Hey Everyone! So I’ve been doing a lot of work in VRChat, as it contains so many tools and services straight out of the gate that would allow us to develop VR experiences that can be easily deployed and distributed. In the spirit of efficiency and making things easier for us I’m compiling a set of links that anyone can use to access information relating to VRChat and Udon (VRChat’s Unity Language). This’ll be broken into two parts, the links pertaining to VRChat and those moreso pertaining to Udon.
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Mechanic of the Month Review #2: The Backpack
The Mechanic
And before I even knew it, we’ve come to the end of another month. This month my goal was to develop a backpack similar to the backpack in Half-Life: Alyx (HL:A). Did I succeed? Not really. I ended up creating something more akin to a portable hole than a vacuum cleaner. What exactly do I mean by that, and how exactly did I get here though?
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Half Life Alyx: Review & Critique
The reason this is split into two separate sections is I want to include a spoiler free review for those who are unfamiliar with the game and a spoiler filled critique that will allow me to better develop my thoughts.
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Half Life Alyx: Mechanical Analysis
I recently finished Half Life: Alyx. It took me a little over 9 hours to complete the story, and while I’ll save an experiential review of the game for a later post, I did want to take some time to highlight the systems or mechanics that I enjoyed most, and may be the focus of a Mechanic of the Month later on (hell, one of them already is).
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Mechanic of the Month #2: The Backpack
Introduction
Month number 2! I have high hopes for this month, as last month went well and I’m really getting comfortable with Puddle Jump and VR systems in general, including spending time playing VR games. I’ve specifically been playing a lot of Half-Life: Alyx. Now this isn’t a review, while I am having fun with the game, I’m also taking a look at some of the systems and seeing how I can recreate them, and here’s the one I want to recreate this month:
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Mechanic of the Month Review #1: The Frying Pan
The Introduction
Welcome one and welcome all to my very first Mechanic of the Month review post! Mechanic of the Month is a somewhat laid back exploratory task where we take a game mechanic or idea that we think could hold some merit in being present in our future VR games and projects and work on a small prototype of that mechanic for a month. Then, at the end of the month we (or at least, I) will write a little report about what was accomplished, how, and how it can be improved on in the future.
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Currently Explored Virtual Reality Social Platforms (VRSPs) Comparison
Introduction
Over the past couple of days I have been experimenting with different VRSPs and noting their features as feasible and viable in the context of an educational environment. So far I have experienced four VRSPs: Sketchbox, VTime, VRChat, and AltspaceVR. In this post I will simply be providing a general overview of the different applications and basic strengths and weaknesses. In later posts I will take the time to really dive in to specific programs or directly compare two or more when I have more time put in to each system. For reference, I have only put about two hours exploring each program and their capabilities, so this is by no means a comprehensive list of features.
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I just spent an hour in VR Chat, and something deep inside me has changed forever.
That title’s not a joke, by the way (well, maybe the second part is). As part of a new and very prevalent investigation being headed by TLT and the CIE, my associates and I will be exploring and documenting our experiences with a Virtual Reality Social Platform (hereby referred to as “VRSP”) in the hopes of applying the findings to future projects involving the establishment of virtual online spaces for students and faculty to interact without physically needing to be present.
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