ChilloutVR Developer Update #5

Hello and welcome to the fifth ChilloutVR Developer Update.

The last months have been a lot of background work to prepare for big upcoming changes to the hub, the game, new systems and overall improvements. In this Developer Update we would like to show you what is coming for Hub 4.0 as well as talk about upcoming additions to the game.

We deeply apologize to and thank all of you that have been supporting us even though we went silent for a while — we were actively working on new things.

Release dates

As many of you are waiting for the hub update and other improvements, you can read more about the dates below:

11.11.2020 22:00 UTC — Hub 4.0 (without Groups and Event features)
14.11.2020 22:00 UTC — Game Server update (fixing issues regarding crashes and desyncs in voice, movement and more)
19.11.2020 22:00 UTC — Release of a game update containing smaller fixes and improvements, unlocking Groups and Events feature in the Hub 4.0
27.11.2020 22:00 UTC — Release of CCK 2.1

We have decided to split the hub 4.0 release into two dates because many of the improvements on the hub will be useful for many of you and the groups system requires another game update that would take more time.

Introduction

The fourth version of our Community Hub “REST21 Quantum” brings many new features you all have asked for. Those include but are not limited to the group system and the event system. We have assembled a short description (and collected some visual footage) for each of the different changes and new features. Read more below.

New Header and Footer

To improve the overall feel and navigation on the site, we have reworked the header and footer of the site. Below you can see screenshots of the new header and footer.

The Groups System

Social connections are not just two people, in many cases groups are common and people tend to spend time in groups to enjoy their time the most. We took this as our main motivation to create our groups system.

The groups system aims to improve overall connections between users, empower events and meetups, and makes people able to find others that speak the same language or play the same game modes.

The Event System

The events system is a very important part of the groups and communities feature and is required to make users able to create and automate event scheduling and let users know about events.

The event system includes features like automatic instance creation, automatic invites, multiple event moderators per event instance, join-guard that only lets users join that were invited or accepted to attend the event and more.

The Category System

The new category system allows you to categorize your favourite worlds, avatars, game modes and friends into groups to be able to find them easier. You will be able to create up to 10 custom categories each with up to 200 entries each.

The Message Center

The all-new message center is one unified place for all of your notifications and replaces the old inbox-system.

You can now see your invites on the Hub as well as join the game from the hub (requires ChilloutVR 2020r160 or higher).

You can now see, create and comment on tickets as well as see the state of tickets you have access to. This enables you to see the status of your world publication requests.

The message center overall is your new central point for seeing system notifications, chats, tickets, invites and friend requests.

The Metaverse Browser

The metaverse browser completely replaces the old search system and is a refinement of it. It now allows to search for users, groups, avatars, worlds and later on game modes, mods, and marketplace assets.

We have also refined the search and you are now able to search for names, GUIDs, descriptions and Authors. This will bring all relevant results to you.

Below you can find a screenshot of the metaverse browser in action:

World Explorer Page

The new world explorer page allows you to view some details of a world when selecting it in the search. This feature allows you to see active instances from the hub as well as set your home world. You can see a screenshot of that page below:

Creators: Statistics Insight

You wonder how many users visited your world? You can now see this and more in the settings menu of your world.

More metrics will be added in the future, got an idea what to add? Contact us and we will see what can be added.

Below you can find a short screenshot of how the page looks:

Community Programs

Our community programs are now accepting applications. This includes the verification program, the partner program and the community guide program. While the verification and partner programs are designed to give community leaders and creators tools and recognition to make our games the places to be, the community guide program is for those who just want to help new and existing users.

Yes this means that new badges and a badge system overhaul are also coming.

Removal of User-Ranks separation

We believe that user ranks just split the community which is why we are removing user ranks from profiles and nameplates. The only remaining ranks are:

• User (Green nameplate)
• Living Legend (As a very rare reward to all those who helped a lot, Turqoise nameplate)
• Community Guide (Orange nameplate)
• Volunteer Community Moderator (Purple nameplate)
• Developer & Community-Admin (Red nameplate)

Having a way to reward active users is a great idea but a ranking system is the wrong approach to achieve this in our opinion. This is what our badge system is for and no separation between users has to be made. We will provide tools to implement local ranks and stats for the game modes system later on.

Changes to the User- and Profile-Settings

The settings have been changed to reflect the new internal changes. The settings page has also received a newer, fresher design.

• Social Media links now require external authentication via oauth for verification to prevent impersonation.
• Name changes now require approval from a staff member to prevent abusive usage. You can still change capitalization on your own.
• You can now specify who is able to share avatars with you, send you private messages and invite you to groups.
• You can now manage your e-mail preferences.
• You can now indicate, what languages you can speak.

