and scrollable now. Open a player's profile by selecting their photo in the Room Chat list to conveniently cheer, friend, mute, or whatever you need to do :)
Every button in the top row of the HUD now has a physical button associated with it. You can find your share camera and maker pen in the equipment radial menu.
One more little addition, you can now see avatar items organized as sets in Rec Room stores!
General Improvements
Added a new room permission to limit spawning of inventions.
Added a new room role to restrict consumable spawning.
Added support to allow users logging onto a new platform to use their existing RR account instead of creating a new account.
The watch no longer detaches when opening the Settings screen while in VR.
Fixed incorrect texture on left handle of maker pen palette in VR.
Patched exploits that would cause extreme grenade speeds.
Fixed an issue where your token balance would sometimes not include all of your tokens.
Outlines should now draw correctly around highlighted objects on Quest headsets.
Extended game controller support for iOS. Now you can use the many MFi compatible game controllers in addition to PlayStation and XBox controllers. Older MFi controllers or controllers that are lacking standard buttons may be partially supported. Additional controller settings are available in the iOS Settings app on iOS 14.
While holding the maker pen, screen players cannot pick up tools/shapes with their other hand. No more accidentally ripping apart your creations!
If screen players get spawned or squeezed into a spot that's too small for them to stand, they'll auto-crouch to try and fit.
Players using screens and touch controls can now Reach their hands out in front of them to more easily touch, push, and interact with the world. We've found that Reaching makes trigger volume-based buttons, like those in popular community-made rooms, much easier to press on screens!
Rec Room screen mode individual hand gesture
Additionally, Waving on screens now respects your selected hand gesture. Want to waggle a finger on your right hand while you give a thumbs up on your left? Now you can! Just select a gesture for each hand using the Gesture Radial Menu and wave!
For even more fun try combining waving and reaching together!
General Improvements
Resolved issue where players would hear voices from other Rooms.
Screens players can now disable VSync by going into the advanced settings menu.
You can now choose a reason for vote kicks.
Resolved issue where you could see invisible players if not on the same Y level as them
The level up celebration is now delayed until you are in the next room.
Gadgets with non-uniform scaling (trigger volumes, bounce pads et al) will now retain their changes when saved.
Images taken during invention updating will be correctly changed.
Today Rec Room is launching on Xbox! Please join us in welcoming a whole new group of players, family, and friends to the Rec Room universe 🌌 We’ve got a few events and surprises that should make the launch even more exciting:
When you invite an Xbox player to try out Rec Room using your Friend Code you’ll both earn a free bottle of bubbly at the end of the event!
We also built an awesome ^WelcomeXbox room where everyone (all platforms) can visit to meet all of the new players and earn a new limited time gift drop - the Space Soldier Helmet! Xbox players can also earn the gift drop by visiting the Rec Center. Be sure to visit the room before December 17th to grab the limited time gift drop!
Our main focus this year on the Econ Team is compensating creators for their contribution to Rec Room. Part of the problem with exchanging tokens for real money is potential “botting”, aka farming, of tokens. Besides giving people a way to essentially steal tokens, it creates instability in the economy, and prohibits us from compensating creators. To solve this problem, and to spice up our reward system, we’re introducing/re-introducing a new/old way of rewarding players for playing the game: Items!
Items!
If you’re wondering why it sounds so familiar, it’s because we actually used to reward players by giving items—just ask the OGs. We changed it to tokens without knowing the kind of impact it would have years later when working towards compensating creators. Now, it turns out to be a great solution that the community loved in the past, so we’re bringing it back with a few improvements.
Before, you’d max out at about 300 tokens a day. Now, you can earn over 3,000 tokens worth of items! THAT’S 10X THE VALUE! But wait, that’s not all! You’ll also have three choices of rewards, so you’re not stuck with yet another dice skin (I mean, why are there so many??).
And it’s not just items - you’ll still get tokens from rewards. They’re in the mix of things that can show up as one of the options you pick from.
These changes apply to the most common reward sources: completing daily challenges, playing your first rec room original game of the day, and finishing a rec room original game. Rewards from leveling up, Frontier Pass, and completing weekly challenges (more on those later) remain as is.
More Rewards
Daily Challenges
Before, you were rewarded for each of the three challenges you completed. Now, you’re rewarded once for completing all three. Before you submit that post in the subreddit, just know that you used to get 50 tokens for completing all three challenges, but now you’re getting 255 tokens worth of items. That’s 5x the value!
Weekly Challenges
Another repeat? Yes, we do this because there are newer players that deserve previous skins, but what about those that have been grinding since the Camper Backpack skin? Well, if you already have the weekly skin, you’ll now get a 4-star box for completing the weekly challenge! Why weren’t we doing that before?
Other Token Rewards
Good news! All Rec Room Plus members can now earn tokens for selling inventions and keys. If you haven’t already picked up the Maker Pen, now is the time to give it a shot. To learn more about the feature, visit the Community Commerce page. It breaks down how selling works and gives you some tips on how to make the most of it. SoonTM you’ll be able to turn the tokens you earn from selling into real money, but that’s a topic for another blog post.
Before, gave out hundreds of thousands of tokens to the top Room and Invention creators each month. Now, we’re still giving out hundreds of thousands of tokens to the top room and invention creators each month - no Rec Room Plus membership required. There are also contests and challenges every month that continue to reward tokens. So seriously, grab that Maker Pen!
What about the non-creators? If you're more about competition than creation, you might look to leagues. You can apply for your league to be officially sponsored by Rec Room. If your league meets the guidelines and is approved, we’ll grant you gold skins (if available) and 10,000 tokens to be awarded to league participants. You can learn more on the League Sponsorship page.
Conclusion
These changes mean you get: more value from rewards, more choice in your rewards, the potential for compensating creators, and us spending more time building fun features and less time fighting bots. As with everything we do, we’ll see how it works, listen to your feedback, and adjust accordingly over time. So let us know what you think.
Screens players can now disable VSync by going into the advanced settings menu.
You can now choose a reason for vote kicks.
Beta Content Changes
You may need to update your rooms as trig nodes now make use of degrees rather than radians.
You may need to update your rooms as trigger volumes can now detect other trigger volumes.
Log has been renamed to Logarithm.
More chips connect correctly. For example:
The output of Add can be connected directly to chips like IntToFloat.
The output of FromCreationObject can be connected directly to chips like ToCombatant.
Disconnected Delays no longer loop infinitely.
Performance has been improved.
Players should experience lower heat usage, as we continue to tweak heat usage players may see it go up or down in future updates.
We added new chips with this update: Log, which logs a string to a Log Screen, and HasAuthorityOf, which checks whether the local player has authority of a CreationObject.
We added these objects with this update: Emitter V2, Log Screen, Point Light V2, Spot Light V2, Text V2. Look for nodes prefixed with their names in the palette!
When selecting a room from the watch menu, the Room Details page shows by default
Room images added by the owner from the room's page on rec.net are featured in a Gallery on the Room Details page (To select Gallery photos, go to your room's page on rec.net, select "..." on the upper right of a photo, and choose "Add Room Image")
The Room Details page now lists: maximum room capacity (determined by the smallest-sized subroom), friends in the room, room warnings, all room creators, room moderators, and published inventions used in the room
General Improvements
Improved height threshold so VR players who play seated won't look like they're always crawling.
Confirmation screen to bring party members along to a new room now has a cancel button.
Fixed a bug where the Pool Table and Disc Golf Goal props were invisible to joining players.
Creators can now set up a custom loading screen for their rooms! This will appear to all players on non-VR platforms.
To set it up, go to your room's page on rec.net, and click the settings button (gear icon) under the room's description. Choose from an existing image in your room, and add a title and subtitle.
If a room doesn't have a loading screen, its room image, name and description will be shown instead.
Screens Quality of Life Improvements
Disabled camera bob/sway when using the Maker Pen on Screens. This makes creating small details easier.
Using the Maker Pen to Move/Configure a door/button will no longer unintentionally use the door/button.
Fixed drawing surfaces putting a dot in the middle of the canvas when you start using them.
Improved player animation when drawing
The Screens setting "Hide Control Hints" also hides the reticle/crosshair. This makes it easier to get clean screen recordings.
Rec Royale Improvements
Chests are now more concentrated in and around Locales rather than randomly off the beaten path. We hope this encourages more combat encounters in places where they were designed to take place.
Lowered the gondola starting height to make the decision of when to drop more impactful.
Performance improvements & sound adjustments (new footstep sounds, downing an opponent sound, win sound, and more local ambience to areas around the map
Fixed some cases where VR players could fall through the ground when exiting the glider.
General Improvements
Flying AIs no longer slow down to a crawl when trying to go up or down slopes.
AIs now always display the exclamation point over their heads when starting Combat Behavior. Not just the first time.
VR Teleport players no longer get shoved outside Invisible Collision volumes that don't stop Players.
Fixed Gizmos not starting automatically when saving or loading a Room.
Fixed Rec Royale menu not popping up automatically after matches.
The clone tool now has a center handle to clone in place.
The Invention creation and publishing flows have been cleaned up and simplified
You can create an invention directly from the context menu (...) when using the Select Tool
Fixed various instances where custom loading screens were not being shown for upcoming rooms (community boards, playlists, etc)
Team color will now be applied to goblins, pirates and skeletons in spawner gadget
Fixed bug with the free gift button where it would always show the disabled error message even when it wasn't disabled.
Changes to other room settings are now not ignored and reverted when enabling "Allow Creative Tools Beta Content"
AI enemies spawned hold the recolor assigned by the maker pen
The AI Stop Combat chip works. AI enemies will not engage in combat if wired to this chip
Snap to center only snaps the center of the object, not the bounds
Reworked how voice chat adjusts the volume and fades the voices of Players based on their distance from you and the direction Players are facing. You can turn this on/off in your rooms through the Subroom configuration screen (Use Directional Voice Chat).
When setting Team Spawn Point Selection Mode to "Team" in the Game Rules Chip, it now correctly chooses Spawn Points away from opponents and near teammates instead of randomly. Fixes bug where respawn locations would "become random" when saving rooms copied from ^Paintball.
Snap Settings can now be adjusted even when Snapping is currently turned off
When moving an object via Undo, its Cleanup position will also move appropriately instead of remaining in the previous position.
When rotating objects with the axis handles, other axes will no longer snap if snap settings are on.
When players Restore a room, they will now be respawned in-place rather than returned to the Welcome Mat
The Player Joined event should now fire properly for connecting players
Corrected the strange colors in Share Camera film effects
Beta Content Changes
Implement Roles in CV2: PlayerHasRole, PlayerAddRole, PlayerRemoveRole
Allow Circuit Boards to be deleted
Allow rooms with Circuit Boards to save
Prevent Control Panels from disappearing for other players
Creators can now set up a custom loading screen for their rooms! This will appear to all players on non-VR platforms.
To set it up, go to your room's page on rec.net, and click the settings button (gear icon) under the room's description. Choose from an existing image in your room, and add a title and subtitle.
If a room doesn't have a loading screen, its room image, name and description will be shown instead.
Screens Quality of Life Improvements
Disabled camera bob/sway when using the Maker Pen on Screens. This makes creating small details easier.
Using the Maker Pen to Move/Configure a door/button will no longer unintentionally use the door/button.
Fixed drawing surfaces putting a dot in the middle of the canvas when you start using them.
Improved player animation when drawing
The Screens setting "Hide Control Hints" also hides the reticle/crosshair. This makes it easier to get clean screen recordings.
General Improvements
Changes to other room settings are now not ignored and reverted when enabling "Allow Creative Tools Beta Content"
AI enemies spawned hold the recolor assigned by the maker pen
The AI Stop Combat chip works. AI enemies will not engage in combat if wired to this chip
Snap to center only snaps the center of the object, not the bounds
Reworked how voice chat adjusts the volume and fades the voices of Players based on their distance from you and the direction Players are facing. You can turn this on/off in your rooms through the Subroom configuration screen (Use Directional Voice Chat).
When setting Team Spawn Point Selection Mode to "Team" in the Game Rules Chip, it now correctly chooses Spawn Points away from opponents and near teammates instead of randomly. Fixes but where respawn locations would "become random" when saving rooms copied from ^Paintball.
Fixed some cases where VR players could fall through the ground in Rec Royale when exiting the glider.
Snap Settings can now be adjusted even when Snapping is currently turned off
When moving an object via Undo, its Cleanup position will also move appropriately instead of remaining in the previous position.
When rotating objects with the axis handles, other axes will no longer snap if snap settings are on.
Minor performance optimizations for selecting shapes in containers with a large number of shapes.
When players Restore a room, they will now be respawned in-place rather than returned to the Welcome Mat
Beta Content Changes
Implement Roles in CV2: PlayerHasRole, PlayerAddRole, PlayerRemoveRole
Allow Circuit Boards to be deleted
Allow rooms with Circuit Boards to save
Prevent Control Panels from disappearing for other players
[Oculus] Rich Presence should now be reported for certain Rec Room Original rooms. This means you may start seeing these rooms show up as trending Destinations in the Oculus app.
Fixed several spots in the terrain in Rec Royale where you could fall through the map
Selection highlighting has been fixed for many gadgets and props, such as the Trigger Volume and Disc Golf Goal
You can teleport into or under an impulse volume. Clambering/teleporting onto, climbing and wall run options have been disabled.
Fixed an input lag issue on drag handles for the Move and Clone tools
Removed camera drift on Screens while flying
Editing a number dialogue on Screens will now return you to the prior Maker Pen screen that you were on
Fixed issues with object and shape outlines while using the Delete tool
Animation Gizmos are no longer able to be placed in Circuit Boards
This update brings some performance improvements, new shapes and colors, and a surprise for our new Rec Roomies on Quest 2!
Here at Rec Room, we're all very excited to be a Day 1 launch title on the new Oculus Quest 2! To celebrate, we're happy to announce that our co-operative "quest" game Isle of Lost Skulls is available for Quest 2 players!
Everyone else will see general performance improvements in Isle of Lost Skulls, Rec Royale, and UGC rooms.
New shapes and colors
We've updated the Maker Pen color palette with 27 new colors for you to create with!
We're also adding five new shapes to the Maker Pen! They are a Cone, Hemisphere, Donut, Pipe and a Half Pipe. Please note that these shapes do not yet have accurate collision, and will often be most useful in decoration mode. We plan to add correct collisions for these in the future.
We've also added Isle of Lost Skulls and Crescendo of the Blood Moon enemies to the spawner gadget for everyone!
Circuits V2 (currently in Beta) now includes some new and exciting gizmos! Be on the lookout for:
Piston V2
Rotator V2
SFX V2
In addition we've added icons to synchronized variables so they look different from other variables even when renamed.
General Improvements
Inventions are now automatically unfrozen when spawned
Fixed issue where the unsaved room warning dialog wouldn't show after making changes
The Maker Pen is now automatically equipped after creating a new room
[Screens] After editing the time value for an animation frame, you will now properly return to the Maker Pen menu
When using the Delete tool inside of a Shape Container, the shapes will now properly have a red outline
You can now report rooms specifically for "misleading purchases" if you feel like something you purchased in the room was misrepresented.
Fixed some of the Ink Space props not getting selected by the maker pen.
iOS players have the option to Login Automatically, which will get you in the dorm faster than having to select your account every time. You can opt-out of this feature if you have multiple accounts / share the device with family. Logging out from the watch menu is supported as always.
Fixed skipping audio in rooms with multiple audio samplers or holotars
We've been working hard on improving our events system and this ship brings a huge number of changes focusing around discoverability, event promotion, and improved UX.
Event Organizers
Event organizers cannot be kicked from their own events.
Event organizers can always visit their created events, even when the instances are full.
Events Screen
There are several new tabs on the events screen to help search for events:
Live! - Shows active events sorted by current attendance
Upcoming - Shows future events sorted by start time
Popular - Shows future events sorted by RSVPs
My Events - Shows created and RSVPed events
Live, Popular, and Upcoming tabs are all searchable and filterable by tags.
Fixed a lot of little UX issues with viewing and updating events.
Event Creation
You can now specify tags for events.
You can select custom photos to represent events.
You can now select a specific subroom to host your event in.
You can host events in any subroom that you own and in public subrooms in rooms that other players own.
Inviting
Invite players screen is now searchable.
You will now be prompted to invite friends when entering events that are mostly empty.
Event UX
You will now hear a custom jingle when spawning in a room which is an event instance.
Players see a "This Event" button instead of a "This Room" button when in an event.
Announcements
Players are prompted to create event announcements when creating new public events. This announcement is sent to subscribers.
Event Meetup Codes
You can now create event meetup codes. These will show players the event's details screen or go to the event if it's currently taking place.
Link Buttons
Player event link buttons can now search for events.
CelebrationCake
And to celebrate during all these events, we also have two new cakes: Celebration Cake and 87 Flavor Cake. Complete with candles. Try blowing them out!
