Rec Room UPDATE - the "Sunset Cinema" Edition

Rec Room UPDATE - the "Sunset Cinema" Edition

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!

• 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!

• 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 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!

• 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!

Thanks for playing Rec Room!

Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community

As always, we love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...