The new Settings page is this:

Community-Profile Design Overhaul

The community profile view has been redesigned and the levels have been removed from its view as well as the ranks. The badges remain to give people a reason to be active in the communiy, partake events and contribute.

Ongoing

• To match the “unlocked account” benefits, groups and avatar / world shares can only be done if the user owns an unlocked account from open beta on. All old shares will remain active, but new shares will require the unlocked account. You can still share avatars with everyone without owning an unlock until the open beta starts.
• We have improved account login security and added 2FA to our internal roadmap for future implementation.
• We have added a SysHello feature to our internal roadmap, that will make you able to whitelist only specific computers to log into the game using your account. This feature will be rolled out later on after it was fully tested and deemed fully secure.
• We have made all preparations for a dark-mode. With Hub 4.1, we will add the dark mode (we just want to tweak the CSS beforehand, the current internal dark-mode CSS does not look as we want it to look).
  This means that dark-mode will come with Hub 4.1!
• When clicking a link while not logged in, you are now redirected properly after logging in to the hub without having to click the link again.
• With the release of Hub 4.0 we are accepting and reviewing world-publishing applications again. If you submitted a world for review but did not hear from us yet, you will get a response soon. Make sure to check your message center every now and then.
• All users who have registered before November 3, 2020 22:00 CET have received their alpha badge before this announcement was posted.

Introduction

The ChilloutVR Content Creation Kit version 2.1 aims to unlock formerly unavailable features as well add new exciting features to enable avatar creators to provide great content. We have been working on refinements of core systems on the games side as well.

It is scheduled to release late November 2020 and will bring Video players, Advanced avatar settings, improvements to syncables and more.

ChilloutVR Avatars Advanced

Many People requested that there should be ways to make an avatar configurable in-game.
Part one of this system was the toggle state system wich many of you were able to use to create features on their avatars. We saw things like changing outfits, color selection, spawning of world objects, and toggling of separate parts to name a few. It proved to be a good foundation but was a little bit limiting to implement bigger customization.

So we are proud to present you part two to this system, Advanced Avatar Settings.

This system works alongside the toggle states to give you more options for customization.
The Advanced Avatar Settings can be enabled from the CVR Avatar Element.
You are able to create the following input Types:

Game Object Toggle

This will give a basic toggle element to switch between groups of game objects or single objects.

Game Object Dropdown

This will give you a dropdown Element with configurable options to enable groups of game objects.

Material Color

This will give you a color picker in-game which is able to control the color of MeshRenderers, SkinnedMeshRenderers, ParticleRenderers, LineRenderes, and TrailRenderers.

Slider

This will give you a simple Slider Element to Modify values.

Joystick 2D

This works similar to the slider but you will be able to control 2 axes with a trackpad like element.

Joystick 3D

This works similar to the Joystick 2D but has an additional slider for the third axis.

Input Single

This will give you a numerical Input field which can be used to modify values.

Input Vector 2

This works similar to the Input single but will control two values.

Input Vector 3

This works similar to the Input single but will control three values.

Game Object Toggle, Game Object Dropdown, and Material Color can be set up using our Tools on the CVR Avatar Component. The remaining Elements will still create their corresponding Animator Layers, Parameter, and Animation clips which can be edited to suit your needs.

The slider Element for example could be used to control a blendshape.

The User interface shown in the videos below is a testing version and not final. The overall look and usability will be greatly improved with the big UI rework later this year (and as usual: can be customized by you as well!)

Advanced Avatar Settings In-Game Preview (UI Not final)

Advanced Avatar Settings CCK / Creation Part

ChilloutVR Video Player

The ChilloutVR video player comes with a toggle option for a built-in library UI. You can choose to use or not use it based on your liking. You can create your own UI by using the Video Players exposed methods as well.

You will have a way to create multiple playlists and add movies or clips to them. You will also be able to add times in seconds that specify where to display a skip intro / skip to next clip button.

You will be able to choose from synced and not synced as well.

ChilloutVR Workshop

The coming ChilloutVR Workshop allows uploading of props and in-game objects for users to use in world variations and to place into a world live using the below mentioned Newton Editor.

Uploading of such propers and spawnable objects will be enabled from CCK 2.1 on and will be supported in-game at a later date. In-depth documentation will follow.

We also plan on adding a workshop for mods and offer a verification program for mods.

ChilloutVR Newton Editor

The Newton Editor has just entered the first internal testing phase.
It will allow creators to check their worlds and world behavior ingame as well as allow users to add objects to a map on runtime (as well as saving variations of the edited world). Creators can opt out of this system, which is not a recommended approach.

Later on, the Newton Editor will also be usable for in-game scripting and debugging for game modes and minigames.