Trying Premium Inventions
You can now try premium inventions before you buy them. Go to the invention details page, tap Try, and the invention will spawn in your room for a short period of time.
AI Improvements
Improved the AI pathing and movement overall. They should get stuck in fewer places and have smoother movement over terrain and in Quests.
Fixed some places in Quests where AIs would get stuck, die automatically, or have strange behavior.
Max health configuration on AIs in Spawners now works correctly.
Wand is no longer able to stun enemies for a very long time.
Assassin bots now actually do stuff.
Barrel Knights should no longer chase players with their axe lowered.
General Improvements
We're trialing some technical improvements for Quest players to make more community rooms load - if you find rooms that still won't load, let us know!
We're improving the experience of getting disconnected from a room. If you get disconnected you'll be sent to your dorm and get a prompt in the watch menu to rejoin the last room you were in.
iOS app consistency - going to the iOS home screen or another app will cause you to leave the room you're in. If you come back soon you'll be in your dorm with a prompt to rejoin the previous room.
Optimized the use of memory across the app, which should result in fewer crashes, especially on older iOS devices.
Fixed broken search tool for clubhouse selection
Fixed extraneous text on club invite screen
Fixed broken cancel button on club permissions settings screen
Swapping to the manipulation mode while a shape is selected will now properly display all the handles.
Fixed when selecting the manipulation tool on screens, it would perform the manipulate operation on whatever your cursor was hovering over.
Manipulate operation now plays sounds.
Fixed the bug where some goals were being counted twice for daily challenges and leaderboards.
Fixed an error that occurs after an undo operation on shape containers.
Fixed a bug that prevented undoing a merge operation of two shape containers.
If you remove a role with flying on someone it should make them fall.
This update brings a bunch of improvements to several maps, screens controls, and a few other perks!
General Improvements
Promote your in-game content with new Showcase Posters found in your maker pen. You can configure them to a room or event, choose what content to display, resize and recolor them!
Screens: You can now see yourself on loading screens so you can check your look between rooms.
Players with an available username change can now change it from the profile screen in-game, in addition to on rec.net (Note that you can only change username once!)
Screen Controls Improvements
We've made a couple of changes to screens controls based on your feedback - more to come soon.
You can now tap the left, right Holster Buttons to quickly cycle through holstered objects. You can still hold down the Holster Buttons to manually make a selection from the Holsters Menu.
Scrolling a mouse wheel also cycles through holstered objects, like tapping the Holster Buttons.
You can now tap the left, right Gesture Buttons to quickly swap to the Pointing Gesture. This makes it easy to bring up another player's profile without having to navigate through the Gestures Menus.
Sprint is once again mapped to the Left Joystick Click on gamepads.
Auto-sprint is now available as an option while playing with a gamepad or keyboard, mouse.
Object Mode toggle (aim with a gun, block with a sword, etc) is now mapped to the Right Joystick Click with a gamepad regardless of which hand is holding the object. Right stick click to aim with a Laser Gun in your right hand. Right stick click to block with a sword in your left hand.
Opening and closing Object Menus, like the Maker Pen Menu, is now mapped to a tap of the Shortcut Menu Button. Tap to toggle Object Menu, hold to navigate the Shortcut Menu.
Map Fixes
Cyberjunk City
Removed a box in the high tower on the orange side.
Fixed a spot where you could get on top of ledge where the map sign is near the overpass
Raised the window trim in a few spots so it's easier to jump inside the windows on screens in particular
Fixed a few spots where you could get out of the map
Quarry
fixed a shipping container on the blue side that you couldn't clamber up to, but could on the red side.
Spillway
fixed a spot where everything would disappear from view
Drive In
fixed the vent ramp so teleporters can teleport onto it.
Disc Golf Lake
fixed being able to get inside some rocks
Creative Tools Fixes
Bounce pads and impulse volumes now have nav bake options on them to ignore, generate or block. They are set to Generate by default now.
Creators should be able to bake AI nav mesh properly in all base rooms. This includes rooms like Spillway, Cyberjunk City and many more!
Screen players can now "cook" grenades by holding down the throw button for a moment before releasing the throw. VR players could essentially do this already by letting go and grabbing it quickly so this change will make fragging more fair across different platforms.
Fixed held/holstered items being invisible when a screen player is dancing or taking a selfie.
VR players who use the setting "don't lock tools in hand" can use the trigger to go through quest doors without letting go of the weapon they are carrying. This also applies if you are not using the setting but want to carry an item that is typically thrown like a breakable bottle or plate.
[Oculus] Rec Room is gearing up to support Oculus Destinations and Presence. This means you'll soon be able to directly join your Oculus friends that are online in Rec Room. You may also see some top Rec Room Original rooms like ^Paintball available as Oculus Destinations.
We made the new UI more satisfying for VR players with a virtual 3D button as you press the menu. It brings back the wonderful 3D squishyness that we were missing from the old UI. Haptics are also improved.
Rec Room for iPhone and iPad now supports Xbox and PlayStation wireless controllers on iOS 13 and up. Pressing any button on the controller will put you in gamepad mode, so you can play Rec Room just like on PC/PlayStation. Touch the screen at any time to go back to touch mode. Here are Apple's instructions to connect your controller: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210414
You can now browse more pages of inventions in the invention store
We've been hard at work giving ^3DCharades a fresh coat of...ink.
Introducing the brand new Charades venue The Ink Space!
This hip, underground cafe isn't just a fun space to play Charades; it's also the perfect place for your next open-mic night or poetry slam!
That's because we've added ^TheInkSpace as a new base room you can clone and customize to your heart's content.
Find ^TheInkSpace on the Create page of your Watch Menu!
Every aspect of ^TheInkSpace can be customized, replaced or just deleted. We can't wait to see what you do with the place. [=)]
We've also made some changes to the rules of Charades to make it a more fun and inclusive game for everyone.
We've extended the amount of time you have to draw - no more getting stuck on stage with only 10 seconds and the word "echo".
Charades is no longer just for VR players anymore! Starting today you can play ^3DCharades with your friends on every platform.
We've added "Draw Mode" to the Charades Pen. This makes drawing on Screens fun and easy regardless of whether you play with a controller, a mouse, or a touchscreen!
But wait there's more! This update also brings new features to Circuits v2 as part of the Creative Tools Beta
We've added new Circuits v2 props
...and new Circuits v2 chips!
Max network heat has been tripled to 1 KB/
Control panels follow their objects correctly in more cases
The prompt player node now allows body text
Boolean logic nodes allow ports to be added
Float comparisons now work
Functions on Control panels and Circuit Boards now have padding between their ports
Control panels now have a special built-in self port
Control panels with no ports except self now have a condensed mesh
A clever workaround for making inventions in beta rooms has been blocked
Mathematical & trigonometric functions have been added (Acos, Asin, Atan, Atan2, Ceil, Cos, Floor, Log, Round, Sin, Tan)
We added these objects with this update. Look for nodes prefixed with their names in the palette! Button V2, Toggle Button V2, and Trigger Volume V2 have been added
Users can now change text on buttons with circuits
Users can now remove tags with circuits
You can now get tags with circuits
Trigger zones return lists of objects and players
Other new nodes: Creation Object Has Tags, Creation Object Remove Tags, From Creation Object, Instance List, Set Element, To Creation Object
As we forewarned with tools in Beta, these improvements might require you to update your rooms:
AILookAtNode Now only connects to AI, Combatant, CreationObject, PatrolPoint, Player and Vector3 types. It used to connect to anything but it doesn't work with any types besides these.
InvalidPlayerVariableNode no longer uses the variable mesh. The invalid player isn't a variable.
LocalPlayerVariableNode no longer uses the variable mesh. The local player isn't a variable.
EqualsNode now works correctly in all cases.
IsValidNode now returns the correct result in all cases. Nodes now need special logic to work with invalid objects. Many nodes which previously tried to work with invalid objects now return errors. Some of these used to null ref.
Unset player variables now correspond to invalid players
All variables now have names to help distinguish them Unnamed variables will be updated to named ones. Names are automatically generated when variables are placed or can be set manually. Variables with the same name will always refer to the same value (they change together) Variables with different names will always refer to different values (one may change without impacting the others)
Lastly, there are a few things being deprecated in the Beta. We wanted to give you a heads-up that we'll be removing these next update:
Invalid Player Replaced with empty player variables
Creation Object Add Tags Replaced with a version with the same name that works better with lists
Creation Object to AI Path Point Replaced with From Creation Object
Creation Object to AI Replaced with From Creation Object
But, to make the medicine go down, we have something sweet! The cake is not a lie. Two different delicious cakes now available in the Rec Center Cafe and the Watch Store: Red Velvet and Double Chocolate. More flavors coming Soon(tm)
General Improvements
On PC VR, fixed a Streaming Camera bug which caused some objects to appear solid black.
Fixed bug where invention purchasing text was cut off on the small screen
When you buy clothing that you were trying on the trial item is now automatically replaced by the permanent one
Sprint on touch controls once again works by dragging the walk joystick up instead of double tapping.
Auto-sprint is now the default for controllers and no longer available for keyboard, mouse. You can disable auto-sprint in the Settings page of your Watch Menu under the Gameplay tab.
Scope Rifle no longer locks up when firing and scoping at the same time on screens
Fixed bug where reticle was visible while aiming with the Scope Rifle on screens
Melee weapons on screens work correctly when swinging rapidly again
The broom, oar, fish, and frying pan can all block melee attacks again
Just a quick patch to make a few highly-requested tweaks to Keyboard, Mouse Controls and also fix some things we broke with our last update. =]
Left Shift is once again sprint, though you can still double tap the 'W' key if you prefer.
Waving has been moved from Left Shift to the 'F' key to make room for sprint
Swapped left and right mouse click so that all "left buttons" control your left hand and all "right buttons" control your right hand. Like many of you we found the previous setup a little brain-breaking. Let us know what you think of this!
Push to talk on controller and keyboard no longer has any delay
On controller the push to talk button (d-pad down) now toggles your microphone on and off when not in push to talk mode
On controller Room Chat has moved back into the shortcut menu to make room for the microphone toggle
Using a menu while flying in screens mode no longer causes your camera or body to move
Typing into room chat with a controller works again
Editing Room Roles through the This Room button on Screens works again
Weapons can no longer get stuck and fail to fire in Rec Royale on Screens
Bow firing on screens has returned to normal
Here are updated controller mappings:
iOS Touch Controls
Keyboard and Mouse Controls
DualShock 4 Controller
Xbox One/360 Controller
As always, your feedback makes these improvements possible so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think!
Playing Rec Room with a controller or a touchscreen should be just as fun, creative, and social as playing in VR. We want players to have the same capabilities regardless of which platform they play on ... and right now they don’t.
There are things you can do in VR that are hard or downright impossible to do with a controller. On the dev team we often talk about a gap that exists between the capabilities of players in VR and the capabilities of players on screens. With this update we’re taking a big step towards closing that gap, we’re introducing Ambidextrous Screens Controls.
Previously, on screens you could only use your right hand to interact with the world. Now, with these new controls you can use either hand (or both simultaneously!) with as few restrictions as possible, just like VR players. This means dual-wielding works in Paintball, and you can finally eat some pizza and drink some bubbly at the same time.
New HUD!
We didn't just iterate on controls, we also took the opportunity to apply a fresh coat of paint to the screens and touch HUDs, we even added the option to hide the HUD entirely when playing with a gamepad or keyboard/mouse!
New Holsters Menu!
We also redesigned the way that players access their Equip Slots on Screens. It’s now possible to store and retrieve objects from any available slot using either hand - just like in VR.
To fully support these new controls we had to shuffle around some button mapping, you can check out the updated mapping below. You can find these diagrams in your Watch Menu under Settings -> Help. [These are updated versions of the button mappings; find the old versions in the file history.]
You can now form parties through the watch menu!
When viewing a player's profile, select the "Party Up" button to send a new request or accept an existing one
If you're already in a party with that player, the button will give you the option to leave that party instead
Other players' party requests will appear in the Messages screen in your watch
Like game invites, party request messages are temporary and appear for that game session only
As a shortcut, you can also party up with nearby friends or players through the People screen
General improvements
Fixed a bug where extra text would appear when displaying bonuses at the end of a Rec Royale game
You can now look at all the clothing other people are wearing via the new Outfit tab on their profile page, and you can buy any items you like from right there
This update, VR players may notice a slight change to the visuals in the watch - this is our first pass at bringing a little dimension back to the UI. The navbar, dialogs and toasts in the new UI are raised above the watch surface now, but again, this is only a first pass, stay tuned for more to come!
Polaroids everywhere
Screen and Touch players can print Polaroids now.
Polaroids display the username of the photographer.
General improvements:
Rec.Net: Added a page to display build contest winners
Rec.Net: Updated the room browser UI
Rec Room Plus members now have 100 saved outfit slots
Fixed bug where tools could become stuck to players' hands when adding comments from room UI
There is a new experience setting to disable notifications from gifts
Stop player screen has an option to disable comfort mode
Cheer screen now shows progress and disables button after pressing them
Replaced the couch cushions
You can now use ., - and _ as valid characters while naming new rooms, editing a room name from the watch and from Rec.Net
While configuring Welcome mats to link to a room ., - and _ can be used
While configuring Doors to link to a room ., - and _ can be used
The Play Screen has been cleaned up, so players will no longer see the Top or Rec.Net tabs.
If you have platform friends, you’ll see an import button on the friends page that lets you add or dismiss them.
There is a new tab in the people screen to quickly see all of your pending friend invites and address them
The Recent and Nearby tabs have been merged, and you'll now see nearby players at the top of the Recent tab
Fixed bug where clicking "Visit" button in room published messages sometimes wouldn't take player to room
Fixed "Clear All" button on Notifications tab of Messages screen
Sorted cards in the new UI will display information relevant to their sort criteria. For example, if events are sorted by attendance, it will show how many people are attending, and if they are sorted by time, they will show what time the event will occur.
[PC VR] Restored anti-aliasing on the Streaming Camera
Smoothed the motion of VR players' avatars during rotation
Introducing, for the first time ever, the Creative Tools Beta!
We are introducing a way to experience current in-development creative tools, the Creative Tools Beta. In each room you create, you have the option to enable Beta Content and are free to use this content anywhere in the room, and subrooms. This gives you an early preview of upcoming creative features, and offers you the opportunity to provide early feedback. A few important points about enrolling in the Creative Tools Beta are outlined here, including significant risks of using in-development tools:
We may make drastic changes or even completely remove beta content features, which could break your creations in these rooms.
Any room that uses beta content forfeits the ability to be entered into official Rec Room creative contests.
You cannot create inventions in beta rooms. This may change.
Rooms that use beta content will be marked with the #beta tag.
Beta rooms may receive special UI treatment in the future to inform players of unstable content
We hope you enjoy these new tools, and more importantly we hope to hear your feedback about these tools so we can make them better before release. Speaking of new, and exciting creative tools...
Circuits V2 Beta
Today marks a day we've been looking forward to for over 2 years. Since launching circuits in 2018 we've known they aren't for the faint of heart. With time and patience circuits can be used effectively, but their limitations make some creations impossible and their complexity makes building tedious. Every once in a while we make a fundamental improvement in Rec Room that expands the universe of possibilities for creation. We believe that Circuits V2 is one of those improvements and we are excited to share it with you!
The functionality we're giving you today is new and exciting, but also experimental. As per the experiment, any and all aspects of Circuits V2 may be changed before being moved out of Beta. - there is also still missing functionality provided by Circuits V1 that we intend to provide over time. Things like buttons, trigger volumes, and gizmos won't interact with this new system just yet. That being said, if there is a specific usability issue or missing feature you'd like to see changed in the future we'd love to know about it. With your help, we can make Circuits V2 even better!
The CV2 functionality we are shipping today focuses mainly on AI scripting, and while functionality outside of that is still fairly limited, there are a bunch of other chips present that can be used to make some fun stuff. (We've made things like a text-based combat system where you initiate a fight by punching someone, and a "quiz show" that asks you arithmetic questions.)
Other Beta Additions
You can find these in the "Other Gadgets" section of your Palette once you enable the Beta Content in your room.
Spawner Gadget V2
This is a Circuits V2 version of the Spawner Gadget that provides much more flexibility. It works almost identically to the V1 spawner, but has more pins on it, like an input for you to override the spawn location directly. Note: AIs and Path Points have Control Panels on them which provide the flexibility to script your very own AI behavior. Read more about these in the CV2 getting started guide!
Path Points
These are handy ways to set up paths for your AIs to follow. Drop these in your room and connect them with the wire tool to create a directional path. You can connect the "Self" output pin of a Path Point's Control Panel to an AI Path To chip to get the AIs on your new path. Note, you will also need a "Creation Object To AI" CV2 node connected to the output of the Spawner Gadget V2.
