Rec Room News

Charades fixes:

• Primitive shapes spawn without pitch or roll, just like if you were using the Maker Pen.
  
• Fixed the triggers on PS4 DualShock. You can actually play Charades (BetaUpdate) now!
  

Room Chat upgrades:

• Room chat messages have a new look that makes it easier to read and to see who the message is coming from
  
• Messages show the sender’s profile photo, this is also a button (for Touch and VR at the moment) that will open the sender’s profile page.
  
• Fixed a ton of bugs with the formatting, transitions, and other interactions with Room Chat. It should be much more stable and consistent now!
  

And some general bug fixes:

• The radio menu is fixed for screen players
  
• Fixed an issue on screens where you could click on scoreboards and other world UI while trying to close the watch menu by tapping in the margins.
  
• Fixed laser pointing a player not working if you were gripping your Index or Oculus controller.
  
• Bear standee should no longer cause errors when saving into rooms
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause players to perpetually drift after landing on the ground
  
• Fixed an issue with manipulate tool that caused it to impact multiple sides at once
  
• Fixed an issue causing state machine nodes losing their configured values when being connected to a state machine graph
  
• Fixed "Cancel" button on Safe Mode confirmation screen during login
  
• Fixed bug that was causing some players to get stuck while viewing their chat messages
  
• Fixed an error in club details where members where showing as blank boxes
  

As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...

Club announcements are a great way to publish info for everyone in your club to read! As a club leader (or someone with the announcements permission), you can post an announcement with a title, body, and an optional image. It will show up for everyone in your club just a few minutes after you hit publish.

Only club members can view club announcements. Members can find the announcements in a new section of your club's page, just under the actions section. Members will know your club has posted a new announcement when you see a number on the clubs button on the watch home screen. Once inside the clubs browser, a green marker will appear on clubs with new announcements. Then in your club's announcements section, each individual announcement will have the same green maker showing you if it's new.

Club owners control who can post announcements. On your Club page, go to "Club Settings" and configure the "Can create club announcements" permission for each membership level. Announcements will be a great way to post about upcoming club events, new creations the club has worked on, updates to the clubhouse, or anything else you'd want to let your members know about. We're thinking about what a true club events system will look like, but for now announcements will be the best way to organize your members.

Thank you so much to everyone who has created a club so far! We're really happy with the variety and love put into all the clubs we're seeing.

On another note, Charades is now in beta for screen players! Try it out in ^CharadesBetaUpdate. We will be refining the experience over the coming weeks and adding a brand-new venue! Soon
As you might have guessed, screen players can now use the charades pen! It also includes some exciting enhancements to make drawing in charades better on screen mode:

• Finger painting mode! Tap the finger paint button to start drawing tubes and other shapes using a cursor on the screen.
  
• Shortcut menu for the charades pen with quick access to a few shapes and colors
  
• Trigger sensitive tube size with a controller
  
• Dynamic tube size on mouse/touch based on how fast you draw
  
• Pressure sensitive tube size with Apple Pencil while finger-painting
  
• Charades pen has gotten some general improvements:
  
• A fresh coat of paint on the tool menu
  
• More shapes (cylinder, pyramid)
  
• Shape previews at the tip of the pen
  

Bug fixes:

• Screen players can now pickup objects that are “sticky” such as charades shapes and polaroids, even after they are stuck to something.
  
• iPad Pro 11 inch home menu now works in landscape.
  
• Fixed Apple Pencil pressure sensitivity for whiteboards
  
• Fixed some cases where the UI would break after returning to a backgrounded iOS app
  

We've also added a new way for creators to easily highlight content for their players -- Link Buttons! The link button is a new dynamic prop which can be spawned from the maker pen palette. Once spawned, players can configure these buttons to link to any of the following: Players, Rooms, Clubs, Inventions, or Player Events. Players that press the button will be shown the details UI for whatever the button is linked to (ex: A specific player’s details UI). We hope creators can use these buttons to call attention to some of the cool people and creations that can be found in Rec Room.

We also added a Rangefinder Gadget - Point this new gadget at anything and it will output the distance to whatever the laser beam hits. If the target is an object or player, it also outputs the target's ID. It can be configured to provide distance values in meters, centimeters, or millimeters, and can filter for objects by tag, and players by role. You can configure it to show the recolorable laser beam even when gadgets are hidden, so get ready for some cool laser light shows!

