This is kind of tiny release (after the huge Holodance 0.8 release just recently), and yet, it's a pretty big milestone: A while back, I had already done some major work on the Avatar system - but then, given that this is most useful really only for players that already have Vive Trackers and that use Holodance to create videos, other items had higher priorities (Music Library! Music Library! Music Library!)
It was kind of funny then, to realize yesterday, that we were just a day away from having this ready to be played with. In fact, I had it running with some tricks in the Unity Editor after just about an hour or two of work and created a first video before lunch ... to be honest, the worst thing about that video was that I forgot to tick the "Switch Cams in the Rhythm" checkbox, so it was all shot from one single camera angle. BORING!
When the work was done, I created a better one:
https://vimeo.com/242714666
The most important limitation of this version is that it doesn't properly work when only using Controllers and headset (your feet will just be dragged after you). You should at least have two Vive Trackers for your feet. It's better when you have three, so you can use one for your waist. Two more for your elbows should help, and finally, two more for your knees and you'll have perfect tracking (and spent a little fortune on Vive Trackers - but more power to you, these things do rock!)
So, what we'll be doing on this over the next few weeks: Make it work as good as possible with only controllers, add two more Avatars to choose from, maybe more. Listen to player feedback and polish things.
We have also fixed one small but very significant issue in the Music Library, and smoothed out the current gameplay trailer.
And now, back to the Music Library ;-)
Full Release Notes
- Avatar System: We actually had this almost ready for a little while with just a few things missing. Those were now added and if you have Vive Trackers, you can already play with the first version. We currently have two Avatars available: A Soldier and Aika, an Animé-girl. We'll shortly add a few more to play with, and polish the whole thing up quite a bit. Like, the Avatar system will also work with only headset and two controllers (obviously, it won't work as well - but it will work much better than right now, where the feet are just dragged behind - ooops :wink: ). In VR, seeing this "other body" of yourself actually is a little weird, so you can switch it off. The primary purpose of this system is to easily be able to create awesome videos, do Streaming, and it's also a preparation for the upcoming multiplayer and "show" mode.
- Music Library: Fixed default values for duration filter. By default, this filter should not filter any songs, so the minimum needs to be 30 seconds (which will ignore the lower limit altogether), and the maximum 320 seconds (which will ignore the upper limit altogether).
- Updated the trailer - the previous version had way to many, and way too chaotic cuts. The new version is still intense, but compared to the previous version, it's much calmer.