Spawner++
We have updated the Spawner Gadget so you can now configure the object that is set to spawn. Examples include setting an object as grabbable, tags, respawn delays, etc. However, much more exciting options have been added to AIs! Note, this upgrade applies to both the CV1 Spawner, and the CV2 Spawner Gadgets.
On AIs, we've made it so you can change the speed, health, team and other options. *Note: some AIs may have extra configurables, so be sure to check them all out.
You can also recolor AIs to any color in the palette, just like you can for props.
We have also added the ILS Rum Jug to the spawner.
Teleporting
We also took a look at teleporting, which has been upgraded to allow a lot of the functionality Walking has had for a while. Teleporting now includes the ability to:
Climb
Fall when room scaling past an edge
Bump/Push other players when the role setting is enabled in your room
Platforms that use Pistons/Animations now provide proper support for teleporters. An example of this are elevators and moving platforms.
Comfort Settings
The comfort settings page has been slightly expanded to include more comfort options for the newly added features. These include vignettes, as well the ability to fully black out the screen during these scenarios, such as falling.
We've also combined the checkboxes for Motion Teleport (previously found in Settings > Experience) and the teleport vignette (under Settings > Gameplay > Comfort options) into a single "Teleport" slider on the Comfort Options screen. Please note: We weren't able to carry over everyone's settings perfectly. If you previously had motion teleport disabled, you might need to manually set the new slider to Full one time.
General improvements
You might have noticed that ever since creator announcements launched you've been seeing fewer room published announcements in your messages screen. Whoops! This build re-adds room published notifications to the messages screen, as well as invention published notifications, and general creator announcements. If you ever feel like you're seeing too many announcements you can toggle off the 'Subscriptions' message group in your options to stop seeing them.
Fixed floating Goblin Elites in GT, CCC and UGC
Fixed issue where duplicate club events sometimes appeared on a club details screen
Enemies will trigger proximity mines
The Desktop Sharing Speaker finally supports selecting different audio sources!
Fix for an issue where volume settings would sometimes not save correctly.
Reduced how frequently we warn you of the weekly limits when changing your display name.
Avatar mouths should now only animate when players are actually talking
Some quality-of-life improvements to ^3DCharades:
Maximum drawing time is slightly longer, 1 minute for Co-op and 45 seconds for Team Lightning. Game length has been adjusted accordingly.
Guessers can no longer interfere by grabbing the drawing when it is not their turn.
"Away from keyboard" prevention measures have been added to Paintball and Laser Tag. Tokens, Tickets, and leaderboard stats will not be issued for these players.
Introducing Club Events - a great new way to bring club members together! As a club leader (or someone with the events permission) you can create a club event using the 'events' button on your club details page. New club events will show up for club members the next time they log in.
Public club events still appear in the Events section of your watch, but only club members can view a club's private events. In the Clubs section of your watch, the "Upcoming Events" stripe will show you all current and future events for clubs you're in! Select any of these events to view details and RSVP. You can also view and manage an individual club's events on the club details screen.
If you create a new event from the club's event screen it will automatically become a Club Event. But you can also promote existing events to Club Events! On the details screen for an event you've created, select "Invite Players" and the Clubs tab to add, remove or change the club tied to an event. (Note: You can only associate one club with each event at this time.)
Club owners control who can create and associate events with their club. On your Club screen, go to "Club Settings" and configure the "Can create club events" permission for each membership level.
General improvements:
You can now teleport to room comments in the world by clicking the "go to" button on comments in the UI. We're hoping this will help creators get more context about bug reports and feedback left in their rooms
We now display creators' room showcases that they've set up on rec.net in Rec Room creator portfolios!
Fixed a problem resuming Rec Room from a suspended power state on Quest
Adjusted settings to reduce out-of-memory crashes on PS4
This patch includes a Unity engine upgrade to 2019.4. This should give our team new tools & capabilities to improve the overall performance of Rec Room. Don't expect anything big out of the gate, performance will remain largely similar for the time being. There's more to come in the future.
As we get the new upgrade into place and start leveraging its new capabilities, we'll be able to make improvements in subsequent updates. In the meantime let us know if you spot any unexpected bugs or hitches which weren't happening previously. If you've got something, file it at HappyFox, or message !bugreport to RecBot on our Discord!
General improvements:
We changed the screen share permissions so that everyone is able to see someone else's screen! If you're interested in being able to share your screen and are a PC player, please email us at sciencedept@recroom.com. You no longer need to email in if you just want to watch someone else's screen
We also fixed a bug where players can climb onto rocks in Disc Golf :)
The mirror has been totally redesigned! Getting dressed is easier and more convenient than ever!
New Tabbed layout with Store, My Clothes, and Hair & Face as the main categories.
Gorgeous, clean, 2D renders of each outfit item.
Clothes sorting and search - makes it super fast to find what you're looking for. You can even type color names into the search bar.
The left column represents what you are wearing currently. If you are wearing trial items, it will show a Buy All button.
After buying an outfit item using the mirror it will be unlocked and applied immediately (without having to open a gift box), so you can instantly start exploring Rec Room in your new look.
Convenient shortcut button to the Saved Outfits page of the watch
Screen players now use the menu with a cursor, similar to the watch menu. No more aiming up and down to scroll!
Rec Room- New Face Shapes!
Tucked away in the new mirror UI is a tab for customizing the shape of your avatar's face, with five new options to pick from (plus the original, which is first in the list!) We want you to be able to build an avatar that feels like a reflection of yourself, and this is one of many small steps towards more unique and expressive features.
Choose between original, heart-shaped, narrow chin, square jaw, round cheeks and long oval.
Beards and items with close-fitting chin straps will conform to the shape of your face.
Mouths may be slightly altered in size and position by being mapped to a new face. Tweak as needed!
New face shapes will appear in new photos, holotars and saved outfits, but will not update anything previously saved or recorded.
Room Doors are also getting a facelift of sorts: Room Doors++!
We have added an upgraded version of the Room Door to the palette! Much like our most recent update to costume dummies, we have provided more flexibility via circuitry to control your room transitions! If the door in your room is somewhat old, to get the new features simply place the Room Door from the palette again. The new Room Doors features include:
Inputs
Green Pin (Player ID) - You can send any Player ID to this door to trigger a room/subroom transition for that player. This pin also respects your config options for invite method (for subroom only). Note, there are steps in place to prevent using this too frequently upon loading into a room.
Configuration
Hide Door/Sign - These new options make the door or sign gadget visible.
Force New Instance (subroom only): This option finally gives players the option to force a new room instance each time the door is used. This adheres to the current instance type you are in (public makes new public instance, private makes a new private instance). This mimics our quest behavior so you can go to the first level of a quest and people in the previous room wont come into your room instance automatically.
Other improvements to doors:
Teleporters can now grab the door in addition to teleporting into the door
Hover animation is now back on the doors for additional feedback
Renamed "Normal" invite mode option to "Ask To Invite Party" to be more descriptive
Fixed strange UI shuffling that occurred when you picked an invite method
New default invite mode is now "Party Auto-follow" to make staying with your party much easier to think about. You can change the invite method via the config menu.
The doors are still kinematic and don't fall when you spawn them in your room.
Grabbable is no longer a configurable on the Room Door.
Rec Room New Free Gifts button!
And finally, we're also introducing the Free Gifts button - A new prop that lets creators give gifts to their room guests or club members. You buy gifts to add to the button, then other players hit the button and choose a gift to receive. Right now you can stock it with food, film, potions, and KO icons, and we plan to add more item types in the future.
We also fixed a bug which causes Rangefinders to sometimes stop working properly.
As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...
Hey folks, we're still heads-down working on Tomb Heist and the all new Circuits V2 system (check out the dev blog for more). We hope to have those ready for you later this summer, but in the meantime, we wanted to push out a few bug fixes and quality of life improvements. They are, in no particular order:
The new player experience has been improved to include friend codes on iOS and import of platform friends on all other platforms
Manipulating small objects and volumes with big snap grids enabled no longer creates a mess
Handles now look pretty when you switch selection
Moods background objects stay centered around you at all times
Selection bubble size can now be controlled by the button pressure again
No more dangerous laser left on when dropping the makerpen
Portfolio lists are now searchable and sortable! Simply click the title of any scrolling list that displays a search icon next to it to be taken to a search page for the displayed content
We've added a new version of the creator feedback buttons which contains a new room comment button. Simply swap out your old creator feedback buttons with the new version in the maker pen palette. The first placed instance is free!
Free and paid invention filters in the store
Players can now add nearby or recent players as friends directly from the People screen
Players can accept or reject pending friend requests directly from the People screen or a player's profile
Improvements to Item Preview on "Join Rec Room Plus" Screen for RR+ Items
The rocks around the campfire in the park are now less shy and will no longer disappear when you approach them
Also, some general bug fixes:
In-world room comments now display even when first viewing comments through the UI
Fix for Gloves visibly equipping to both Hands via Giftbox
Club details no longer pop up automatically when joining a clubhouse
We're experimenting with a room recommendations system. Some users will see recommended rooms instead of the Rec.Net tab. These recommendations are based on your previous room visit history as well as a point-in-time analysis of the aggregate history of the community. We expect to update the aggregate analysis periodically. We hope this new system will make it easier to discover rooms that you'll enjoy!
Also, some general bug fixes:
Players can no longer use their own Room Settings AI menu to kill AI in rooms that they don't own.
The Game Rules chip now caps the player count at 40.
The welcome mat now immediately shows whether it is configured to link to a room name, or a subroom.
You can now report another player's comment in your room, even if you have never met them.
As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...
It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your inventions are?
The line between playing and creating in Rec Room is often blurry, something that we think makes us special as a user-generated content platform. Becoming a creator is as easy as taking out your Maker Pen and drawing some new shapes or placing new inventions. However, managing your created content can get a little messy. You can find your rooms in your watch menu, but you can’t view your inventions unless you’re holding your Maker Pen. If you are a creator with a large number of published rooms, it can be a hassle to find the one you want to work on without sifting through all of them. You can see other players' rooms and inventions in their player details, but you can’t see your creations from your profile. As part of our Audience Connection work, we wanted to greatly simplify the work of viewing a player’s created content and offer easier methods of sorting and searching through it.
Introducing, Portfolios!
The solution we came up with is the Portfolio Screen. Portfolios are created in our new UI system and act as a central location for all content related to a player.
For the first iteration of portfolios, we display:
Rooms that you own or co-own
Inventions you’ve created
Clubs you’ve created
Subscribers
You will see both published and unpublished rooms and inventions on your own portfolio but, don’t worry, other players will only see your published work.
Something that’s coming very soon is the ability to dig into any of the scrolling lists of content on the portfolio page and search or sort through it. We’re introducing a new UI convention to help with this. Whenever you see a UI stripe with a magnifying glass next to the title, you’ll be able to click either the icon or the title text to show a searchable grid of the same content.
There’s one other type of content we display on portfolios: Creator Announcements. What are creator announcements, you ask?
Creators need a voice!
Previously, you didn’t have many ways to communicate with your subscribers. We automatically created notifications for your subscribers whenever you published a new room, which was useful but kind of boring. Also, while you could notify your subscribers of new rooms, inventions were ignored completely, meaning that you were forced to look outside of Rec Room to promote your inventions. As a creator, your style is what sets you apart and it is high time that we give creators a voice.
Build it, Announce it
Our solution is Creator Announcements. If you’re familiar with the recent Club Announcements feature, you’ll feel right at home with Creator Announcements. At any time, you can go to your Portfolio screen to create, edit, or delete your announcements. Your subscribers will be notified whenever you create new announcements through a badge on the People button on the home screen. From here they can view a list of all of their subscriptions and see which ones have unread announcements.
You can create general announcements that contain a title, body text, and an optional image but we also wanted to help you notify your subscribers whenever you create new content. Gone are the bland room notifications of the past – now you will be prompted to create a custom announcement whenever you publish a new room or invention. If you don’t want to take the time to enter a custom message, we still provide you with a default one but feel free to customize the new announcements to your heart's content. When your subscribers view your new room or invention announcements, they’ll also see an action button with the option to visit your room or download your invention.
What’s Next?
We currently show all of the content you’ve created in your portfolio, but what if you want to highlight some of your favorite creations and place them front and center? We’d love to add the option for you to customize your main portfolio page to show off what is most important to you.
We’re also talking about ways to show more of your creations on Rec.Net.Rec.Net is a great way to quickly view more information and as we continue to open up more communication and customization options, we’d love to develop more streamlined ways for you to manage audience communication right from your browser.
As far as announcements go, we’d love to create easier ways to view all of your unread announcements at once. Our notifications system is looking a little long in the tooth. We’d love to develop easier ways for you to manage and view your notifications.
Finally, we’re always looking for more ways to allow you to communicate with your audience. We hope that this is just the beginning of a more expressive future for creators everywhere.
As always, if you have comments or suggestions about either of these new features, we’d love to hear them! Leave a comment below and, as always, give it your Rec Room best!
Some of the touch controls for iPad/iPhone players have been redesigned to make it easier and more comfortable to play!
What used to look like this...
...now looks like this!
In our latest blog post we started to talk about experiments we’re running to make players on screens devices better able to express themselves with their hands.
This control redesign is our first step towards that more-expressive screen-player future as you can now wave with both your left and right hands!.
We also took this opportunity to make interacting with the world a little more comfortable and a little more consistent.
Instead of this...
...do this!
Players on iPad/iPhone will also see a streamlined login flow. We have removed the portrait mode chat UI for now. We will likely bring it back in improved form at some point. But for now we want to focus on getting you into the game as quickly and as smoothly as we can.
In other news, we’re also bringing circuit pins to the Costume Dummy! This version of the costume dummy will replace the old one in the Maker Pen, but you can still find all of your old costume dummies without the pins in your rooms and still use them.
[General Changes]
Equip UI on the costume dummy no longer orbits the base.
The distance at which the equip UI opens and closes was tuned to be closer to the dummy itself.
The costume dummy is no longer physical, and will now stay in place while you’re working on it.
[Configure Options]
Select multiple roles to add to the player that is wearing the costume.
Select whether to remove the roles that were added when the costume is removed (on by default).
Select whether to show or hide the equip UI.
Select multiple categories of avatar outfit items to hide when the costume is worn. *You can choose from Head, Torso, Left Hand, and Right Hand.
Option to disable the zip sound
[Circuitry]
Input Pins
Equip to player ID - equips the costume to the provide player ID.
Reset - removes the costume from the current wearer and puts it back on the costume dummy.
Output Pins
Equipped Player ID - now reports 0 when no one is wearing the costume.
We also created a new screen where you can view all of the content a player has created in Rec Room – The Portfolio Screen! You can access your portfolio screen through your profile and view other players' portfolios through their player details pages. On the portfolio screen you can view all of the rooms, inventions, and clubs a player has created as well as viewing a list of their subscribers. You will see both unpublished and published content on your own portfolio but you can only view published content on other players' portfolios.
You can now view a list of all players you're subscribed to through the "Subscriptions" tab on the People screen. Here you'll find a searchable list of subscriptions with links to each creator's portfolio.
Creators can now publish custom announcements for their subscribers! Announcements can be created from your portfolio or when publishing a new room or invention. Other players will be able to view your announcements on your portfolio and can follow links to check out your new rooms and inventions.
Also, some general bug fixes:
The rangefinder will now report the most recent player ID or object ID on the next circuit tick, so you will no longer miss out if a player or object passes through the laser beam between circuit ticks.
Wall run behavior is back to normal after an unintentional change last ship - maintenance has cleaned the walls to verify you should be able to wall run normally again.
As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...
This week we’re covering a recent upgrade to the costume dummy, and a peek at our creative tool development plans AKA, the Maker Pen Workshop.
Maker Pen Workshop
The Maker Pen Workshop is the new term we're using to describe internal projects that push the bounds of the creative tools in Rec Room. With a Maker Pen Workshop, we dream up a game idea and then set out to make it using the Maker Pen. Along the way, we add new features to the in-game tools and improve the most frustrating parts of our workflow. In short, Maker Pen Workshop gives us a great way to be in-game creators and choose exciting new creative tools to add to Rec Room. This is different from an #RRO where we primarily use Unity and C# to build new experiences.
You might remember ^CapturePoint from a while back. At the time, we saw an opportunity to make creating structured games in Rec Room a much simpler process with the addition of the Game Rules chip. This process involved using the tools we expose to you to create a fun experience instead of Unity. The process for all Maker Pen Workshops going forward is going to be very similar to the ^CapturePoint release with some tweaks. The general idea here is that if we use the same tools you do to build something, we’ll better understand your workflows and be able to improve them more quickly! Some improvements that we got out of the internal feedback while making ^CapturePoint were Handles (like you see on the move, rotate, and scale tools), bubble select, and magnetic wiring to name a few. Having a specific building scenario is an important part of this process because we have context for adding new features, and improving the tools. This brings us to… Tomb Heist!