And some general bug fixes:
Reduced latency on screen creation tools. Dragging now happens instantly rather than in .25 seconds
Can now drag objects which are far away

As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...

Codes and Links have been unified and polished, and can now be used on all platforms! Codes are used for Meetups, Friend Invites, and Referrals with more to come. You can discover, create and enter all types of codes from the new Code button on the home screen of your watch. For your convenience, you can also enter any code from the login screens. When you create a code, you’ll also see a unique RecNet link for that code. This link is helpful for sharing with others: it displays the code, helps install Rec Room, and even supports Quick Play for iOS and PC users.

Meetup codes - Create a private instance of a room that only other people with the code can access. Great for meetings and hangouts where you don't want to have to manually invite everyone. The meetup code also works for non friends which makes it ideal for quickly meeting up with people not already on your friends list.

Friend codes - Single use invites that will automatically add the player to your friends list and bring them to wherever you are in Rec Room. If you're in a private room when they enter the code it will auto ping you saying they have requested to join. This is a great way to quickly invite a single person to your friends list and quickly bring them to you.

Referral codes - Referral codes should only be used when a referral event is running. By referring new players during an event you can unlock different rewards. Watch out for in game announcements or announcements on our social channels for when these events are happening. We will be running one soon! There's also an 'event details' section of the Codes screen that will show if an event is currently active or not along with the event details. The referral code ensures we attribute new players to your account so that we can issue you the event rewards. Referral code players are not added to your friends list so that you can share this code more widely to anyone who might be interested in trying out Rec Room. This system will be updated over time with new features like sending you a notification when someone has used your referral code. For now there is no way to tell how many people have used your code until we issue rewards at the end of the event.

We’re also starting a Selling Inventions Beta - A small group of players are selling inventions for tokens. These beta sellers were selected based on their creation skills, their history of giving quality feedback, and their good moderation standing. It’s an intentionally small group for the beta period as we test out the system and find the flaws. Anyone can buy these inventions from the Inventions store in the watch. There are some really great things there: costumes, furniture, animated characters, games, and more.

And some general bug fixes:

• Fix for sign collision in disc golf, paintball, and soccer
  
• Fixed bug where settings screen could show incorrect options
  
• Improved navmesh baking to better respect the bounds of objects
  
• Improved quick action menu sizing on non-VR platforms
  
• Changed SetLeaderboardStat chip to use an 'invalid' mode by default. You will need to explicitly choose the assignment behavior in the configure menu before the chip works. In the case where a room instance breaks, the chip should revert to the invalid state preventing data loss for users.
  

As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...

https://imgur.com/a/zcYRax0

This one's been a long time coming! We've seen so much enthusiasm and positivity around the Quests we've built over the years, and as long as community rooms have existed, the ability to build experiences with AI has consistently been one of our most requested features. Today we're excited to announce our first step in an ongoing journey to bring delightful, expressive, and robust AI tools into Rec Room for everyone to use! It all starts with Golden Trophy Goblins and JumboTron bots, but this is just the beginning, and you can look forward to many more AI features in the coming months!

https://recroom.com/developer-blog/2020/5/5/ai-in-rec-room-you-are-here

New Things for Creators to use:

- The Spawner Gadget
https://imgur.com/a/uKbLcCJ
This unassuming-yet-powerful little Gadget is now available in the Maker Pen Palette under Gadgets -> Other Gadgets. The purple base and beacon indicate the location for its spawned object, and the chip provides its circuit interface. This Gadget will ultimately be able to spawn just about anything in Rec Room, but today you can use it to spawn AI and some destructible props.
To spawn an AI, place one of these in your room, and then select it with the Configure Tool to select whatever you'd like to spawn:
https://imgur.com/a/qsxMXoU
Once you've selected something to spawn, you'll see a purple-tinted preview of the AI in the location where it will show up. To spawn an AI, send a circuit signal to the Red input pin!
https://imgur.com/a/Gj7woL2

