Hello people of Steam, welcome to our monthly Status Report! This will be the first post migrating from our old Forum website, so expect to see these regularly around the beginning of each month.
This month’s Status Report will cover progress on the next major update, information on the upcoming Standalone version of the game, a new Networking feature for modders, and news on our other resources.
r171 Progress Update
Continuing on with the development of the next major update, we’ve introduced many new additions and fixes that draw us closer to a final release. There is still more work to be done before then, so let’s take a look at some of the highlights from Experimental updates during the month of April:
- ChilloutVR is migrating to Unity 2021.3.23f1
- Significantly expanded the customization options for quick menu, movement, and turning
- One-handed VR Movement was added
- Microphone volume can now be adjusted
- The “Go Home” feature in the exit menu is now functional
…and much more! These are only a few of the changes we’ve made; a much larger changelog can be found in our community Discord server and by navigating to the Experimental News channel.
On an additional note, we are aware that this update has been taking much longer than initially expected. This is mainly due to considerations and research required to find the most stable and compatible unity version to upgrade to and migrate old systems to the new foundation. We want to ensure that the stable updates add to the game's quality and performance, not diminish them. We are confident that we have the majority of issues derived from the Unity engine upgrade resolved and hope that we can give everyone access to the new version of the game within the next month.
With that said, if you’re a content creator and have not already checked out the current Experimental build of ChilloutVR, now is the time! Rendering changes introduced in Unity 2021 cause some incompatibilities with old shaders in VR, so be sure to prepare and update your content when the new CCK is available if necessary!
More information here: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SinglePassInstancing.html
Please don’t hesitate to ask for help in our Community Discord!
Standalone Progress Update
While additional work on a standalone port is still required, we still want to keep those interested up to date and informed of new information when we have more to share.
Development is proceeding well, as we’re currently working to provide early test builds to chosen participants who answered our call for applications back in March. All spots for the first wave of testing are filled but we are hoping to let more users test the standalone builds early once the first working builds are made. We are also looking into possible ways to allow public experimental builds for both Pico and Quest at a later date - just like currently available for Steam builds.
For the creators out there; shortly before, we’ll be aiming to provide a CCK capable of building and uploading content for the Android platform to use with Standalone headsets. This will allow new content to be uploaded, or existing content to be updated for support. Unfortunately, this will introduce a separation of content between PC and Standalone, but an indication of platform availability will be added to specify if a world, avatar, or prop is available for PC, Standalone, or both. A future development goal is to establish a custom asset format that allows building for all platforms together and loading the content generated for one platform on other platforms as well. This is a goal for the rather far future and we will elaborate on this further once we get to the point where we are able to move on regarding this specific feature.
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask over in our Community Discord server at the end of this post!
Mod Network
As some of you may know, modification of the ChilloutVR game client has allowed developers to express their creativity through more than just the avatars, worlds, and props that we directly support. These can be anything from small tweaks to entirely new features and overhauls. The possibilities that modding can bring to a game are endless and we enjoy the idea of users making the game their own within reasonable bounds.
Of course, modding isn’t very common for online multiplayer games to support for understandable reasons. However, our team understands the benefits that such creations can bring to an open sandbox like ChilloutVR through our own experiences of using and creating mods for games that we love.
As such, we try to show our support for the modding community by equipping them with the tools and entry points needed to create something new and exciting.
With that said, we will soon release a tool that will expand the possibilities granted by modding by a new layer; the network layer. Introducing the Mod Network.
Simply put, the Mod Network will allow mods to send and interpret messages and information over the network between users using our game server network. Such messages and information can only be sent to users connected to the same instance. Though this is already possible by creating a custom networking solution for mods independently of the networking of ChilloutVR, it is often outside the scope of small projects. In those cases, developers will likely find the Mod Network much more convenient and favorable to use.
Recently, we’ve been working with a few selected mod developers to test the capabilities of the Mod Network, and the results have been great so far! We’re really excited to get this out there and see how people put it to use!
Documentation on its use will be available in the near future, along with its public release, so keep an eye out for that if you’re interested.
Forums and Documentation
Just a quick update on our forums and documentation websites; both are currently unavailable due to changes to our infrastructure. We will bring them back in the upcoming days and will have a new, reworked documentation site - that the community will be able to contribute to - very soon; as was announced in former status reports. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused to anyone.
Status Page
Our website developers are currently working on a new status page system to effectively inform the community about the current status of our infrastructure. This will allow the users to self-diagnose if a network connectivity issue is related to their connection or our network. This will include status indications for the game servers in all regions, the API, the hub, and other services like the forums. Upcoming features and systems accessible to the community will also be monitored and shown on the status page.
The status page will also provide a small API for developers to display the current network status on community websites and use it in discord bots.
The status page will also offer a feature to directly report outages without the requirement to send an email.
Final lines & social links
As always, thank you for your continued interest in and support of ChilloutVR's development. Tune in next month for more updates like this, see you next time!
Social media
Find us on social media with the links below:
Discord: https://discord.gg/abi
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlphaBlendNET
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl8toTHzEER6PXoJyZcTFjg
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChilloutVR/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/661130/ChilloutVR/
Support Alpha Blend Interactive
Like every company, we need financial support to be able to push updates and improve our product. We are grateful for every bit of support we get.
If you want to support us you can do so here:
https://www.patreon.com/AlphaBlendInteractive
We are more than thankful for your support!
Not on our Discord server yet?
Use the link above to join our discord server and get in touch with our wonderful community, get help with creation-related topics, and find people to play with.