Tomb Heist!
Tomb Heist! is the name of the current Maker Pen Workshop we are building internally at Rec Room using only the maker pen. At the end of the project, this would not be released as an #RRO, but rather a room that either Ry-Guy or Meriesa publish as a community room. As we build it, we’ll be creating and releasing new creative tools that you can start using in your own rooms.
This is the elevator pitch for Tomb Heist!
Tomb Heist! is a short, two player co-op experience that emphasizes stealth, and team play. This heist takes place in a long lost tomb hidden away in the depths of the jungle. The goal is to break in, steal the magic idol, and escape. Each player has a purpose in this heist, and you will need both to pull it off. This quest will take place entirely indoors.
This project is aimed at enhancing the overall quest building experience by adding some new tools and enhancing a lot of the building blocks we have currently... like costumes!
Costumes++
Since the costume dummy was first released, we have seen some amazing costumes from the community - but we’ve also heard ambitious creators asking for more functionality. While there's a bunch of things we could do for costumes to improve them, we picked a few features to target looking through the lens of Tomb Heist!
The design for Tomb Heist! requires two distinct characters with unique capabilities. A great way to bring these characters to life is to use costume dummies to give each one a unique look.
Meriesa spent about 5 minutes making these rockin’ costumes, but thinking through how we want this quest-like experience to go, making players use the equip UI to drive this experience is both unreliable and prone to user error. Rooms such as ^WarOfTheLions, ^PayloadPvP, and ^CrisisLegends are all amazing experiences, but all of the builders faced similar issues when trying to tie gameplay to their costumes. One of the main goals of this project is to give costume dummies circuit pins to drive their functionality to accomplish this.
We added an “Equip To Player ID” pin as well as a reset pin. With both of these, you can freely equip/unequip costumes using many methods via circuits. In Tomb Heist! a big win we saw is going from the lobby to the first level automatically assigns the costume upon entering via the Player Joined pin off the Player Event Chip, creating a seamless experience.
Another thing we wanted to do to further differentiate these characters is change move speed, and other role settings to make them feel different. In this quest, we have the larger character moving slower, but can pick up heavy things like rocks, while the nimble character can move a lot quicker. Roles are definitely the way to go here, but hooking up a costume to a specific role is somewhat annoying to set up, so we have included a way to configure adding a role to the player who has the costume equipped, as well as removing that role easily when the costume is taken off. All of this is done through the configure menu.
We have been testing this feature a lot internally and it’s been fantastic to see how much more streamlined the building process is, and how much better the experience is for your players.
Future Of Tomb Heist!
Costumes++ is just one of the projects associated with this larger effort over the next couple months. In addition to costumes enhancements, another area we are focusing on is the addition of new AI features like setting up your own paths for them to follow. You can learn more about those features here. You can expect to see more additions to the tools that push on features to make Tomb Heist! behave more like one of our RRO quests… but we can talk about those another day [|=)].
As always, we appreciate your feedback as we continue developing the creative tools, so please let us know if there are things you need to build your creations. See you on the Discord, Canny, etc. and shortly in our next blog post about more creator tools!
Primitive shapes spawn without pitch or roll, just like if you were using the Maker Pen.
Fixed the triggers on PS4 DualShock. You can actually play Charades (BetaUpdate) now!
Room Chat upgrades:
Room chat messages have a new look that makes it easier to read and to see who the message is coming from
Messages show the sender’s profile photo, this is also a button (for Touch and VR at the moment) that will open the sender’s profile page.
Fixed a ton of bugs with the formatting, transitions, and other interactions with Room Chat. It should be much more stable and consistent now!
And some general bug fixes:
The radio menu is fixed for screen players
Fixed an issue on screens where you could click on scoreboards and other world UI while trying to close the watch menu by tapping in the margins.
Fixed laser pointing a player not working if you were gripping your Index or Oculus controller.
Bear standee should no longer cause errors when saving into rooms
Fixed an issue that could cause players to perpetually drift after landing on the ground
Fixed an issue with manipulate tool that caused it to impact multiple sides at once
Fixed an issue causing state machine nodes losing their configured values when being connected to a state machine graph
Fixed "Cancel" button on Safe Mode confirmation screen during login
Fixed bug that was causing some players to get stuck while viewing their chat messages
Fixed an error in club details where members where showing as blank boxes
As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...
When we launched Rec Room in 2016, it was a VR-only experience. And one of the coolest things about VR was - and still is - the feeling of social presence that you get. It really feels like you’re hanging out with other people! As Rec Room has grown over the years, we’ve welcomed many players on non-VR devices as well - players from all around the world are using consoles, phones, and PCs to play, create, and hang out with each other.
Players on all devices have equal access to important social features like voice chat, room chat, facial emotes, etc. But it’s fair to say that our VR players still have a big advantage in social expressiveness. In large part this is due to hand tracking in VR. We humans really like to express ourselves with our hands!
So today we wanted to share a sneak preview of some of the experiments we’ve been doing to make our players on screen devices better able to express themselves with their hands.
Currently on screen devices you can wave with one hand:
It’s really nice to be able to quickly acknowledge someone in a natural way. So our first experiment was… what if you could wave both hands?
Pretty fun! Also note another experiment in the top right of the image - this is a “Picture in Picture” view which means you can always see yourself, even though you’re in first person. This helps you be more expressive by giving you a sense of how others are seeing you. In VR, you get this more naturally due in large part to proprioception, but on a screen device you need more help.
Playing around with range of motion for dual-handed waving, we found you could get quite expressive! Like maybe you need to weigh your options:
Or declare the runner SAFE!
Note that there are no canned animations in any of these GIFs. The avatar is being driven directly by analog stick input, which means you’re in control of the speed and intensity of your movement.
This means you can play the bongos in rhythm!
Shh, don’t tell anyone you can flip your hands around…
Do I need to lay it out on a platter for you?
Or sing it from the mountain tops?
We felt like it was looking pretty promising, so we added the ability to switch between different hand gestures (open hand, fist, point, thumbs up).
Let’s try making a fist… it’s pretty exciting:
Don’t agree? Don’t make me stride purposefully over there…
And punch you!
THE POWER!!!
Of course some of us are shy…
Or maybe we’re hatching an evil scheme…
Or maybe we’re just picking our nose =]
Did we just blow your mind???
Well, thanks for checking it out…
Pretty cool huh?
Next steps[]
This stuff is all experimental for now, but we believe it’s a promising direction. We think the next step is to dig into what freeform hand control on screen devices means for interacting with objects.
For example, there are some awesome #community escape rooms that players on screen devices struggle to complete, because you need to interact with custom objects in arbitrary ways.
We think this more freeform hand control system should extend pretty naturally to interacting with objects. So as well as making our players on screen devices better social playmates, it will also unlock the ability to play in more rooms!
If you have questions or comments reach out to us directly at the social media links listed below!
This week we’re covering a small (but useful!) new feature in Rec Room, Link Buttons! This is another part of the “audience connection” initiative — a collection of features which help increase communication and visibility between creators and their audiences
Why Link Buttons?
We’ve seen many examples of creators highlighting interesting content in their rooms. Often this is accomplished using in-world text, although this means that players have to manually search for called-out content in the UI. This is time-consuming and we wanted to help make this process easier.
Our solution is Link Buttons, a new type of spawnable object that can be placed in-world and configured to open many different types of UI screens. We’ve seen in the past that features which are hidden within the UI (Looking at you, room cheers!) often get overlooked by players, and by providing intuitive in-world shortcuts we can help increase visibility and usage. The idea behind Link Buttons is the same, they should help make it easier to show off cool Rec Room content to your players!
Get Linking!
To use link buttons, you’ll first need to find them in your maker pen palette. They’re categorized as dynamic props.
Once a button is placed, you can configure it using the configure tool on your maker pen.
In the configure menu, you can select the type of link button you’d like to create and search for the specific content target to link to.
Once you’ve picked a target, your link button will change to display an icon depending on the link type and show the name of the target you’ve selected.
When users press the button it will take them to the appropriate UI screen and show details about your link target.
If anything ever happens that invalidates your link (e.x. an event expires, a published room is unpublished, etc), the link button will show a “missing” label to show that the link is broken.
What’s Next?
Link buttons can help creators show existing content to their audiences but we still don’t provide many in-game methods for creator-to-audience communication. Future projects will focus on giving creators new and more powerful ways of reaching out to their audiences whether it be to notify them of new creations or just to say “hi”.
As always, let us know if you have ideas for how you’d like to better communicate with your audiences or with the creators you follow! We’ll be updating this blog again soon - next topic will be on our experiments with improving the social expressiveness of our non-VR players ;) As always, give it your Rec Room best!
Club announcements are a great way to publish info for everyone in your club to read! As a club leader (or someone with the announcements permission), you can post an announcement with a title, body, and an optional image. It will show up for everyone in your club just a few minutes after you hit publish.
Only club members can view club announcements. Members can find the announcements in a new section of your club's page, just under the actions section. Members will know your club has posted a new announcement when you see a number on the clubs button on the watch home screen. Once inside the clubs browser, a green marker will appear on clubs with new announcements. Then in your club's announcements section, each individual announcement will have the same green maker showing you if it's new.
Club owners control who can post announcements. On your Club page, go to "Club Settings" and configure the "Can create club announcements" permission for each membership level. Announcements will be a great way to post about upcoming club events, new creations the club has worked on, updates to the clubhouse, or anything else you'd want to let your members know about. We're thinking about what a true club events system will look like, but for now announcements will be the best way to organize your members.
Thank you so much to everyone who has created a club so far! We're really happy with the variety and love put into all the clubs we're seeing.
On another note, Charades is now in beta for screen players! Try it out in ^CharadesBetaUpdate. We will be refining the experience over the coming weeks and adding a brand-new venue! Soon
As you might have guessed, screen players can now use the charades pen! It also includes some exciting enhancements to make drawing in charades better on screen mode:
Finger painting mode! Tap the finger paint button to start drawing tubes and other shapes using a cursor on the screen.
Shortcut menu for the charades pen with quick access to a few shapes and colors
Trigger sensitive tube size with a controller
Dynamic tube size on mouse/touch based on how fast you draw
Pressure sensitive tube size with Apple Pencil while finger-painting
Charades pen has gotten some general improvements:
A fresh coat of paint on the tool menu
More shapes (cylinder, pyramid)
Shape previews at the tip of the pen
Bug fixes:
Screen players can now pickup objects that are “sticky” such as charades shapes and polaroids, even after they are stuck to something.
iPad Pro 11 inch home menu now works in landscape.
Fixed Apple Pencil pressure sensitivity for whiteboards
Fixed some cases where the UI would break after returning to a backgrounded iOS app
Link to a Player, Room, Club, Event, or an Invention using a Link Button!
We've also added a new way for creators to easily highlight content for their players -- Link Buttons! The link button is a new dynamic prop which can be spawned from the maker pen palette. Once spawned, players can configure these buttons to link to any of the following: Players, Rooms, Clubs, Inventions, or Player Events. Players that press the button will be shown the details UI for whatever the button is linked to (ex: A specific player’s details UI). We hope creators can use these buttons to call attention to some of the cool people and creations that can be found in Rec Room.
Range finder
We also added a Rangefinder Gadget - Point this new gadget at anything and it will output the distance to whatever the laser beam hits. If the target is an object or player, it also outputs the target's ID. It can be configured to provide distance values in meters, centimeters, or millimeters, and can filter for objects by tag, and players by role. You can configure it to show the recolorable laser beam even when gadgets are hidden, so get ready for some cool laser light shows!
And some general bug fixes:
Reduced latency on screen creation tools. Dragging now happens instantly rather than in .25 seconds
Can now drag objects which are far away
As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...
A long time ago, in a Rec Room far far away, when Sandbox Machines roamed custom rooms, the first version of Circuits was conceived. We wanted a way for players to add logic to their rooms, a way to allow rooms to be dynamic, more alive, and hopefully, more fun. Thus, Circuits were born, the “logic” system in Rec Room, used to drive everything from game rules, to player spawning, to Gizmos and sound effects.
The Beginning
Circuits started out very modestly. They were originally called “Signals”, they used big old cubes, and they were single-player only, but you could still do some pretty neat stuff. The first prototype came in December of 2017:
Even with their simplicity, we thought they were pretty fun. One of the first things we made with them was a basketball mini-game, and that felt pretty cool:
So, we invested time to make them work in multiplayer games, cleaned up the art, and added some fun Chips to work with.
Circuits V1 officially released in February of 2018 as part of the “Merch Booth” update. We’ve been blown away by the creations the community has made with them ever since. Everything from machines that draw geometric patterns on the whiteboards, to Pong, to entire room experiences have been built with them over the last two years. You all have consistently impressed us with your ingenuity and skills!
The Problem
After a little over two years, Circuits have really started to show their age. They can be buggy, they can be hard to understand, and worst of all, they’re limiting the boundless creativity of the community.
Simple things like just storing a value are hard, or at least, not intuitive. You can only work with numbers, no matter what “type” of thing you’re dealing with. You can’t loop through collections of things, like players or teams. Due to our first networking implementation, V1 circuits execute only 10 times per second. Things get lost between the ticks, things feel laggy, and generally it’s holding back the experiences our creators want to give their audiences.
We want to change that!
The Solve - Circuits V2
Circuits V2 is the newest version of logic in Rec Room. We’ve built it from the ground up to be more powerful, more expressive, and easier to use than Circuits V1. We want to empower our creators to build whatever they want, and Circuits V2 is a step down that path!
We’re still figuring out a lot of the details, so consider everything a work in progress, but here’s some new key features:
V2 circuits are event driven. No more 1/10th second tick! You can respond to events in near real-time, enabling faster interactions and more interesting behaviors. You can even make your own custom events, like “MyEvent” in the image below. Circuits can send and receive events anywhere in your room, and provide a really powerful way to message things far away, or to respond to many different inputs the same way. For example, every button in your room could fire a “ButtonPressed” event that triggers a Sound Effect Chip.
V2 circuits have an explicit order and chain of execution, that you define! Only circuits in the chain will execute. So, in the image below, only one of the two Show Notification chips will run per-execution, never both. No more checking if a number isn’t zero!
V2 circuits support types! Booleans (true/false), Integer numbers, Decimal numbers, Players, and Strings (like Player names), Lists, and more to come!
V2 circuits have Variables! Gone are the days of using a Random chip to store a value. We now have variables! You can set them whenever you want, and they’ll hold their value until they are set again.
V2 circuits no longer cost ink! V2 circuits instead use a new metric, “Heat”. V2 chips only cost heat if they execute. So, you can create massive amounts of chips, as long as they’re not all running constantly =].
V2 circuits run locally, meaning you don’t have to wait for network latency to execute local logic. We’ll dive deeper into V2 Networking in a later blog post!
Because V1 and V2 circuits are so different, the two systems will operate separately, in parallel. V1 circuits will not connect to V2 circuits (or vice versa). Your old rooms won’t break, and all the old functionality will remain available via V1 while we bring the new system up to speed!
The Future
Circuits V2 is in the “Kinda soon” bucket on our Creator Roadmap. You can expect to see them rolling out in 1-3 months. We’re very much trying to take our time and make sure we can deliver an awesome and powerful experience.To reiterate from our Creator Road Map post, the plan for rolling out Circuits V2 is as follows:
Phase 1 (“Kinda soon”) - Circuits V2 are released under an opt-in “preview” checkbox.
Creators can use V2 circuits early, but they might be a little unstable, or things might change around between versions.
Creators will probably have a mixture of V1 and V2 circuits in their rooms, as many features of V1 won’t be present in V2 yet.
V1 circuits remain the default logic system in Rec Room. We’ll still provide bug fixes and sometimes new features on V1 circuits if we need to.
Phase 2 (Medium Term) - Circuits V2 are made the default logic system.
You no longer have to opt-in to use them.
Circuits V1 are placed under an opt-in, “Legacy” checkbox. We’ll still provide high-priority bug fixes, but no new features will be added. Many of the things we’ll be adding to V2 wouldn’t be possible in the old system.
Phase 3 (Very Long Term) - Circuits V2 have been around for a long while, and are providing more utility than Circuits V1.
“Legacy” checkbox is removed. You can no longer edit V1 circuits, but they’ll probably continue to work in rooms that have V1 circuits saved.
More for another time...
We’re so impressed with everything creators have been able to build in Rec Room. It’s not uncommon for us to have no idea how some bit of logic was done, or how some effect was achieved. We can’t wait to see what you can do with all the new interactions and expressiveness of Circuits V2!
Stay tuned for further Circuits V2 Blog Posts, where we’ll dig into things like events, networking, planned features, and rollout news. If you have questions about a specific feature, a request, or a comment, let us know, and, as always, you can reach us directly at the social media links listed below!