- Navigation Data
We've built a lot of gameplay scenarios in our Quests and Laser Tag maps, but we've barely scratched the surface on the variety of environments these bots can play in. We're excited to see you push these limits, and because everyone builds environments differently, we've provided a visual indicator to help illustrate how these AI see the world and navigate through it. If a hallway is too narrow for a bot to fit through, you'll see that reflected in the navigation data. If a hill is too steep for AI to climb, you'll see that too, all without having to test all these scenarios manually.
https://imgur.com/a/gbGFL1D
https://imgur.com/a/Lwdl0XP
For creators, this visualization is a powerful design aid and time saver to help make sure your environments support the gameplay you want for your players. This information will then be saved into the room, and you’ll only need to redo the bake step when something changes where AI can move in the room, like moving walls or furniture.
Before you can have AI running around your room, open your Watch Menu, and go to This Room -> Settings -> AI -> Navigation and hit the button to bake NavMesh.
https://imgur.com/a/ZOQ0oIv
If you forget where to find this, you can follow the in-game prompt that displays if you attempt to spawn AI in a room that doesn't have navigation data yet.
**A couple quick tips for working with AI**
We’ve added a couple features to make it easier to iterate on your gameplay setups. First, we’ve added a Destroy All AI button to the AI Settings tab in room settings. This will clear out any AIs currently running around in your room. It’s easy to lose track of them as you’re testing a bunch. Second, we’ve added the ability to specify whether a trigger volume should only trigger once.
https://imgur.com/a/BYisIZR
With this set to true, if you just want one wave of spawns, your players will really only get one wave of spawns, rather than triggering spawns every time they touch a trigger volume.
We’ve also added a new Reset Gadgets button to the Maker Pen settings menu.
https://imgur.com/tQGFhPT
In Rec Room we have a very fluid line between creation and play. That said, as we add more complex features like AI, it’s helpful to be able to quickly try your experiences over and over, and see them the way your users would see them. This button provides a way to clear out non-permanent changes to the room, and reset the room back to the state it was in before circuits started running logic. This button currently only applies to the trigger count for Trigger Volumes, and the state of your Spawner Gadgets, but it’s likely we’ll expand this to reset other gadgets where it helps. If you work anything like we do, this one will make iteration on gameplay setups much smoother.
Lastly, we’ve added a configuration shortcut to our Game Rules chip in order to help Creators quickly configure their own games to run similar to our Quests.
https://imgur.com/a/jnP8jys
If you're using a Game Rules chip for game states, Reset Gadgets also gets called automatically on game start and game end. So if you have AI running around during pre-game, they'll get cleaned up before the game starts. And if AI are still alive when the game ends, they'll get cleaned up when you transition to post-game. The Reset Gadgets button is currently the only way you can manually trigger it.
All right, that should be enough to get you started creating with AI in Rec Room! As we mentioned at the beginning, this is just the first step in our journey to bring the delight and expressiveness of AI to everyone in Rec Room. As always, give us your feedback, both good and bad, hit us with all your feature requests, and stay tuned for more exciting AI features to come!

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While we were building our new AI systems, we also took this time as an opportunity to run a comb through our existing Quests to tune interactions and squash a whole bunch of bugs!
General Quest bug fixes:
- Fixed spawn points being above the ground in some spots
- Fixed lock icons not going away when you unlock mid level gates and end doors
Curse of the Crimson Cauldron:
- Improved visibility and flow in the ladder section of the bell-tower
- Pike Goblins' shields now react more physically to being hit by projectiles
- Fixed a spot where you could get stuck on a ladder in the first level
- Added some ramps to clean up areas where players were getting stuck
- Fixed some black textures
Crescendo of the Blood Moon:
- Fixed various props clipping into geometry
- Sound effects that previous had no mixer assigned are now in SFX or Ambience
- Fixed a visual on a skeleton hand that showed a book
- Fixed a sprinkler effect that wasn't visible in the first level
- Lowered miniboss' hit audio volume
- Fixed enemy pathing issues in the Lower Sanctum level
- Lowered Musket Enemy health from 100->75. This makes it a little more feasible to flank a squad of enemies
- Made some navigation improvements to the ballroom level, specifically reaching the door at the end of the room
- Fixed some mini-bosses not spawning silver
- Minor performance improvements in some scenes
- Adjusted volume of the fire traps to be more audible
- Fixed a spot in the boss room that you could get stuck behind props
- Fixed getting out of the map in the Grand Hall
The Rise of JumboTron:
- Fixed a wall that had no collision in the first level
- Fixed meshes being unable to utilize LODs
- Fixed JT grenade damage radius visual
- Fixed props clipping inside of each other
- Fixed some collision clipping to allow smoother movement on some staircases
Isle of Lost Skulls:
- Fixed a name not showing up on one of the loot chest pedestals
- Fixed a bunch of audio sources that had no sound channel assigned
- Fixed the hat being the wrong color for the third slot outfit in the ILS storefront.
- Fixed an enemy killzone not working in the boss room

