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NeoSpark314

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A member registered Jun 23, 2019 · View creator page →

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Hi, thanks for your comment. The short answer is: there are no new newer versions and I'm not not planning to continue development. (but the full source code is available on github)

It started as a small prototype for jog in place + hand tracking and after adding several addtional features it became clear that the architecture did not allow to expand it much further with reasonable time invest. So at some point I just shifted my focus on other things.

I removed it from SideQuest because at some point a Meta Update seems to have broken the game and it did not work anymore for everybody who tried; I wanted to avoid that too many people try it and get frustracted with it just crashing.

A contributer created a texture converter that takes minecraft texture packs and outputs a texture that can be used in voxel works. You can find the converter here: https://arthurcose.github.io/VoxelWorks-Texture-Converter

Hi, I deactivated the invites because the server did not serve any meaningful purpose anymore since I'm currently not working on this project and it got too much spam.

at the moment it is a quest only game; but it is open source and godot has rift support so porting it should be possible without too much effort

APK is the format used to install to android devices. And the oculus quest VR headset is an android device.

no; Teleport is not yet implemented; you could try the jog in place motion; for some people it helps with motion sickness (but it is of course quite strenuous).

You put items from your inventory on top of the bench; they should start rotating; the recipes to craft are on a "crafting guide" that spawns near your starting location. When the bottom of the crafting area turns green you have a valid recipe. You then can either press the A/X button with your hand over the area or you hit the crafting area with a swing (same as mining).

Hope this helps; if you still have questions you could also join our discord linked above to discuss.

Currently you can put a single type of item into a wooden crate; and then you can just take them out by grabbing into the crate (so there is no way to open them).

The wooden workbenches are for crafting wooden tools; you can also craft the stone workbench on it and then use it for stone tools.

Thank you so much for this feedback! It makes me really happy to hear that you are having fun with it. The climbing is also one of my favorite mechanics. Climbing in VR just always feels so nice.

I hope that you do not run into performance problems when placing too many objects. 

At some point I would love to visit your world. I plan to make the register feature part of the client in one of the next updates (at the moment I need to create accounts for uploading worlds manually)

Thanks again! cu

My first thoughts were:

Hi, thanks for the nice feedback. I think most of the things you suggest are at least planned (but they will require quite a lot of work; so don't expect them too soon); here is an overview of ideas and also roughly what is planned and what I am working on: https://trello.com/b/WoM1BXHc/voxel-works-quest

Regarding the save issue. I heard from others with the same issue. Not sure what causes this but I think uninstalling the game; rebooting your quest and then installing it again fixed it for most. If not you could join our discord and we can try to debug it together. The game should save every time you exit it or go back to the menu area.

The game saves automatically when you exit or go back to the start area. Do you have the latest version? The latest version (0.3.6) allows to have multiple saves and create new worlds with a different seed.

I have not yet started on this.

In one of the last updates I introduced a wooden and a stone crafting table; they are now required to craft a tools. You see the requirements at the bottom of the in game crafting guide. The wooden crafting table can be crafted on the tree trunk.

Thank you for this very nice feedback! Chests would indeed be very nice. They are already on the todo list (https://trello.com/b/WoM1BXHc/voxel-works-quest); I will try to add something like this as soon as possible.

Thank you for reporting the flipped arm menu. Will try to fix it in the next update.

Regarding player models. At some point I think yes but at the moment it is not on the immediate todo list as I think there are more urgent things do include in the game. But feel free to disagree :-). If you are interested you could also join our discord server here: https://discord.gg/7hvHAad there are already some interesting dicussions ongoing what could or should be included next.

Thank you for the detailed feedback! Tutorials are one of the many things still missing. But since the game is in a very early stage and I plan to change many things in the future I decided to invest my time better in working on the new things. For example the crafting will definitely need some rework I hope to address in a future update. I created the discord server for now so people who are interested can ask questions and also discuss suggestions.

I just updated the description of the game to include some instructions on how to install. Let me know if this helps or if I need to change something in the description. Thanks for asking!

You need to install it either via the android 'adb' tool or you can install it via SideQuest: https://sidequestvr.com/#/app/431; they also have a tutorial on their page on how to set up your oculus quest for installing external software.

Thank you for reporting this! The issue is that I don't recheck after mining of a voxel if the state depending on the voxel is still valid. A similar issue is that you can mine the voxel you are gripping during climbing and the grip will still be there even when the voxel is gone. I will try to fix this in an upcoming update; but probably not in the next one as this will require some change in my logic on how I create/remove these things.