Codes and Links have been unified and polished, and can now be used on all platforms! Codes are used for Meetups, Friend Invites, and Referrals with more to come. You can discover, create and enter all types of codes from the new Code button on the home screen of your watch. For your convenience, you can also enter any code from the login screens. When you create a code, you’ll also see a unique RecNet link for that code. This link is helpful for sharing with others: it displays the code, helps install Rec Room, and even supports Quick Play for iOS and PC users.
Meetup codes - Create a private instance of a room that only other people with the code can access. Great for meetings and hangouts where you don't want to have to manually invite everyone. The meetup code also works for non friends which makes it ideal for quickly meeting up with people not already on your friends list.
Friend codes - Single use invites that will automatically add the player to your friends list and bring them to wherever you are in Rec Room. If you're in a private room when they enter the code it will auto ping you saying they have requested to join. This is a great way to quickly invite a single person to your friends list and quickly bring them to you.
Referral codes - Referral codes should only be used when a referral event is running. By referring new players during an event you can unlock different rewards. Watch out for in game announcements or announcements on our social channels for when these events are happening. We will be running one soon! There's also an 'event details' section of the Codes screen that will show if an event is currently active or not along with the event details. The referral code ensures we attribute new players to your account so that we can issue you the event rewards. Referral code players are not added to your friends list so that you can share this code more widely to anyone who might be interested in trying out Rec Room. This system will be updated over time with new features like sending you a notification when someone has used your referral code. For now there is no way to tell how many people have used your code until we issue rewards at the end of the event.
We’re also starting a Selling Inventions Beta - A small group of players are selling inventions for tokens. These beta sellers were selected based on their creation skills, their history of giving quality feedback, and their good moderation standing. It’s an intentionally small group for the beta period as we test out the system and find the flaws. Anyone can buy these inventions from the Inventions store in the watch. There are some really great things there: costumes, furniture, animated characters, games, and more.
And some general bug fixes:
Fix for sign collision in disc golf, paintball, and soccer
Fixed bug where settings screen could show incorrect options
Improved navmesh baking to better respect the bounds of objects
Improved quick action menu sizing on non-VR platforms
Changed SetLeaderboardStat chip to use an 'invalid' mode by default. You will need to explicitly choose the assignment behavior in the configure menu before the chip works. In the case where a room instance breaks, the chip should revert to the invalid state preventing data loss for users.
As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...
This one's been a long time coming! We've seen so much enthusiasm and positivity around the Quests we've built over the years, and as long as community rooms have existed, the ability to build experiences with AI has consistently been one of our most requested features. Today we're excited to announce our first step in an ongoing journey to bring delightful, expressive, and robust AI tools into Rec Room for everyone to use! It all starts with Golden Trophy Goblins and JumboTron bots, but this is just the beginning, and you can look forward to many more AI features in the coming months! [For more information about future AI features, see the developer blog: https://recroom.com/developer-blog/2020/5/5/ai-in-rec-room-you-are-here.]
New Things for Creators to use:
The Spawner Gadget
This unassuming-yet-powerful little Gadget is now available in the Maker Pen Palette under Gadgets -> Other Gadgets. The purple base and beacon indicate the location for its spawned object, and the chip provides its circuit interface. This Gadget will ultimately be able to spawn just about anything in Rec Room, but today you can use it to spawn AI and some destructible props.
To spawn an AI, place one of these in your room, and then select it with the Configure Tool to select whatever you'd like to spawn:
Once you've selected something to spawn, you'll see a purple-tinted preview of the AI in the location where it will show up. To spawn an AI, send a circuit signal to the Red input pin!
Navigation Data
Navmeshwestern
Navmeshmuseum
We've built a lot of gameplay scenarios in our Quests and Laser Tag maps, but we've barely scratched the surface on the variety of environments these bots can play in. We're excited to see you push these limits, and because everyone builds environments differently, we've provided a visual indicator to help illustrate how these AI see the world and navigate through it. If a hallway is too narrow for a bot to fit through, you'll see that reflected in the navigation data. If a hill is too steep for AI to climb, you'll see that too, all without having to test all these scenarios manually.
For creators, this visualization is a powerful design aid and time saver to help make sure your environments support the gameplay you want for your players. This information will then be saved into the room, and you’ll only need to redo the bake step when something changes where AI can move in the room, like moving walls or furniture.
Rebakenavmesh
Before you can have AI running around your room, open your Watch Menu, and go to This Room -> Settings -> AI -> Navigation and hit the button to bake NavMesh.
If you forget where to find this, you can follow the in-game prompt that displays if you attempt to spawn AI in a room that doesn't have navigation data yet.
A couple quick tips for working with AI
We’ve added a couple features to make it easier to iterate on your gameplay setups.
First, we’ve added a Destroy All AI button to the AI Settings tab in room settings. This will clear out any AIs currently running around in your room. It’s easy to lose track of them as you’re testing a bunch.
Second, we’ve added the ability to specify whether a trigger volume should only trigger once.
With this set to true, if you just want one wave of spawns, your players will really only get one wave of spawns, rather than triggering spawns every time they touch a trigger volume.
We’ve also added a new Reset Gadgets button to the Maker Pen settings menu.
In Rec Room we have a very fluid line between creation and play. That said, as we add more complex features like AI, it’s helpful to be able to quickly try your experiences over and over, and see them the way your users would see them. This button provides a way to clear out non-permanent changes to the room, and reset the room back to the state it was in before circuits started running logic. This button currently only applies to the trigger count for Trigger Volumes, and the state of your Spawner Gadgets, but it’s likely we’ll expand this to reset other gadgets where it helps. If you work anything like we do, this one will make iteration on gameplay setups much smoother.
Lastly, we’ve added a configuration shortcut to our Game Rules chip in order to help Creators quickly configure their own games to run similar to our Quests.
If you're using a Game Rules chip for game states, Reset Gadgets also gets called automatically on game start and game end. So if you have AI running around during pre-game, they'll get cleaned up before the game starts. And if AI are still alive when the game ends, they'll get cleaned up when you transition to post-game. The Reset Gadgets button is currently the only way you can manually trigger it.
All right, that should be enough to get you started creating with AI in Rec Room! As we mentioned at the beginning, this is just the first step in our journey to bring the delight and expressiveness of AI to everyone in Rec Room. As always, give us your feedback, both good and bad, hit us with all your feature requests, and stay tuned for more exciting AI features to come!
While we were building our new AI systems, we also took this time as an opportunity to run a comb through our existing Quests to tune interactions and squash a whole bunch of bugs!
General Quest bug fixes:
Fixed spawn points being above the ground in some spots
Fixed lock icons not going away when you unlock mid level gates and end doors
Curse of the Crimson Cauldron:
Improved visibility and flow in the ladder section of the bell-tower
Pike Goblins' shields now react more physically to being hit by projectiles
Fixed a spot where you could get stuck on a ladder in the first level
Added some ramps to clean up areas where players were getting stuck
Fixed some black textures
Crescendo of the Blood Moon:
Fixed various props clipping into geometry
Sound effects that previous had no mixer assigned are now in SFX or Ambience
Fixed a visual on a skeleton hand that showed a book
Fixed a sprinkler effect that wasn't visible in the first level
Lowered miniboss' hit audio volume
Fixed enemy pathing issues in the Lower Sanctum level
Lowered Musket Enemy health from 100->75. This makes it a little more feasible to flank a squad of enemies
Made some navigation improvements to the ballroom level, specifically reaching the door at the end of the room
Fixed some mini-bosses not spawning silver
Minor performance improvements in some scenes
Adjusted volume of the fire traps to be more audible
Fixed a spot in the boss room that you could get stuck behind props
Fixed getting out of the map in the Grand Hall
The Rise of JumboTron:
Fixed a wall that had no collision in the first level
Fixed meshes being unable to utilize LODs
Fixed JT grenade damage radius visual
Fixed props clipping inside of each other
Fixed some collision clipping to allow smoother movement on some staircases
Isle of Lost Skulls:
Fixed a name not showing up on one of the loot chest pedestals
Fixed a bunch of audio sources that had no sound channel assigned
Fixed the hat being the wrong color for the third slot outfit in the ILS storefront.
Fixed an enemy killzone not working in the boss room
We also made some fixes to Laser Tag maps:
Hangar
Fixed Laser Launcher power weapon damage radius visual
Fixed bleachers collision to be more accurate
Fixed a hole in the map that let you leave the arena
CyberJunk City
Fixed some UVs on the orange side tower
Made the orange side tower's windows slightly taller so you can enter and exit from the windows easier
Re-tuned occlusion bake values to reduce areas where parts of the map disappear
Adjusted collision on the overpass so its more accurate
Fixed a window collision that allowed teleporters to get on top of a building in the map that was unintended
Unrelated we also added notification filtering settings to experience settings to help keep notification clutter down.
We also already have some updates to Clubs:
Inviting all friends or nearby players to a club now prompts you with a confirmation screen.- “Sort By” options for club join requests work correctly now
Club searches can now be run by hitting enter or submit, and provide more details about the search when no results are found
Searching for players on club invite and ban pages should be faster and more responsive
Club settings screen does not re-show Code of Conduct warning if the club is already public
Club and member search text doesn’t get cleared when navigating
Fixed a few typos in clubs pages, including the typography crime that was the word “CoOwner” :)
Added join date to club member details page
Updated validation and feedback messages for various club actions to be smaller and more concise
Hitting the back button after removing a member or deleting a club no longer results in a 404
Setting club photos now give better details about whether it is adding or replacing an existing photo
Also some general bug fixes:
Unfavorite button in player details page was truncated
Tooltips on room report categories were incorrect
Friends list was updating too often and making it unusable for people with many active friends
Chat message behavior improved for unread messages
Vote to Kick button behavior improved when initiating a vote to kick
Fix that prevents WalkVR players being able to teleport off of Royale gliders
Fix for getting stuck in strange animation states when player releases 2-handed tools (ex: Cannon)
Fix for animation tool desyncs when player joins room after it has been saved
Fix for not being able to set shape equip slots on costume dummy in screens
Fix for screens players not being able to fly when falling
Fix that makes 3D text display reflections and fog properly
Fixes crashing and stalling when using the clear all notifications button
Fixes comment UI paged grid from resetting to first page when cheering or reporting comment
Reduces max number of comments user can leave per minute from 4 to 2
Adjusted AFK detection on Steam VR to address issues with certain headsets
Improved audio prioritization in rooms with lots of players
As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...
Today we want to talk about the Selling Inventions Beta we just kicked off, and the other features we’re planning that will enable players to earn more tokens. We’ll get into what’s going on now, what we’re planning Kinda SoonTM (in the next 1-3 months), and what we’re excited about in the longer term. As with everything we do, we want to remain flexible here to adapt to how you are using the features, so the farther out the planning gets the looser it gets.
Inventions Store
What’s Going On Now
Interactive plinko game
A small group of players are selling inventions for tokens. These beta sellers were selected based on their creation skills, their history of giving quality feedback, and their good moderation standing. It’s an intentionally small group for the beta period as we test out the system and find the flaws.
Anyone can buy these paid inventions from the Inventions store in the watch. This is very similar to buying an avatar item from the clothing store. Sellers receive 70% of the tokens spent on their inventions delivered weekly.
Here are some examples of the cool stuff they’re selling. As always we’re blown away by the talent y’all have.
This is an early beta - we expect to find bugs and things that need to improve. Please hit us up with feedback on Discord. The chance to hear from you and work out the kinks is why we're running this first stage as a beta.
What We’ll Do Kinda SoonTM (1-3 months)
Pack of skinned weapons
The next few months will be about improving invention selling based on what we learned in the beta - fixing bugs, plugging security holes, and adding useful features for both sellers and buyers.
Addressing major bugs and security issues will be our first priority. We want everything to work smoothly and for people to be confident that their inventions aren’t going to get stolen.
Functioning keypad lock
We want to hear from you on what features you want. A couple features we’re already excited to add are giving buyers a way to check out inventions before they buy them, and giving sellers a way to see more data on which inventions are selling best.
Once that’s done, we’ll move to giving you ways to earn tokens in your rooms! We’re not sure what the first step of that is yet, but some ideas we’re playing with include:
Selling access to costumes, weapons, etc.
Selling your own room currencies
Selling access to subrooms
Selling RRO items and taking a cut for yourself
Which of these are you most excited about? What else do you wish was on this list?
What We’re Planning For Later
In the second half of this year and beyond, we’ll continue to grow the ways you can earn tokens from your creative efforts, and when we’re comfortable with the state of the community economy, we’ll roll out the ability to sell things to all RR+ members.
Then once you’re earning all these tokens, we want to let you cash them out for real money! That’s right, turn in your earned tokens for cash! It’s going to take us a while to get to this, but it’s the north star that we’re building toward.
We’re stoked to see what you build with tokens as part of the creator ecosystem. In addition to rewarding you for your efforts, we think we’ll see deeper, more persistent gameplay in rooms which will lead to more players joining the game, and a more rewarding community experience.
What are you planning on building once in-room economies are a thing? What inventions are you planning on selling? Let us know in the comments if you’re feeling it.
And check out our next (long awaited) developer blog about CircuitsV2 ;)
Last week we released a new feature called Room Comments, and this week we wanted to take a deep dive into why and what this means for Rec Room.
We thrive off of community feedback at Rec Room and we want to give creators a chance to engage in deeper collaboration within their communities. Internally we’ve talked about this as “audience connection” - we want creators to feel as connected to their audiences as we feel to our player community. You may have noticed some features aiming at this already - like the ability to put cheers and favoriting buttons in your rooms. We believe room comments are an important step and we want to continue making these investments in the “KindaSoon” time frame (1-3 months).
One of the goals for room comments was to encourage expressive feedback by displaying comments in-world. This allows players to show creators where they experienced delightful moments or encountered issues with a room. If you find a bug in one of your favorite rooms, you can save a lot of typing by leaving a comment right where you see it.
People might have a lot to say about your creations and so another goal was to make sure room comments don’t create visual clutter in rooms. We decided that making comments display on a togglable visual layer (similar to circuits) would give players control over when to view feedback versus creating or experiencing a room.
Finally, it was important to us that players be able to learn how to post and read comments without having to, for example, read this blog post. Even if you’re a new player in Rec Room we wanted feedback interactions to be easy to stumble across as you explore the game. Put another way, it was a goal to make room comments: intuitive, discover-able, and low-friction.
Feedback tool and hint
Leaving Feedback
We landed on an implementation called the Feedback Tool, which is available from the backpack or shortcut wheel just like the Maker Pen.
Dialog for leaving feedback
Players can use the new tool to leave feedback in the world. When holding the tool, players will see a placement hint showing where their feedback will appear to help with positioning. Pressing the action button will bring up a UI dialog where players can select the style of feedback to be left and enter a short message to the room creators. Currently, comments can be styled as feedback, ideas, or bug reports. Each displays with a different color in the world to help creators read and sort through feedback quickly.
Viewing Feedback
In order to reduce visual clutter, players will only see comment icons when holding the feedback tool. Unread comments appear brighter in the world to help creators focus on new feedback quickly. For the initial launch of this feature, we only display the most recent 100 comments, but we’re investigating better ways to display and sort larger amounts of comments in the future.
Creators will be able to view comments in their room by tapping the floating icons in-world which will toggle on and off a bubble showing the comment message, posting date, and commenter information. If you see multiple comments in the same area, it can be a good signal that players are reacting strongly to something - perhaps it’s a magical moment in your room which players love, or maybe it’s an area that is buggy. The comment types can help you understand at a glance and the feedback can help you learn more.
Types of feedback in-world
If the comment is constructive and appreciated, creators can easily cheer the commenter directly from the comment bubble. This creates a nice interaction loop between players and creators -- something which we’d love to encourage more as we develop new audience connection features. Creators can also delete comments and report commenters that are trolling or abusive.
In addition to viewing comments in-world, they can also be viewed from the “Comments” tab in the “This Room” UI and sorted by type. This is a great way to skim feedback quickly when you don’t need the spatial context.
“Comments” tab in the “This Room” UI
As a regular player in a room, you’ll still see the comment icons when holding the feedback tool, but they will be in a grey deactivated state. The intention behind this is to help players better position their own comments around existing comments. We’re thinking about this like a bulletin board where users will (hopefully) not want to place new comments overlapping with existing ones.
Notifications
Having players leave feedback in your rooms is only useful if you know it’s there, so we’ve built new notifications to let you know when feedback has been left in one of your rooms. However, we know it’s easy to be overwhelmed by notifications. To help cut down on the noise, creators will receive at most 1 watch notification per room and at most 1 iOS push notification per day. Watch notifications will tell creators how many new comments have been left in their rooms since they were last viewed. We hope that by condensing this information into a single message, the notifications are useful rather than overwhelming!
