Thanks so much for the detailed feedback, it helps a lot! I recorded a little video to explain the rhythm seeing as the game doesn't do a great job of making it intuitive.
As you noticed the level generation and the CPU are incredibly simple, so yes the RNG can screw you over. I wanted to have hand crafted levels but they didn't make the cut in the one week jam period.
As for the table being too far, I did implement the recenter event so if you hit the recenter button it should bring you straight to the right place on the table.
Starting the game with the whistle is a great idea, I'm definitely putting that in post-jam! The plan was for some sort of obstacles that you need to clear with the whistle, e.g. cars at a level crossing, but that also had to get cut for now.
I'm away from my headset traveling interstate at the moment, but I'll definitely fire up your game and the others that I haven't got to yet when I get back home.
Thanks for playing! Giving the player better feedback about when it is their turn to place a track and when it isn't, and also when and why their placement is denied is one of the things I have already started working on for a post-jam release.
The intention is that the music and the beat is the main cue for when to place tracks, along with the colours of the tracks in your hand matching the colour of the ground coming up next. Everything else in the game is synced to that rhythm and intended to reinforce it; the animation cycle of the CPU player, the track signals on the side that you noticed, the train's bouncing animation and the train's puff puff noises. But you aren't alone in finding it tricky, so I'm continuing to work on it more.
Allowing placement of extra tracks ahead of the beat timing would break the rhythmic and turn based nature of the game, so it would be a hard pivot to ditch those aspects entirely if I go that way.
Making a pico version was a given, the only headset I own is a pico!
If the tracks don't place it's most likely because you're dropping them on your partner's turn instead of yours. Unless therr is some kind of other bug. This isn't your fault, it's mine for not making the game communicate this idea strongly enough or giving you feedback when a piece fails to be placed.
As player one the light green area is yours and the dark green is your partner's. You can only place track on the beat of the music when a light green areas is next after the existing track. Sorry for the confusion.
I too know the pain of watching someone play my game! And don't worry too much, it was fun and I figured it out without wanting to give up, that counts for a lot.
I tried to give this a go but was unable to get it running with only 1 PC. If you had added a standalone export or even just the ability to run two copies of the game and select "join" on one it could have worked, but with a headset detected the "join" option isn't even available for the second copy.
Yep. Everything in the game is based off the music tempo and the beat.
It's midi so it can be sequenced and sped up or slowed down in a controlled way without audio glitches. Tempo starts at 66% of the original music speed and ends up at 300% if you make it far enough. The 66% is a little slow for the music but helps make the game easier at the start.
I wanted to add collectible power ups along the way which would show this off by instantly slowing down or speeding up when the train runs over them, but they had to be cut in favour of other things.
Instead of tracking the position of objects in game you could use the velocity as reported by the xr runtime, via get_pose(). This will be closer to using the raw accelerometer data from the controllers.
I wanted the game to be more about "play" and "performance" rather than "checking your homework" and it being frustrating having to repeat things because you did them "wrong".
So you technically don't need to sing, but singing makes the game more fun, especially hearing yourself harmonizing with yourself, and hearing it build piece by piece.
I could have made that clear in the game but I wanted to try to trick the player into having fun.
They should be in time with the drum beat. I think there is a problem with the very first run of the game though where shader compilation delay throws off the timing. If you run it again it should work.
As for when to sing, sing in time with the priest. They will sing each line twice. The first time you can just listen and the second time you sing with them.
