8Bit | 
| 🍶🦊Alright, chat, hear me out:
First Person Marble!
Good idea or nah?
Gawain(DarkGriffin)@memoriesin8bit In VR? If so, you've just made everyones dream roller coaster designer!
Well, if they dreamed of being marbles at least, lol.
@memoriesin8bit It's like a track designer for those Jurassic Park ball vehicles...as designed by the spy kids theme park guy.
@darkgriffin The VR version of this game is up in the air. It was initially planned to be VR only, but then I made both and now it's almost 5 years and an engine switch later and I'm still not done.
The biggest implication of the VR follow mode is the size. It may not be obvious here, but the game is made in *relatively* realistic size. So a marble has a 5cm diameter. Which is likely smaller than the distance of your pupils.
So unless I can scale the VR player, this may not work.
@memoriesin8bit Hmm, yeah, that could get tricky depending on how the new engine handles vr players as entities. I know in Unity a player vr rig is actually all under a root, which unity uses as "0,0,floor", scaling that makes all relative real life movement match the new in game universe scale, including rendering camera distance. Walk about does it for the score menu when players turn giant to view the course miniture. But I am unsure how universal that handling is across different vr engines.
@memoriesin8bit Besides, most player count is still on desktop anyway. Best focus there first!
Professor_Stevens
Patatabrava Jocs 
Benjamin@memoriesin8bit I feel like I might get sick from it, but I showed it to my son and he is absolutely EXCITED about this feature!
bassistance@memoriesin8bit perfect!! ❤️
doqunbop@memoriesin8bit Marble Coaster! Looks really cool (but might require more vertices in some places, like the wire track endpoints).
@doqunbop Yeah they would. Unfortunately, that's not really practical. Lemme explain: Detail is good, but it needs to be consistent across all parts(mesh). A small part can have 1000 triangles. To get the same detail on a big one, it may need up to 7000. And larger means higher LOD distance. If I ramp up details, some meshes will end up with +10000 triangles. Means much, MUCH smaller levels.
aeva@memoriesin8bit omg yes :D
Irenes (many)@memoriesin8bit ooo it sounds neat
Florian 'floe' Echtler@memoriesin8bit 🤢 I can already feel the motion sickness kicking in
@floe Consider this a mockup at best.
For once, it's gonna be an optional "follow" feature. Of which I will also likely make a third person orbit mode. And for both I will investigate damping mechanisms to make both experiences as little jarring as I possibly can.
For once, it's gonna be an optional "follow" feature. Of which I will also likely make a third person orbit mode. And for both I will investigate damping mechanisms to make both experiences as little jarring as I possibly can.
@memoriesin8bit No worries, I think I'm not exactly representative here 😵💫😅
@floe Oh yeah I just wanted to preface it - this was literally a 3 code line experiment. The main game is supposed to be very cozy - build some marble contraptions and watch them work as you would in real life. I want this to be game to be able to be enjoyed by everyone - hence I try to make it as accessible as I possibly can.
crab@memoriesin8bit i have to say i was expecting the camera to spin around wildly as the marble spins :p
@operand I don't hate any of you. That's why :D
the creatures fka "avie!!"@memoriesin8bit ohh interesting, I wasn't expecting a static camera attached to the marble honestly
i mean it makes more sense than what I was expecting which is something akin to the old increpare title "Salome" where the camera is fixed to one part of the ball meaning you experience the full rotation in first person (and consequently get immediate motion sickness)
@avie yeah. I was planning initially to rotate the camera towards movement direction but even that could get too jarring. So I left the rotation entirely up to the player and it made things a lot more manageable.
@memoriesin8bit honestly going the Salome route would be very funny to me given how the look and feel of your marble game is very bright colourful and happy vs Salome's isolating unsettling ambiance lmao
just a thing of like "oh, first person mode? thats interesting let's look at th--OH GOD NO LETS NOT LOOK AT THAT"
@memoriesin8bit this is why I can't be trusted to make games
@avie I try to think of "haha funny if I made this another option to do" but I am also way too busy how to organize the inputs (esp on gamepad the whole building marble machines already consumes ALL buttons), fix material fading, add a third person orbit mode, make everything less puke inducing, add puke warnings, if this is possible in VR despite your head larger than a marble....
It's fun cause this test video was 3 lines of code. Making it a proper polished feature will likely take a month.
@memoriesin8bit I appreciate your commitment to making a normal video game that people can enjoy and not letting the Brain Gremlins take over to do horrible things because it would be funny (/gen)
@avie No, trust me, I love absolutely crazy things. I always say it's better to have something fun and crazy than a polished game that's super boring and uninspired.
I got three days a week to work on this and I'm almost 5 years in. So I'm getting anxious with every idea. And I hate that I think like this.
I got three days a week to work on this and I'm almost 5 years in. So I'm getting anxious with every idea. And I hate that I think like this.
@memoriesin8bit think of it this way, once you've completed this project, you have a great excuse to make something just completely unhinged and ridiculous
@avie I kinda did that already. That was my first solo game. It's where I said: "What if you take a SHMUP, throw in some Geometry Wars and add the gravity mechanics of Mario Galaxy?"
It's called DOKI DOKI GRAVITY DIVE and it's on GOG and itch :D
@memoriesin8bit oh hell yes I gotta check this out
but also I meant More Unhinged, full shit post type thing , stuff where it just sucks for the player in really funny ways 
@avie It was already so unhinged, it put off enough people to barely make back the money I put in to have the music made. :D
@memoriesin8bit bless, absolutely perfect, thats what i love to hear (apart from the barely making back the money people need to be less cowardly grrrr)
@memoriesin8bit see i joke about making barely playable things for a laugh but i do genuinely appreciate going in the opposite direction of "marketable" so so much because having a unique look and/or feel to your game is so crucial to me and it pains me so much when i see cool games that do that but dont really get much recognition as a result
i even run a whole steam curator page with a friend to try and boost their existence a bit more lmao https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42578071/
@avie Don't get me wrong: Spending 2 years and just making pennies back, I admit, it hurts. But I know how crowded the market is and money is short. I can live cause I work as a contractor also. Means I can work on my games less, but I am fine. When/if that work ends one day, I can get anxious, open a Patreon/KoFi - whatevs. Till then I try to have fun making games :)
@memoriesin8bit 💜 i hope in future you get a buncha dosh back for your hard work regardless tbh
@avie Me too. My retirement fund would be happy so I can stop working before I turn 90. :D
@memoriesin8bit (placed it on the wishlist, will grab it when I next get paid!!)
@avie If you got an itch account, you may already own it. It was part of a lot of charity bundles.
+>e@memoriesin8bit the camera should be fixed in the marble and rotate with it, more fun and ideal for VR
@eons But I don't hate any of you. I don't want you guys to get sick!