While thinking about how to make notifications more useful, we also took the opportunity to add filters for watch notifications to easily allow players to customize which notifications they want to see and which they want to ignore. Also, a new “Clear All Notifications” button will help more organized players quickly get to “inbox zero.”
Handling Abusive Feedback
We made the decision early on to only allow comments to be viewed by room creators, co-owners, and moderators. It’s important to us that players have control over how their rooms are presented to other players and for now we’ve decided that the safest method is to keep comments out of public view.
Comment messages are filtered through our standard content filters and if creators are feeling overwhelmed by a flood of feedback they can completely disable comments in their rooms via a room setting.
We’ve also implemented a limit (1 comment per minute) to prevent spamming.
Finally, placed a few restrictions on who can post comments to a room. Junior players are not allowed to leave comments, nor are players who have been reported too many times recently or blocked by one of the room owners. Rec Room admins have the ability to remove commenting permissions from players who are abusing the system and have tools to quickly verify reports and delete offensive messages. We trust that with these measures we can keep creators from abusing the system and ensure that room comments bring more value than grief.
As always, we’ve been thinking about where this feature goes next. It would be amazing to let creators filter, sort, and mark comments for public view or favorite them.
We also want to invest more in this feature to drive a deeper interaction between creators and individual players. Right now, you can cheer a player from their comment, but that’s a very surface-level interaction. We’ve brainstormed ideas around adding a thread system that would allow creators to reply to feedback creating ongoing conversations. Ultimately this is about furthering the goal of creating meaningful connections between creators and their audiences which will remain the main focus for future iterations.
Like this article about the Feedback Tool? We always like your feedback. Find us on social media and keep an eye on this blog for our next update on creators selling their own inventions!
As we revealed in last week’s blog post (and hinted in previous AMAs), Rec Room has been working hard to bring AI to creators. We want to talk about our plans publicly as soon as we can (now!) because we’re really excited about releasing these features.
Why AI?
^ClockingOff by @BDSwagMuffin
We know you’ve wanted AI for a very long time. Internally, we’ve loved building quests and we know you want to do that too. So badly that you’ve found ways that honestly amaze us.
We know how difficult these rooms have been to build, and we want to invest in bringing you tools to make these experiences easier to craft.
^BloomingAdventure by @Demoro
Bringing AI to creators is a large endeavor, so we are going to be doing this in stages. This approach lets us get tools to you faster and enables us to innovate and adjust in between stages based on your feedback from the las phase. We’re referring to each of these stages as “phases” internally, and we’re very close to getting Phase 1 to you.
Now let’s go into more detail about what these “phases” mean for rolling out AI.
Phases
For us, a phase encompasses a set of tools that unlocks new scenarios for creators, and takes us one step closer to a fully capable AI tool set. We’ve outlined at least 4 phases long term.
Phase 1 focuses on making our bots, starting with our initial cast of Goblins and JumboTron bots, available for you to use in your own rooms. The initial scripting capabilities for these bots will be pretty lean, but we’re keeping it lean intentionally so that we can iron out a whole bunch of complexity and expand our AI systems with confidence in the near future. We’ll go into more detail about phase 1 below.
Phase 2 is all about taking the simple building blocks from Phase 1 and expanding them to include all the same AI scripting capabilities we rely on for our Quests and Laser Tag rooms. As such we’d start enabling things like being able to spawn bots in random locations within a region, assign bots to your own custom patrol paths, or even assign bots to different teams so that you can have a mix of hostile and friendly AIs interacting with one another. For some creators, Phase 2 means that they’ll be able to easily build a wide variety of Quest experiences. For others, this will be the best time to build an awesome new tower defense game, or horde mode room! We want you to be able to channel your passion and creativity into building your own adventures and telling your own stories, rather than fretting over details of how to just get things to work! During Phase 2, you will still be limited to our own bots, but we’ll be adding in even more as we update them to work in any room.
Phase 3 is all about establishing the pipeline for being able to customize AI, save new versions of them, and republishing them to share with others. For example, you could make a giant yellow skeleton who moves really slowly but has quadruple hit-points. It won’t be the most flexible customization in its first incarnation, but this phase is really all about laying the foundation of the system so that it can handle all the magic of fully customizable, built-from-the-ground-up AI that we see as the ultimate destination for all this effort.
Phases 4 and beyond are entirely about giving you low-level user-friendly building blocks for creating your own AI. This includes everything from what they look like, how they animate, what sounds they make, and much much more. Our cast of bots has made for a lot of joy in Rec Room, but we’re most excited to see what you all would make if you had the tools to do it yourselves from the ground up. We can’t wait to get there, but we have to acknowledge that it’s going to take a lot of work to make it happen. Aside from having an abundance of passion for doing the work, and a belief that using these tools will feel more like working on electronics and motors than like programming a game, the honest truth here is that we won’t know the details of how this system works until we build everything leading up to it. The way it ultimately shapes up and feels will be evolving with every release as we hear from our wonderful, engaged creators all along the way.
Beyond these phases, the sky's the limit on how many and how varied AI building blocks we can add to extend the system. This is a large part of the reason we want to release things incrementally, so we can prioritize tools based on creator feedback. We can’t wait to see what creators will do once they aren’t limited by just our RRO bots, whether that be custom NPC in quests or something we haven’t even thought of doing.
As we mentioned last time, AI Phase 1 is slated for release in the next month, Phase 2 soon after in the next 3 months.
Since we’re so close to release, we want to share how Phase 1 has been going.
Phase 1
The goal of this phase is to make the bots from our quests and RRO content available to creators in their own rooms. Internally, we also had to make sure our own Quests remained intact and that we were setting ourselves up for technical success in later phases. The best part of this phase is that AI will be in your hands after release, and we can start hearing your feedback. We know you’re going to make things we never would have anticipated and we can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with!
This phase will let you:
Spawn any of our Goblins or JumboTron bots in your rooms
Set intentional spawn locations for these bots
Spawn them based on circuit signal
A lot of this relies on our new spawner gadget...
Spawner Gadget
The Spawner Gadget spawns an object - this could be a traditional prop or an AI. This means to spawn one of our RRO enemies in a room, you find the spawner gadget in the palette and place it where the enemy should spawn. Then you configure the spawner gadget to select the object to spawn.
Then to actually cause bots to spawn, you activate the red input pin of the gadget with a circuit signal.
How do bots work in custom rooms?
Good question. We've built a lot of gameplay scenarios in our Quests and Laser Tag maps over the years, but we've barely scratched the surface on the variety of environments these bots can play in. We're excited to see you push these limits, and because everyone builds environments differently, we've provided a visual indicator to help illustrate how these AI see the world and navigate through it. If a hallway is too narrow for a bot to fit through, you'll see that reflected in the navigation data. If a hill is too steep for AI to climb, you'll see that too, all without having to test all these scenarios manually.
For creators, this visualization is a powerful design aid and time saver to help make sure your environments support the gameplay you want for your players. This information will then be saved into the room, and you’ll only need to redo the bake step when something changes where AI can move in the room, like moving walls or furniture.
Before you can have AI running around your room, open your Watch Menu, and go to This Room -> Settings -> AI -> Navigation and hit the button to bake NavMesh.
This information will then be saved into the room, and you’ll only need to redo the bake step when you make a change to something that affects where AI can move in the room, like walls or furniture.
What about ink cost?
In early tests, it felt confusing to balance AI ink budget against regular ink budget. We’ve settled on a system where spawned AI does have an ink cost, but it’s a very small one on par with a small prop, and it only applies once you actually spawn the AI. Each bot also has an “AI cost,” which contributes to a unique AI budget separate from room ink. The budget, which you can find under a room’s AI settings tab, only applies to currently spawned AI, regardless of how much regular ink is used in the room.
Before spawning we check the ink budget for props and the AI budget for AIs. If all can be added, we spawn them. If the objects cannot be spawned, the requests are tracked in a global queue that is serviced as soon as ink or AI budget becomes available.
A couple quick tips for working with AI
We’ve added a couple features to make it easier to iterate on your gameplay setups. First, we’ve added a Destroy All AI button to the AI Settings tab in room settings. This will clear out any AIs currently running around in your room. It’s easy to lose track of them as you’re testing a bunch. Second, we’ve added the ability to specify whether a trigger volume should only trigger once.
With this set to true, if you just want one wave of enemies, your players will really only get one wave of enemies, rather than triggering spawns every time they touch a trigger volume.
And lastly, we’ve added a new button to Reset Gadgets in the Maker Pen settings menu.
In Rec Room we have a very fluid line between creation and play. That said, as we add more complex features like AI, it’s helpful to be able to quickly try your experiences over and over, and see them the way your users would see them. This button provides a way to clear out non-permanent changes to the room, and reset the room back to a the state it was in before circuits started running logic. This button currently only applies to the trigger count for Trigger Volumes, and the state of your Spawner Gadgets, but it’s likely we’ll expand this to reset other gadgets where it helps. If you work anything like we do, this one will make iteration on gameplay setups much smoother.
What’s next?
We look forward to releasing AI in the next month and seeing everything you are going to do with the Phase 1 tools! Rest assured that as we get closer to a release of future phases that you’ll see similar communication via this blog, our AMAs, and our Discord. See you soon with an update on our feedback tools, and until then, give it your Rec Room best!
We've added a new way for players to leave feedback in rooms they like in Rec Room -- the feedback tool! You can find the feedback tool in your backpack and use it to leave feedback, ideas, or bug reports in any user-created room. When holding the feedback tool, you'll see where other players left feedback in a room and, if you're a room creator, co-owner, or moderator, you'll be able to read the feedback by tapping the floating icons. To quickly manage feedback in a room you own, you can view recent comments in the new "Room Comments" tab under the room details UI. Creators can cheer commenters from comment bubbles to show their appreciation for their thoughtful feedback.
Creators will also receive watch notifications when their rooms have new comments. You can jump to these rooms right from the notification. Also, if your notifications list is getting a little too full, we've added a "Clear All Notifications" button to quickly clean up your inbox. Enjoy!
We also built out subroom welcome mats: you can now configure the welcome mat to support sub rooms and set the spawn point based on what room the player is coming from.
Also some bug fixes:
Fixed bug where you couldn’t scroll past 10 clubs
Fixed missing level up rewards
Fixed infinite consumable bug
Fixed bug that meant leaderboard stat values were truncated
Fixed an issue where costumes didn’t respects world fade settings
Fixed bug where arrows hung in the air when dropping the bow
As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...
We promised it was coming Soon(tm). You waited. You asked on the Discord, you asked on the Reddit, you asked in AMAs. Well, the wait is over because this update brings:
New Clubs feature! Rec Room Clubs allow you to create and manage communities of like-minded players!
You can create a club for any topic/interest/reason you like (Code of Conduct permitting). Want to create a club for fans of scary horror rooms? You can do that! Want to create a club to discuss your favorite books, movies, games, etc.? You can do that too! We hope to see clubs large and small, public and private, open and invite-only, covering a wide array of topics and interests!
You can use any room you created as a clubhouse for your club, and club members can choose to spawn in the clubhouse by default (bypassing the Dorm Room).
Rec Room UPDATE - Clubs - how to join, create, and manage a club
For a quick overview of how Clubs work, check out this video:
Clubs is a new top-level button in the watch!
NOTE: Clubs is built with a preview of a new UI system we're working on. So when you press the Clubs button you'll be transported to a _strange new world_ where the UI looks different. Lots of work remains to make it polished, so please give us feedback on what you like/don't like about it!
Once you're in the Clubs UI, you can browse existing Clubs, or tap "CREATE CLUB" to create your own.
You can be a member of as many clubs as you want, but you can only create five clubs at any one time. We have limited it because we expect you to actively manage and moderate your club in accordance with the Code of Conduct. If it attracts too many reports you may receive moderation penalties including removal of your club.
Please note that the new clubs feature replaces the old clubs we experimented with a loooong time ago on rec.net. Old club creators will be notified of the new system and the old clubs will be deprecated in 30 days after this update. Old clubs are not compatible with the new clubs system so creators will need to create them again in the new system. This means the old club name in your bio will disappear. But we are looking to bring that same functionality back soon to show and link to all of the new clubs you create or join! The good news is you can now be in as many clubs as you like and there is no limit on the number of players that can be in a club.
New clubs don't have rec.net pages yet but we want to get to that work soon!
We can't wait to see the clubs you create, and we hope you find them useful and inspiring. This is a brand new feature, and we have plenty of improvements planned. So please let us know what you like/don't like about clubs and help us make them better!
We've also added another highly experimental new feature: The ^ARRoom! This "room" works using the AR (augmented reality) capabilities of the latest iOS devices to bring the full Rec Room experience into the real world! Check it out:
https://twitter.com/recroom/status/1238896912465448961
iOS Users can go to Watch > Create > My Rooms > AR Room to enter AR mode. From there you can use the Maker Pen as normal to add props/shapes/etc. Rec Room will scan your room so it knows where the various surfaces are (walls, floor, tables, etc.) and things will bounce off them, etc.
Players on other platforms can be invited to the "AR Room" by the iOS player. Rec Room will represent the scanned surfaces as colored shapes, so you'll be able to have some idea of what the remote room looks like! It's pretty weird, to be honest, but it's a science experiment and fun to play with =]
Please note that the "AR Room" cannot be saved.
iOS players can also play in any room using experimental AR Locomotion. In addition to the on-screen buttons, you can walk around your real-world space to move and aim your device to look.
Please let us know what you think of AR mode!
As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...
And we’re back! Our second edition of the developer blog gives you a sneak peak at our roadmap for creator-facing features. We have some powerful new tools for creators in the pipeline, and we’re excited to share a little bit of our plan. Creator tools aren’t the only thing we have cooking, it’s just our focus for today. Other plans will have to wait for their own time to shine [|=)]
I don’t remember seeing a previous roadmap...
That’s true! We haven’t shared roadmaps in the past. Instead we tend to say that some features are coming “SoonTM”. We aren’t trying to keep you in the dark - roadmaps simply don’t align with how we typically work at Rec Room. There are so many things we’d like to build and only a small team to tackle them. We constantly re-evaluate priorities, meaning our plans change a lot. This allows us to stay responsive to the needs of the community and gives ourselves flexibility to go after the best opportunities… but it also means it’s hard to promise a long term roadmap. If your plans change every couple of weeks, a roadmap is likely to be out of date shortly after sharing.
So why share a roadmap now?
Well, for one, creators have asked for a roadmap for a long time! We know you want more insight into our plans. All of the above is still true -- we value flexibility and will continually reevaluate priorities. At the same time, we want to share more info with you. We want you to hear about our plans early so you can help shape what we build.
We’ve reached a point where our creative tools are mature enough that we have confidence many of our big feature plans won’t (entirely) change. Now seems like the right time to try sharing a roadmap. So consider this an experiment - we’re going to share our plans in a way that gives you a look at what’s to come, while maintaining the flexibility we need to do our best work. If you like this view into our plans and it goes well, we’ll probably try this again in a few months. If not, we’ll learn from the first attempt and iterate to a better version -- that’s the Rec Room way.
Below is a look at some of our creator feature plans. Rather than claim a particular date for a given feature, we’ll use a very Rec Room approach and label things as “Very Soon” and “Kinda Soon”. It seems only appropriate that increments of SoonTM are adopted as our roadmap measuring stick -- this also corresponds with how we’re looking at the roadmap internally. Here’s what these terms mean:
Very SoonTM -- these features are likely to come out within a month. They are probably being worked on as you read this.
Creator roadmap of April 30, 2020.
Kinda SoonTM -- these features are likely to come out within 1-3 months. This includes features we intend to work on next + larger scoped features that are actively being developed but need more time to land. If you see multiple features within this bucket, you can assume the ordering indicates the order in which we plan to implement them at this point.
A final reminder - this is only for creator-facing features. We have lots of other good stuff that won’t show up here. If something we’ve talked about in AMAs isn’t mentioned below that doesn’t mean it’s cancelled. Even within creation, we’re certain to add some features which aren’t on the roadmap. This only captures the large items you can plan on.
Without further ado, here’s our Creator Roadmap!
But what does all this mean?
There’s a bunch of exciting stuff coming up! Here’s a quick note about each category…
AI - AI is coming to creators … finally! This is a big investment and there are a bunch of ways we could handle it. We’re choosing to release AI in phases, with each phase representing a meaningful chunk of functionality for Creators. Phase 1 is in the “Very SoonTM” bucket which means, internally, we’re playing with versions of it right now. It’s rad. Expect to hear more on this in the next dev blog.
Circuits v2 - Circuits continue to be an amazing tool for creators, but you’re pushing the limits of what they can do. We want to shatter those limits and unlock even more creativity for you - that’s what “Circuits v2” is all about. Don’t worry, original circuits aren’t going away and all your awesome rooms will continue to work. You’ll just have an even more powerful tool to use. Will there be a blog post about this? No. There will be many. There’s tons of fun info to share. Expect the first one in about a month!