Yes; this is a bit strange at the moment. I was struggling where to put the update. When I linked it to the head rotation it was bad because it rotated away when you were looking at your tools. As a compromise I chose in this version to orient it when a "step" was taken... I hope I find a better solution soon.

Cool; thanks for the nice feedback. The last few weeks I pushed out a small update each weekend. But not sure if I can keep this up; especially if I start working on something bigger than just adding a new block or fixing bugs.

I created a Trello to give a rough overview what I'm currently working on and what is planned: https://trello.com/b/WoM1BXHc/voxel-works-quest

Help would be great. I'm still in a very early stage and try to figure out in what direction I would like to take this project. In what area could you start helping out?  If you want you could join our Voxel Works discord: https://discord.gg/sbV2pq. There it is easy to discuss, exchange ideas and ask questions.

Yes. Agreed. This was also suggested by other people on the voxel works discord. I'm planning to start working on it soon (if you are interested what I'm currently roughly working on you can check out the Voxel Works Trello: https://trello.com/b/WoM1BXHc/voxel-works-quest).

Thank you! I found the mistake; Will be fixed in the next update.

Wow, thanks for the nice feedback and all these great suggestions. I
will see what I can pick up out of them. It's really cool to hear that
you can have already this much fun with the prototype even though it
is in a very early state.

You could solve your coal "problem" in the current version by creating
coal blocks out of 9 coal lumps and build a coal house ;-).

The hookshot is a great suggestions; I will try to do some prototyping
with this idea. Not sure about ladders as currently every surface is
already climbable. XBox controller support I would rather not add as
the game should be a VR game with VR interactions. Tweaking the
systems for another input method will affect the way I try to design
the game into a classical direciton. I think there are enough standard
games already there; I would rather like to spend my time on exploring
at least partially new things.

Music would be nice. But at the moment the game is in such an early
state and I don't know yet in what kind of direction it will evolve
and how the final feeling/mood will end up. But any CC licensed music
that fits I would use in the next iterations of the prototype.

Multiple worlds is planned. I need to code a simple save game manager
in the main menu and then it should be possible to create new
savegames (and also worlds with a different seed).

Thank you for the nice feedback! I'm currently working on improving the inventory a bit. I'll look into adding windows. That would make houses much nicer. For Doors I need to see how much work it will be to add them with some reasonable VR interaction. Compass is a good idea. I plan to make some menu screen attached to the arm; Maybe I can add something basic there. Flowers is also cool; since I already have the grass making some simple flowers would be relatively easy.

There should spawn a recipe guide directly in front of you when you start the game. On there all the currently implemented recipes are displayed.

Thanks again for reporting and the description. I found the bug. I just uploaded 0.3.3 here on itch and also on sidequest. It fixes this issue. Let me know if you run into any other problem with this release.

Thank you for reporting the issue. Other people mentioned crashes already but without any details. Do you know if this happens while pressing the stick and at the same time trying to jog?
I will experiment on my side and as soon as I can reproduce the issue on my side I will work on fixing it. 

Cheers, NeoSpark314

It is playable on the Oculus Quest. You can install it via SideQuest: https://sidequestvr.com/#/app/431 (they have a tutorial on their site to explain how sideloading works). Or you need to download the .apk from here and sideload it manually via adb after you have setup developer mode for your oculus quest.

Thank you. Yes VR is really very fun; especially to explore some new gameplay concepts.

Thank you so much! This is invaluable feedback and SO helpful to see it in a video  how you swing the tools and interact with the blocks.

One issue I already see is that in the current code you need to move the controller at least 30cm; (so you need to really pull back to hit). If I want to keep this I would need to explain this somehow in game. The reason for this mechanic was to avoid spamming fast hits to quickly destroy a block and rather require more real-world like swinging motions with a tool.

I will recheck all the hit locations on the tools; there seems to be some bugs there too.

Thanks again! I will tune this for the next update as much as I can.

Thank you for the feedback! Arm swinging could indeed be an option in the future. One of the main reasons I have not yet explored this is that this would not work with hand tracking (both the accuracy as well as the tracking volume are not yet good enough on the quest to reliably detect this kind of motion). But with controllers this could be reliably detected I think. The only trade-off that I see at the moment is that you will not be able to freely use tools (or weapons) while moving.