We also made some fixes to Laser Tag maps:
Hangar
- Fixed Laser Launcher power weapon damage radius visual
- Fixed bleachers collision to be more accurate
- Fixed a hole in the map that let you leave the arena
CyberJunk City
- Fixed some UVs on the orange side tower
- Made the orange side tower's windows slightly taller so you can enter and exit from the windows easier
- Re-tuned occlusion bake values to reduce areas where parts of the map disappear
- Adjusted collision on the overpass so its more accurate
- Fixed a window collision that allowed teleporters to get on top of a building in the map that was unintended

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Unrelated we also added notification filtering settings to experience settings to help keep notification clutter down.

We also already have some updates to Clubs:
- Inviting all friends or nearby players to a club now prompts you with a confirmation screen.- “Sort By” options for club join requests work correctly now
- Club searches can now be run by hitting enter or submit, and provide more details about the search when no results are found
- Searching for players on club invite and ban pages should be faster and more responsive
- Club settings screen does not re-show Code of Conduct warning if the club is already public
- Club and member search text doesn’t get cleared when navigating
- Fixed a few typos in clubs pages, including the typography crime that was the word “CoOwner” :)
- Added join date to club member details page
- Updated validation and feedback messages for various club actions to be smaller and more concise
- Hitting the back button after removing a member or deleting a club no longer results in a 404
- Setting club photos now give better details about whether it is adding or replacing an existing photo

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Also some general bug fixes:
- Unfavorite button in player details page was truncated
- Tooltips on room report categories were incorrect
- Friends list was updating too often and making it unusable for people with many active friends
- Chat message behavior improved for unread messages
- Vote to Kick button behavior improved when initiating a vote to kick
- Fix that prevents WalkVR players being able to teleport off of Royale gliders
- Fix for getting stuck in strange animation states when player releases 2-handed tools (ex: Cannon)
- Fix for animation tool desyncs when player joins room after it has been saved
- Fix for not being able to set shape equip slots on costume dummy in screens
- Fix for screens players not being able to fly when falling
- Fix that makes 3D text display reflections and fog properly
- Fixes crashing and stalling when using the clear all notifications button
- Fixes comment UI paged grid from resetting to first page when cheering or reporting comment
- Reduces max number of comments user can leave per minute from 4 to 2
- Adjusted AFK detection on Steam VR to address issues with certain headsets
- Improved audio prioritization in rooms with lots of players

As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...

We've added a new way for players to leave feedback in rooms they like in Rec Room -- the feedback tool! You can find the feedback tool in your backpack and use it to leave feedback, ideas, or bug reports in any user-created room. When holding the feedback tool, you'll see where other players left feedback in a room and, if you're a room creator, co-owner, or moderator, you'll be able to read the feedback by tapping the floating icons. To quickly manage feedback in a room you own, you can view recent comments in the new "Room Comments" tab under the room details UI. Creators can cheer commenters from comment bubbles to show their appreciation for their thoughtful feedback.

Creators will also receive watch notifications when their rooms have new comments. You can jump to these rooms right from the notification. Also, if your notifications list is getting a little too full, we've added a "Clear All Notifications" button to quickly clean up your inbox. Enjoy!

We also built out subroom welcome mats: you can now configure the welcome mat to support sub rooms and set the spawn point based on what room the player is coming from.

Also some bug fixes:
* Fixed bug where you couldn’t scroll past 10 clubs
* Fixed missing level up rewards
* Fixed infinite consumable bug
* Fixed bug that meant leaderboard stat values were truncated
* Fixed an issue where costumes didn’t respects world fade settings
* Fixed bug where arrows hung in the air when dropping the bow

As always, thanks for playing Rec Room!
Please see here for convenient links to controls, tutorials, comfort options, etc.: https://recroom.com/community
We love to hear your feedback, so please don't hesitate to let us know what you think...