Communication tools - As a dev team, we love interacting with players and creators. It’s hugely rewarding to hear your thoughts on the game and ideas for making Rec Room even better. We want to make it easy for room creators to have those same kinds of conversations with their fans. Very SoonTM, players will be able to leave feedback for creators in their rooms. And Kinda SoonTM, creators will be able to better interact with their subscribers.
Creator clubhouse - Clubs is a brand new feature in our latest update. Leveraging the club system, we’re establishing an official creator club hosted by @Meriesa. It’s a place to socialize with other creators, share ideas, learn, and celebrate the awesome things you’re making in game. Expect this space to evolve over time and take advantage of new Clubs features as they are added.
Wrapping up…
We’re pumped about what’s ahead for creators - and we hope you are too! We can’t wait to get these features out to you and see what you do with them. It’s the most exciting time yet to be a creator in Rec Room.
If there’s a feature you want to know more about, let us know in the comments below. We’re planning out our future blog posts now and would love to hear what you’re most interested in! Thanks to everyone who left comments on the first article - we read them all. As a reminder, you can also reach out to us directly on social media (links below). And stay tuned to the developer blog for our next article, which will shed more light on our AI plans...
Hey everyone, we're excited to announce the grand opening of the community door in the Stunt Runner lobby! Here, you can play through a featured collection of some incredible courses built by your fellow Rec Room community members.
Stunt Runner is just the start. We're planning to use Room Playlists more broadly to feature community content in the coming months. Stay tuned for opportunities to get your rooms featured!
Hey folks and welcome to the inaugural developer blog post from Rec Room! The dev team wanted the opportunity to talk about some of the technical and design challenges we face. We’ve heard that many of you are interested in having more info about the Rec Room development process and this is our chance to give you a peak behind the curtain. We’re going to be putting these out about once a month, in parallel with feature releases.
And now without further ado, the first of hopefully many topics, Room Playlists!
We recently built a system for Room Playlists, which act as a grouping for rooms. Much like a music playlist allows you to listen to a group of songs without forcing you to pick each individual song, Room Playlists support easily transitioning between rooms without leaving the context of a playlist.
Question - isn’t ^Paintball, as we know it already a playlist? It feels that way because you auto-transition at the end of games, and, in fact, our mental model of ^Paintball is that it behaves like a playlist. But under the hood ^Paintball is just a room where each map is its own subroom -- this is an important distinction for a few reasons. First, all maps in ^Paintball must be owned by Coach (because they are part of a room owned by Coach). Second, due to the way RRO rooms are managed, we can only update ^Paintball by shipping a client update. And finally, the auto-transition and voting behavior is a special case for our rooms, rather than a general system creators can hook into.
With the introduction of playlist support, we have the ability to group separate rooms (not just subrooms) from different creators under a single entry point for players -- this could be via a button in the watch or through a door, such as the one in the ^StuntRunner lobby. And we generalized our voting logic to be able to work with playlists.
We think Room Playlists are an important addition to the Rec Room ecosystem for both players and creators:
Players get an easy way to consistently find a collection of great community content.
Players have a higher chance to find full rooms for community games - matchmaking works at a playlist level to try to aggregate users together.
Creators have a new avenue for being featured -- being included in a popular playlist will help more users find your awesome maps.
Our first use of Room Playlists is a hand-curated list of community Stunt Runner rooms picked by our lead designer, RadiantBlur. These awesome community rooms are now available via the previously locked Community door in the Stunt Runner lobby or via your watch under StuntRunnerCommunity. We have plans to do a lot more with playlists in the future, but before we talk about that, let’s look at what we wanted to accomplish with playlists...
Community Door is Open!
Goals of the Feature
At Rec Room, after we have an idea for a feature but before we start building, we like to make an explicit list of goals. Goals focus our work and help us prioritize the important bits. So to understand our implementation of Room Playlists, it’s helpful to look at the goals we used. Here’s a sampling of the goals we started with:
Playlists can seamlessly slot into games you already know and love: one day a door leads to the existing rotation of RRO maps. The next day, it could lead to a rotation of Community-made maps.
When entering a room as part of a playlist, clearly message the room name and the creator’s name in a consistent way. We want playlists to shine a light on creators.
Make sure new or casual players know when they’re in a playlist so they can differentiate between community maps and Rec Room Originals.
All playlists have a single, non-transferable owner who made the playlist. Rec Room Original Community Playlists will be made by Coach.
Playlists can include rooms from any number of different creators.
Playlists can have rooms added, removed, or shuffled at any time without a client update.
Playlists show up in the room browser sorted by hot score, just like the rooms they appear alongside.
Join-in-progress support is specified per room, not at the playlist level.
Users can access playlists via doors in the world or buttons in the watch.
A playlist button in the watch is visually distinct from a room button. Players should be able to understand at a glance whether a watch button links to a room or to a playlist.
Player presence indicates if a player is in a playlist.
Playlists are resilient to null entries, removed entries, etc. Worst case, players bounce to their dorm rooms with an error message.
Playlist information screen
There’s a lot packed into this list! These goals formed the core of what we felt Room Playlists needed to do. During brainstorming, we also had some “nice to have” features we wanted but felt were not ship blockers. Typically we refer to these as “stretch features” -- they may get cut, but we’re going to do our best to fit them in if there’s time.
Here are the important stretch features we wanted (and in this case, implemented) for playlists:
“This Playlist” menu while in a Playlist - note the “Next” button
Voting. We wanted to promote the special case voting logic in ^Paintball to support Room Playlists. One wrinkle that playlists introduce to voting is that not everyone in a room is necessarily in the same playlist. Players from different playlists can be matched into the same room instance. How should voting be handled in this case? We decided that a separate vote would occur for each group of players, based on the playlist they are in.
Skipping. Similar to music playlists, we wanted a “Next” button in the watch so that players can “skip” a room. This let’s people easily skip rooms they might not want to play. It’s also a critical feature if we want to include non-game rooms in playlists (which we do!) -- these rooms won’t have an “end of game” moment where we can automatically transition you. The skip button gives players a way to continue through playlists containing non-game rooms (eg story rooms, endless pvp rooms, art rooms, etc).
Touring. While in a playlist, players transition from one room to the next, together as a unit, much like in ^Paintball now. For our first playlist, we wanted this to be as smooth as possible. This means it’s important that StuntRunnerCommunity maps we choose to feature support the same number of players. We opted not to impose a requirement on the playlist system itself and instead are going to handle this via curation - we will only choose rooms if they support four players. That’s the right outcome for a Stunt Runner playlist. By solving this via curation and leaving the system more flexible, we’ll have the option to make more varied playlists going forward.
The Future
There are a number of things we hope to use playlists for in the future. One of the short term plans is converting Paintball into a playlist proper. We’ve always thought of ^Paintball as a playlist internally, and now we have the tools to support this properly. In addition to a more robust foundation, converting ^Paintball into a playlist would give us the opportunity to experiment with showcasing amazing creator maps within the Paintball rotation. We think this will benefit Paintball regulars by adding excellent, new maps to the mix, and benefit creators by funneling lots of users to their creations. Stay tuned for more details Soon™ [|=)]
Longer term, we’ll experiment with playlists outside of Paintball and Stunt Runner. If Paintball is our Pop and Stunt Runner is our Electronic playlists, we could depart into all kinds of other genres to highlight any number of styles of rooms. Doing a themed playlist around outstanding escape rooms or a specific style aesthetic of rooms - GoldenEye! Roaring 20s! Cyberpunk! There’s a lot of potential here.
And, of course, we want to eventually release playlists as a tool for creators. We need to iron out the kinks first, but our hope is that creators can make and share their own playlists. We really believe Playlists open up a lot of doors (joke intended!).
That wraps things up for our first dev blog. Let us know what you think and what future topics you’d most like to hear about in the comments below!
Meetups have been polished up for your convenience!
There is now an extra dialog when creating a meetup to prevent accidents. Remember that when you're in a meetup, your friends can only get to you by invite or with the meetup code/link!
Your last successful meetup code is remembered for you.
You are now notified when you enter a meetup, either when joining or when the private room instance you're in is converted to a meetup.
Additionally:
This update is a minor engine upgrade that should get rid of the "Rec Room Requires Focus" warning on PC. We also hope it will allow us to get rid of the annoying "crash on exit" on PC which has been happening forever, but we haven't quite landed that change yet.
Please note that we still have a major engine upgrade in the works!
In order to limit violations of the Code of Conduct, we are now launching Rec Room on PC via Easy Anti-Cheat (aka "EAC"):
EAC may cause certain anti-virus programs to flag Rec Room as suspicious. If you experience this, please check these links for instructions on how to ensure Rec Room is allowed to run on your system:
This update includes two experimental features (currently available only to PC players) - you can now share your Windows desktop in a private room, and you can now share your Windows audio in a private room. We've been using these features for team meetings, etc. during this time of remote work. They are perfect for meetups like presentations (use your desktop PC to share your slides!) or parties (someone can DJ the party). These features are highly experimental, and are only available to players who've contacted us directly. If you'd like to try them, please email sciencedept@recroom.com.
This updates also makes it much easier to get together with friends and colleagues in Rec Room! Now they can easily join you in any private instance of a room via Meetups.
To create a Meetup, visit the This Room page in your watch and press the Meetup button. From there, just share the Meetup Code or Link with your friends.
Meetup Codes work on ALL platforms! If you're on iOS you have the added option of using a Meetup Link. Friends on iOS with Rec Room already installed can just click the link to go straight to your private instance. For all platforms, the Meetup Code can be entered from the Play menu in your watch. On iOS you can also enter the Meetup Code during login.
We've tried hard to make the feature easy to use for both experienced Rec Room players, and people that are totally new. Meetups work great for office meetings, presentations, happy hours, virtual dance parties...you get the idea =]
As part of our ongoing efforts to make sure everyone in Rec Room is a delightful social playmate, we've brought Dancin' and Wavin' to screen platforms (PlayStation or PC with controller, or PC with mouse and keyboard).
[1]
Be sure to checkout the latest controls help via the Shortcut Menu if you're playing with a controller or mouse and keyboard, because there's a lot of cool new stuff to play with:
Note that the Shortcut Menu is now accessed by pressing and holding the Tab key
Speaking of shortcuts:
The 'neutral' emote (aka "straight face") is back for all players! There are now two pages of emotes in the shortcut menu, so we can fit more dumb faces =] [2]
Screen players have a new Cheers gesture. It lets you do a thumbs up animation (thumbs down if you wave down) and send cheers by targeting players. Find it in the shortcut menu on the gestures page.
We've refined dance moves for all screen players including new pointing and conversational sets so you can really talk with your hands. On controller, tap down on the d-pad to access dances and poses. Or use the shortcut menu.
Some tweaks, bug fixes, and quality of life improvements for Creators:
Maker Pen functionality should now be the same across controller, VR, and touch inputs. This includes giving screen players the ability to connect tubes on subsequent draws, and sets us up for more efficient development of new Maker Pen features!
We've improved the "Make Invention" workflow on screens - after selecting pieces for your invention, you'll get a '…' menu option to "Make Invention"
Maker Pen - Pivot point now stays when performing split on shapes
Maker Pen - Pivot point can be recentered on the selected shape(s) via the ... menu
Maker Pen - All shapes can quickly be selected via the ... menu
Maker Pen - Pivot point visuals are now correctly rotated with the object
Animations - New option added to rotate around pivot point to make animation editing easier.
Animations - Fixed issue where animations would not stop when sending signals.
Animations - Animation slider now works properly for keyframes with times less than 1 second
Animations - Undo can be performed on both add and remove of animation keyframes
Animations - Odd behaviors when editing an animation while sending it 1 in reset solved.
Animations - Fixed an issue where users couldnt join because of empty animation gizmos (can no longer delete last frame)
Animations - Start/stop and reset signals that are negative numbers now counts as true.
Maker Pen - Fix center scaling. It now scales properly from the center without moving the object.
Maker Pen - Prop menu focuses on last selected props when returning to menu
This update introduces Rec Room Plus, an optional paid membership program for Rec Room players. Rec Room Plus Membership costs $7.99/month, and includes:
You get 6000 tokens (r6000) monthly - a $10 USD value, delivered in installments of r1500 per week
One four-star box per week
10% discount in Rec Room stores that accept tokens
Exclusive access to the RR+ section of the item store
To become a member:
Click the Rec Room Plus button from any token store.
Click the Info button if you want to read more about how it works. For example, due to platform restrictions, you'll need to log in each week to claim your tokens and boxes.
Click the buy button and confirm, and you're a Rec Room Plus member!
Please note:
Rec Room Plus members must log in each week to claim your token and box rewards (due to platform restrictions, we can only check your membership status when you are logged in).
Rec Room Plus membership and benefits are cross-platform except:
Oculus platforms do not yet support memberships (but you can sign up on another platform, then keep playing on Oculus)
If you sign up for RR+ on PlayStation®, you must claim your tokens on PlayStation®.
If you sign up for RR+ on any other platform, you can't claim your tokens on PlayStation®.
We hope you'll check it out and decide to join the plus club!
This update also introduces cross-platform inventories! Items are no longer locked to specific platforms. Many thanks to our platform partners for working with us to make this possible!
This update also includes lots of new emotes in the shortcut menu (and Expresso menu in VR) 😉😬😳😅🤢 and matching emojis in Room Chat.... these are allowing us to express our feelings about the headlines:
BTW, we in no way mean to make light of the coronavirus situation. We're feeling it here in Seattle, and our hearts are with everyone who is sacrificing to mitigate and minimize the impact of this disease. We want to give a special shout out to nurses, the best people. Stay safe out there, everyone, and WASH YOUR HANDS WITH SOAP!
OK... awkward segue back to ship notes:
There is also a new AFK animation 😴
iOS now supports AR facial expressions! When taking a selfie or dancing, use the TrueDepth camera (on the iPhone X and newer) to control your character's face. Improved AR tracking in both contexts.
Access the facial expressions via Expresso (VR), the Shortcut Menu (iOS and now...)
We've added/updated the Shortcut Menu for Screens and iOS players!
Shortcut menu features include:
Swift access to room chat, tool menus, your camera, the maker pen, and more
Quickly toggle your Mic Mute setting at any time, or use the shortcut menu for Push To Talk
Maker Pen: Common Maker Pen actions like Move, Rotate, Scale, Clone, Undo, and more are readily available at your fingertips. And for iOS players, you now have even more Maker Pen shortcuts than before! We hope this makes creating awesome content even easier.
Emotes: Whether you want to laugh at a funny joke, or shed a tear over a sad story, we've got a variety of facial expressions available.
Gestures: Need to point at something? Want to quickly high five your teammates after a close victory? It's all here.
Inventory: Much like the old inventory menu, screens players can access their holstered items on this page.
Accessing the Shortcut Menu replaces the old inventory radial menu on screens:
Controller: Press and hold Triangle (PS4) or Y (Xbox controller)
Keyboard: Press and hold the Tilde key
On iOS, the shortcut menu is always available along the top of the screen. The shortcut menu bar at the top has gotten a fresh coat of paint, and now supports paging to different sets of shortcuts!
Screens players will notice that we've removed the "quick comms" shortcuts (d-pad on controller, 1-4 on keyboard). We hope the Shortcut Menu is an even easier way to access those actions. And we've got plans coming for those buttons we've freed up!
Are there any other actions you wish you had shortcuts for? Let us know!
But wait... there's more...
For creators:
We added 40 new props and 3 new materials to the palette for you to use in your rooms, including the Whip from CBM! Yes you can finally stop asking @gribbly about it!
Creator Feedback Buttons!
There are new Creator Feedback Buttons in the Maker Pen Palette
The buttons are equivalent to tapping "Subscribe" or "Cheer" in the watch, but they are physical buttons you can integrate into your room design. Note that the first placement of the buttons doesn't cost ink (subsequent placements do)
Find them in Maker Pen Palette > Props > Dynamic
Buttons are now set to "Environment" by default (so they won't drop to the ground when you spawn them)
Doors and holotar are also "Environment" by default now.
Players can now send each other friend links in iOS. Clicking one of these links on iOS will automatically launch Rec Room, add each other as friends, and bring you to the same room so you can start playing together right away.
There's a new Referral tab in the Profile page of the watch. You should only use this page when we announce a referral event is going on! Then you can refer players to Rec Room using your @username and earn rewards. Look out for the first event in the in game announcements or on our social channels: recroom.com/community
Plus bug fixes/tweaks:
Players on Oculus platforms can use their grip trigger to grab bowstrings again
Fixed a bunch of objects that didn't have proper hover highlight feedback.
Tweaked object previews in the Maker Pen Palette to give a better view of the object.
Fixed a bug causing the Sun Light to cost less ink than it is supposed to. It will cost slightly more now.