The argument with arm swinging would be more relaxing is also true. At the moment the main goal of the prototype though is to explore how the gameplay mechanics and design are influenced when achieving something in-game is real effort. For this goal the jog in place is more fitting but I still plan to explore different options once I have most of the basic mechanics implemented.

Do you already have the version 0.3.1 installed; this has a reset start position to work around a bug in 0.3.0. With 0.3.1 you can just update without uninstall (uninstall would loose your save file if you did not back it up before using for example SideQuest)

With which tool was the problem you describe in 1. ?

I just did a brief test with pick axe; there it worked for me as intended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vBfgo3_J1A  (in the video my controller is far from the actual voxel I'm digging with the tip of the pick)

I did not know about Medieval Engineers; this looks really cool (and inspiring) from the videos I have watched. Thanks for sharing this!

Jump would be very interesting...especilaly if I manage to detect actually a small jump during jog in place :-) How would you like to use it; do you want to cross some gaps that are deeper than one block or do you have other things in mind?

The offer with the models is great. If you are willing to release your models under a "CC By" license we could test some things :-). I don't have yet the code to add models; but plan to work on it soon. Would you also be able to texture and make simple animations? I also would really like to add some first simple mob to the game just to see how it is in VR; not sure what this would be; a classic would be a cube slime...)

If you want you can reach me also via discord: NeoSpark314#4701

Thank you so much for the continued feedback! This is invaluable and really motivating to continue working on the prototype :-)

1. I will check/test it again this afternoon; could easily be that I made some mistake with marking the interaciton points on the tools. One think to keep in mind though is that at the moment you still need to move the Controller ~30cm for a hit to trigger (not the interaction point at the tool); the idea was that you still need to move signficiantly to work on a block.

2. I can try to block the movement forward when there is a lower block in front of you. Would indeed make more sense. But it will probably take me some time to figure this out as I still would like to keep the "autojump" feature that you can run up blocks which make the logic to check what should happen a bit more complex because now I just run forward if there is no block in front of your head and move up when there is space above you.

3. I'll try to start the detection also on the "high" point; this is a good suggestion (in my experiments my gait was that I always went down when starting to jog in place; but that might easily be totally different for other people). One problem with the thresholds is that I need to make sure that the walking does not trigger easily when performing other motions (especially mining, looking around or leaning); also the latency should be as small as possible (which means I can't look to much into the past to make the decisions); if you are intereseted in the details you can have a look here: https://github.com/NeoSpark314/godot_oculus_quest_toolkit/blob/master/utilities/oqrec_recordings/run_in_place_analysis.ipynb this is a (slightly older version than in v0.3.1) of the step detection algorithm; there you also see that at least for my gait my running always started at a low point.

4. Yes; this needs to change. It was just the fastest solution that came to my mind when I wanted to release 0.3.0. The suggestion with the hammer is awesome! I will try to add this; how do you think "unfinished" should look? I could make it that you can finish it with a hand but later when you crafted a hammer it goes much faster. What do you think: should an unfinished block just stay there for ever? or should it disappear after some time?

Thanks again; btw. If you want you could also reach me via Discord: NeoSpark314#4701

Thanks a lot for this nice feedback and the great suggestion. The strap on the back for tools would indeed be very cool; but I fear it would not work with the current limitations of hand tracking on the quest. But the putting something like a tool-belt at the waist would work. And would allow to carry the tools visibly and just grab them quickly when you need them... I think I will try to add this in one of the next updates.

Implementing lighting and lightsources though will take me some time. I currently plan to focus first more on adding a bit more recipes and some of the missing core mechanics.

Thanks again! cu.

Thank you for reporting the issue with the woodaxe recipe; I think I found the bug in my symmetry detection :-); will be fixed in the next update; then both should work. 

Regarding the walking: this would work; but is probably a bit less immersive I think; will try it out myself. Basically I'm detecting the head up/down motion in a specific frequency.

Hi; thanks a lot for the videos! This is very very helpful. 

The first one looks really fascinating; I have at the moment not the slightest idea how this can happen... I will try to investigate. Does this happen when you load into the game? Did I see this correctly that you could catch the flying pickaxe out of the air?!

The second problem is that actually when you save, the objects are removed from the crafting area and just stored as normal objects in space. (They rotate when you put them on the crafting area); so you can just put another object on the crafting area and the floating one will just be ignored; I will need to find a solution for the many floating objects anyway; too many of them might become a performance problem at some point.