Fixed some visual bugs in the Sunset Cinema map.
Opened a path on the Red side of the Sunset Cinema map from the Cinema area to behind the screen (matches the blue side now).
Made it easier to get into the diner through the windows in the Sunset Cinema map.
Fixed the grenade visual not matching the damage radius. Changes should reflect the proper damage radius game-wide.
Fixed bug where one hand would twitch when you closed the other hand
We're back with an update! Super excited to share a bunch of stuff we've been hard at work on recently. This is a big one, so strap in!
Sunset Drive In Preview
Introducing a brand new paintball map: "Sunset Cinema" - the sun sets over this classic roadside destination, where the locals enjoy one last round of paintball before settling in for a night of silver screen entertainment! Emotions fly high, and the paint flies higher in this highly varied collection of mid and long-ranged splatting environments.
The new map features a brand new paintball gun: The Paint Thrower - Hold your ground with this awesome new splat-tastic area-denial powerhouse!
For the more strategic players out there, the new map also introduces Paint Mines - earn your keep with discerning placement and relish the payoff of a distant splat long after the fact!
We're taking the release of the new map as an opportunity to roll out some bug fixes, fresh tunings, and mechanical tweaks we've been working on:
Spawn invincibility time increased from 3s to 5s
Respawn delay increased from 3s to 5s
Removed the speed penalty for flag carriers (applies to all locomotion styles)
Tuned Sniper Scope to provide a more zoomed-in view
Spawning changes: we noticed that on every paintball map there was potential to spawn in-view of an opponent. We have updated our Paintball respawn logic to factor in opponent visibility, so this should be much improved going forward.
Spawning changes (Quarry): There is now a sniper and spawn point on the top level of each base in Quarry.
For non-VR players, we went through the various weapon poses and tuned them to be better aligned with the reticle
Sprint cooldown - Sprint now incurs a cooldown after shooting, and before auto-sprint engages again.
We've retuned the Paint Shotgun:
Total range reduced from 18m to 15m
Reduced projectile velocity
Updated audio to be less fatiguing on the ears
We think this new Paintball stuff is seriously awesome! We're having a blast playing it at the office, and we're excited to share it with all of you =]
We're also introducing some awesome new creator tools!
Moods Chips
We've made a dramatic upgrade to the Room Mood system - this is a huge increase to the fidelity, flexibility and expressiveness of the Room Moods system. You can still choose from our collection of pre-configured moods for your room, but if you want to dial in your own signature look and feel, you now have four new tools to work with...
New Sun Light Gadget – use this gadget to change the position, size, color, and intensity of the sun in your room.
New Skybox Chip – Use this chip to select the different colors used to compose the skybox in your room.
New Background Objects Chip – Use this chip to show background elements like mountains, various types of clouds, moon, and stars.
Last but definitely not least, the new Fog Chip – Use this chip to change the color, distance, and thickness of fog in your room!
All these new Moods features are powered by Circuits, so you can script them to create all kinds of cool effects like dynamic day-to-night cycles and role-bound mood effects. These are just the first four chips to go out with our improved Moods system, and you can expect this to evolve and become more flexible over time. Please note that the new Moods features are still Maker Room only, but expect more rooms to support them over time.
We can't wait to see what you do with the updated Room Moods system!
But wait there's more!
New Props & Palette Search!
New Maker Pen Palette Search function - We've added the ability to search through everything you have in your palette. This search is fuzzy and it happens as you type, so you don't have to worry about spelling things correctly, or even typing entire words to find what you're looking for. For example, simply typing "tv" pulls Trigger Volume straight to the top of results. The search panel also remembers your recently used search items, so you'll rarely need to search for the same thing twice in the same session.
Now that it's easier to search for content in the palette, we've added a bunch of new props - You can now find all of the new assets from Sunset Cinema in the Maker Pen Palette! We also went back through a ton of other props we have in the game and cleaned up a bunch of them and added them to the palette as well. In total, you can find 34 new props in the palette, and the new materials from the map will be coming soon!
There are new Paintball Rules circuit boards in the Palette - you can use these chips to create your own maps that run the full Capture The Flag and Team Battle rules on your own maps!
But wait there's more!
Invisible Collision & Gadget Visibility
Introducing Invisible Collision - This long-requested feature enables creators to save ink by replacing tons of complex individual colliders with a single, simple volume. These volumes are also great for enclosing maps, or preventing players from getting into areas you'd prefer they stay out of!
The new invisible collision gadget allows you to place configurable collision boxes that are not visible when gadgets are hidden. These gadgets are located under the "Other Gadgets" Maker Pen category and are placed similar to Trigger Volumes.
You can configure whether invisible collision applies to players and objects / projectiles or only to players
You can configure whether your invisible collision supports clamber (clambering is supported by default)
Invisible collision supports filtering for players by role (both "enabled for..." and "disabled for..." modes)
And more...
As part of our goal to further reduce ink costs for gadgets, we are making some changes to who can see gadgets and when they can see them. Gadget rendering is a big part of why they cost so much ink, so restricting gadget visibility to creators allows us to lower ink costs for all gadgets and pass those ink savings back to creators.
As a default, when you're not holding the Maker Pen we automatically hide gadgets for you. However, there is an additional setting that has been added to the Palette Settings menu that allows you to see Gadgets/Circuits while not holding the Maker Pen. If you leave that checked, Gadget Visibility works like it did before this update.
Collision and Trigger Volumes now fade out depending on how far you are away from them in an effort to optimize Rec Room performance and keep levels looking clean while you're building them.
Gadget Visibility is no longer a configurable permission. Instead, gadget visibility is simply part of using the maker pen.
If you can use the Maker Pen, you can enable/disable gadget visibility at will through a new toggle at the top of the Maker Pen menu, next to the World Space toggle (now removed from the palette settings menu).
We've done a bit of work under the hood to make circuits run a bit faster so you may notice a slight performance increase in rooms with lots of visible circuits.
We know that some creators rely on gadget visibility being enabled for all players (light shows, tutorial rooms, etc), so we've provided creators with a new subroom setting to display gadgets for all players at at their existing ink costs.
And some general improvements for working with Gadget and Chips:
Certain objects (e.g., Trigger Volumes) now scale up their input arrows as you scale them up.
We have done a cleanup on gadgets/chips to exclude configurable settings such as wallrun/climbable where they didn't sense.
We've improved hand stability in VR while making subtle movements. This should help with more delicate creation tasks. Can be disabled if you prefer in Watch > Settings > Gameplay.
Aaaand some bug fixes:
Fixed an issue where screens players could not select Maker Pen UI when looking too far above the horizon
Fixed an issue where leaving a config menu then going back to the palette would continuously bring you back to the config menu.
Respawn Point is now kinematic (non-Physical), and costs less ink.
We made a fix in this release for syncing text when circuit inputs change – previously it could get permanently out of sync
Fixed an issue where HoloHelpers (the little people who give you hints in the Dorm) wouldn't stay closed in some cases.
And some more general improvements:
New "Announcements" tab in Watch > Messages - look for the "bell" icon! We'll post important announcements here so that more players see them (not everyone reads Reddit/Discord/etc.)!
Made some improvements when searching for friends (e.g., searching for friend, clicking profile, then backing out no longer clears the search)
We did some work to make our network code more robust - you should now be considerably less likely to disconnect (i.e., get dumped back to the Dorm Room) under poor network conditions.
We now show helpful Code of Conduct reminders when publishing a new Room or Invention. Please remember that the Code of Conduct applies to the things you publish, as well as the things you do!
You can now view and change your account's email from rec.net! In addition, you can change your account's username. (Please note that you can only change your username once after setting it.)
You can now dismiss the "Suggested Friends" dialog and have it not show again. We also made it so the prompt only happens once a week.
iOS - you can now choose to sync your Contacts and connect with real world friends who already play Rec Room. Find this in Watch > People > Import Friends > Allow Rec Room to Access your Contacts. Please note that synced contacts are never stored and you can remove access at any time via your iOS device settings.
iOS - improved appearance of notifications in the Watch. They now include some context on what the notification is about.
iOS - the Home Menu got a fresh coat of paint, and should now be more usable and responsive. And prettier too!
Hey! We've confirmed the "some Oculus players can't walk" issue is only affecting players who have opted in to the Oculus "Public Test Channel".
Workarounds until we're able to resolve in a patch (ETA unknown):
Opt out of the Public Test Channel (i.e., use vanilla Oculus). In the Oculus client, go to Settings > Beta > Public Test Channel and turn it to off.
Alternatively, if you need/want to stay on the Oculus Public Test Channel, you can play the SteamVR version of Rec Room which will work as normal. You can launch the SteamVR version of Rec Room via the Oculus app (assuming you have Steam installed).
Sorry for the inconvenience, we will resolve as soon as possible (although we are in an update freeze for at least a couple of weeks, so it will be after that)
[There are cases of a severe issue with SteamVR controller bindings, e.g. for HTC Vive, Index, Windows Mixed Reality, etc.] It seems like Steam gets non-deterministically frustrated about having a legacy binding set, now that we've upgraded to their current input system. Try the following - this fixed it for me, anyway.
Make sure SteamVR is not running. Close it if it is.
Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\config (might be slightly different if you installed Steam somewhere other than the default location).
Open steamvr.vrsettings in the text editor of your choice.
Find the entry for steam.app.471710 and delete it. Save the file.
Open SteamVR and launch Rec Room.
As an example, here's what I had to delete out of my steamvr.vrsettings file:
Before we dive into what's new in this update, please be aware that we will likely be unable to update for a few weeks. We are doing some administrative stuff that means we can't submit builds until it's finished, so please expect an interruption in our weekly updates!
How to use the Pool table!
OK! Here's what's new:
The Rec Room Facilities crew finally got around to fixing the Pool Table. The Pool Table in ^bowling is now fully operational. To play - grab a pool cue, slap one of the buttons to spawn the balls, and get to playing!
Here's how to play:
VR Controls - grab a cue and release the trigger (it will stay locked to your hand). Now grab and hold the aiming grip with your other hand. When you're aimed and ready to shoot, hold both triggers and power through!
Screen Controls - grab a cue and look for the "Play Shot" option at the center of the table Use your look controls to aim (get low to the table for more backspin). When you're aimed and ready to shoot, hold the Shoot button and bring the cue back to adjust your power. Release the button to complete the shot, stunning your opponent with your skill and guile!
As a bonus, the Pool Table and Pool Cues are also available in the Maker Pen palette, so you can add a Pool Table (or three) to your #hangout space =]
VR players! We've updated the controls on all VR platforms to address a bunch of feedback we've been accumulating over time (e.g., via the Recent Reddit thread)). Here's what's changed:
Tweaked button mappings on all platforms. It should now be easier to Slide, Sprint, and Push-to-Talk on all platforms.
We updated the diagrams in Watch > Help so you can check what got updated.
By popular request, we've added an "Auto-Sprint" option in Watch > Settings > Gameplay. With Auto-Sprint enabled, you'll sprint in any room that supports it without needing to push the "Sprint" button (when using thumbstick walk) or double tap the "Walk" button (otherwise).
PSVR walkers can now strafe using the X and O buttons on the walking hand.
We fixed the Oculus/Index bug where you couldn't use the Walk button when thumbstick walk was enabled.
We added a "Motion Turn" comfort setting. This allows you to disable the animation when swipe turning, which some players have requested as a comfort option. Find it in Watch > Settings > Gameplay.
We've upgraded our SteamVR plugin. This means we now support Steam's controller binding system, so you can customize your controls on Steam if you wish. We have created a default for each controller, and some variants for the Index (in case you prefer the previous mappings)
Index players can now grab/release objects using the open/close hand gesture. This is now the default, if you prefer the old method, please use the variant Index mapping.
Index and Oculus players have a (somewhat experimental) new setting in Watch > Settings > Gameplay called "Don't lock tools in hand". Default is unchecked (so locking tools - e.g., paintball gun - will still lock by default). When you opt in to this setting, tools will no longer lock to your hand - you'll have to continuously "grip" them using the Hand Triggers or close hand gesture. An exception is any time you're _spawned_ with a locked tool (e.g., the Charades Pen in ^3DCharades) - in that case the tool will still lock until you've closed and re-opened your hand. The other thing to know is that when this setting is enabled, you can't do one-handed translation when Self-Scaling. If this bothers you, let us know and we'll iterate on it.
Getting into the weeds here, but we made it so that you must use the main trigger (not the grip or "Hand" trigger) to nock and release arrows with the bow (e.g., in ^GoldenTrophy).
How to use the Text Tool!
New stuff for creators!
There's a new Text Gadget in the Maker Pen Palette.
Text created using the Text Gadget is very low on ink cost
There are fun formatting options to play with: Thickness, character and line spacing, alignment
You can use the Recolor tool to change color AND material on text
You can drive the Text Gadget via circuits to update the display based on game events, etc.
In non-Text news, we added a "Champions" filter to all leaderboards so you can see how you stack up against the best in the world in your favorite rooms
We decided it was time that the Homestead paintball map had its own music, so we brought in a local bluegrass band to give us some Homestead flavor (the new track is also available in the Radio).
And a bunch of bug fixes:
Fixed missing trees in Disc Golf maps
Fixed a bug that could cause PS4 players to hear an unpleasant noise in ^IsleOfLostSkulls (sorry about that :-/)
Tweaked the way screens players pick up throwable boards in ^IsleOfLostSkulls
Fixed a bug where breakable weapons could look weird before you picked them up.
Fixed the giant sign in ^Soccer (oops)
Fixed a bug where community board videos didn't have spatial audio. Now they do!
OK I think that's it for this update. Don't forget: We probably won't be able to update for at least a few weeks, but we'll be back as soon as possible with some very exciting stuff =]
The Maker Pen can now mirror shapes using the Clone tool. This makes certain kinds of building tasks (such as making symmetrical structures) much easier!
When using the Clone tool, you'll see a second set of handles that flip the shape on that axis as you clone it.
Note that you can only mirror Maker Pen shapes, not props!
Some bug fixes/improvements:
Precision when drawing on an Art Canvas is much improved
Fixed a bug that was preventing hair ties from receiving your selected hair color
Fixed an issue where the sight on the Sci Fi Pistol wasn't getting team color assigned
Fixed an issue where some objects (e.g., donuts, plates) could flicker in the Rec Center
Laser Tag: Hangar - the wall protruding from the red spawn area is back to normal, and no longer blocks the spawn doorway
Laser Tag: Hangar - removed extra pillars in the red side spawn to match the blue side
Laser Tag: Hangar - removed extra I beam right outside the red spawn that doesn't exist on blue side
Extended render distance on Laser Tag/Jumbotron pistols!
You can now *search* for friends in the watch! Want to send a gift someone, but it's hard to find them by paging through the watch? Well, now you can search. And it's a "fuzzy" search... e.g., searching for "grb" will find "gribbly"
Added a "Gift" button to player's profile, so you can send 'em something right from their profile page! (This actually went out last week, forgot to mention it!)
Fixed an issue where bows wouldn't reload properly on non-VR platforms (sorry about that!)
Fixed an issue where UI could flicker annoyingly on some platforms. For the curious, this turned out to happen when someone in the room was drawing on a whiteboard (or similar drawing surface)!
Fixed an issue where you could get stuck on a loading screen when re-joining a room automatically after a disconnect.
Aaaaaand we're back for 2020! We had a nice little break over new years, we hope you did too =]
We've got some fun stuff in the first update of the new year/decade:
Quest players can now play both Laser Tag maps ("Hangar" and "CyberJunk City")
Quest players can now visit The Park (and all custom rooms build on top that base room)
Creation tool updates:
You can now use the Maker Pen Manipulate tool on any volume (e.g., Trigger Volumes, Bounce Pads, etc.). This means you can finally adjust them after creation!
There's a new Toggle Button dynamic prop. This is like the existing button, but it has two states (on/off). Use it with Circuits to create interesting behaviors. This button can be toggled by projectiles! Find the new button in the Maker Pen Palette under "Dynamic Props".
The LookAt Gizmo can look at players (by specifying a role), and you can tell it to look at specific body parts (head, either hand).
If you have a password set, you can now change it directly in the app. Go to Watch > Profile and hit the button!
Fixed a bug where watch notification sounds weren't playing correctly.
Fixed a bug where you couldn't interact with the scoreboard in the watch.
Added a "head bob" slider to screens platforms. This is to improve comfort for some players. Find it in Watch > Settings.
Fixed a bug with the golf shirt poking through the shoulders.
Fixed a bug with laser tag pistol and shotgun not rendering correctly.
Fixed an issue where normals were rendering incorrectly on your left hand.
Fixed an issue with audio being set incorrectly for the new "Fancy Bubble" item.
Please note we've updated our privacy policy to conform to California's new CCPA privacy laws, so on some platforms you'll need to re-accept that when you launch after the update.
