Hello and welcome back to the Weekly Update!
This week, the Creator Jammiversary has kicked off! The celebration is going on for the whole week, so there’s still plenty of time to join and have fun, see the program below!
We’ve received a lot of feedback on our GitHub on both the Facet system, which has been progressing nicely and on the planned blocking/votekick system. Please see the details below, as there are still important things to decide and discuss.
On our Friday livestream we’ve also gone over the community creations from May. There’s more and more amazing stuff being created every month, so definitely check it out if you missed it. We show a bunch of cool worlds and a Cross Universe game that’s being made by our Japanese community.
[h2]Creator Jam Jammiversary in progress![/h2]
Today the 1 year anniversary celebration for the Creator Jam has officially kicked off! If you missed the initial live stream and celebration, there’s still plenty of time to jump in and hop through some of the best creations from the weekly community event.
The celebrations are continuing through the entire week of June 1st to June 6th, with the following program from Medra:
Monday - Improv 4:00EST(UTC 20:00)
Tuesday - Telephone Game/Build Challenge 4:00EST(UTC 20:00)
Wednesday - Avatar Fashion Show/Beauty Pageant 4:00EST(UTC 20:00)
Thursday - Gadget/Logix Snippet Drop Off 3:00EST(UTC 19:00)
Friday - Dance Party 6:00EST(UTC 22:00)
Saturday - Scavenger Hunt 3:00EST(UTC 19:00)
[h3]Improv[/h3]
Come out to perform or watch Improvisational Theatre. Improv games will be played on stage.
Performance is encouraged but not required.
[h3]Telephone Game/Build Challenge[/h3]
Groups play the telephone game with worldbuilding. Optionally a individual or team based build competition might be chosen instead of the telephone game depending on who votes for what.
[h3]Avatar Fashion Show/Beauty Pageant[/h3]
Show off your avatar! People will strut on the runway letting others see all the work you've put into that avatar.
Performance is encouraged but not required. Please message Medra beforehand if you wish to participate.
Check out Creator Jam 42 to see examples of the telephone game.
[h3]Gadget/Logix Snippet Drop Off[/h3]
In a relaxed environment stop by and drop off gadgets you've created and especially logix code snippets. We'll keep them all together for others to enjoy. (with credit to author of course)
[h3]Dance Party[/h3]
Wiggle that bod!
[h3]Scavenger Hunt[/h3]
Work individually or in teams to complete a list of tasks to video or photograph and items to grab. Scavenger hunt list will be distributed at near the beginning of the event. Late arrivals can still participate. 30 Minutes before the end of the scavenger hunt everyone will meet back in the world for a show and tell session. Winners will be determined then.
Prop Hunt Everyday (Server will be up all Day and Night)
[h2]Feedback on the user blocking functionality[/h2]
We’ve gotten
lots of great feedback on the user blocking functionality on GitHub, thank you everyone for chiming in! This is a really important feature for the future of Neos and having a community involved in its design is crucial.
The major concern is that features like this can be misused by many users and create a negative culture, where users get blocked permanently over trivial matters. At the same time it is important that the ability to block somebody shouldn’t be taken away, as it can be necessary to deal with some genuinely distressing situations.
The best compromise for this kind of situation would be a system, where the one-click block is temporary (e.g. 24 hours). This way when dealing with annoyances, the user isn’t blocked forever.
To actually apply a longer or permanent block, you’d have to expand the block options and add a little personal note (a private one, not shared anywhere, could be even random text) in order to apply the block. This way the permanent block is a bit more effort than the temporary one, but also nothing that would take more than a minute.
We believe that this setup would help nudge people towards using the permanent block in situations where they’re really serious about it and using the quick temporary one to deal with annoyances.
However this presents one problem - having this kind of UI for blocking isn’t implementable with the current UI, so in order to implement it this way, we’d have to wait for the new UI to be replaced, which will likely take a few more weeks.
This way, we have two main options:
- Implement the permanent block now as a single button with the existing UI. Later replace it with the system proposed above once the new UI is in.
- Delay the blocking functionality until the new UI is in and use other moderation tools to deal with the situations.
Which option would you prefer? Do you feel that the blocking functionality is urgent enough to warrant it being added now or do you think it’s sufficient to wait? Let us know your thoughts on GitHub or if you’d prefer to give your feedback anonymously, you can contact team members on Discord (preferably Veer, our chief of moderation).
There are some other points raised as well. We recommend reading the GitHub for details, but one important one is that the ability to block users can also be disabled by a host of the world. This will prevent game worlds breaking and will allow to also host “block-free” social zones. The fact that blocking is disabled in a particular world would be displayed of course, so users are aware before they join.
[h2]Progress on the Facet system[/h2]
After gathering a lot of interesting feedback on GitHub, the development is continuing on the Facet system. Currently the focus is on designing the more technical parts of the system, so there’s not much interesting to show yet, but some important changes and additions were made to UIX and its underlying systems.
Particular support for nested canvases was added, which allows nesting one canvas into another, with proper masking and forwarding of inputs. This way a facet can be properly contained within the canvas of the container, with the inputs automatically forwarded.
The interaction mechanism for UIX was also redesigned to allow for new kinds of interactions, such as placing a Facet into a container, bypassing any interaction elements that cannot process the currently held item. A support for a hidden layer, allowing certain objects to be only explicitly rendered by a camera has been added as well. As more of the underlying systems are built, the changes will become more visual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN1BPcVMt4A
[h2]Various improvements, additions and bugfixes[/h2]
As usual, Neos keeps getting steady updates that provide small additions, tweaks and bugfixes, many of them based on the community feedback and bug reports.
One notable fix in the past week has been for the new laser system on Oculus devices. We have found out that when interacting with private UI, the laser is extremely jittery, but only when using Oculus headsets. Some community members assumed this was intended behavior, so the issue wasn’t reported sooner, but now should be fixed!
If you’re using an Oculus headset and you’ve previously disliked the new lasers because of this, we recommend resetting the settings and testing them out again now, to see if they feel any better.
There were many other changes as well, such as a new method to equip tools through the context menu simply by clicking on them, new dash icons and many more bugfixes.
[h2]Working on a new Streamer House[/h2]
We’re also working on a brand new streamer house! Aegis_Wolf is currently designing a new building that will serve as our main environment for our livestreams, but will be freely usable by anyone.
The work is still very much in progress, but you can see some renders here to get an early look at what it looks like so far:
[h2]Community Highlights[/h2]
[h3]Monthly Community Showcase[/h3]
This month, Nexulan has shown off all of the wonderful creations and worlds that our community has graced us with throughout the month of May. We do these every last Friday of every month on our Twitch channel, so come catch us for the next June showcase, or re-watch the stream below.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]Education & Science group on Discord[/h3]
A group of educators using Neos have started holding regular meetings to discuss how Neos and other platforms can be used for learning and science, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you’re interested in following those discussions and meetings, check out the #edu-science channel on our official Discord. You can also ask a team member (preferably Shifty) for a new “Education & Science” role, so you get pinged with any news in that channel!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]Fennec Cave by Kal[/h3]
This world is designed with ambience in mind! The cave’s movie screen actually projects light around the room, giving off an emissive glow that reacts nicely with the shiny cave walls. This is a great place to watch movies, youtube videos, or listen to music with friends!
[h3]Chess World by Kal [/h3]
Kal’s Chess World features multiple chessboards, and a main table with a chess display so people can easily see what’s going on during a heated chess match! With a fancy Victorian theme, this is sure to be a delightful world to play a game of chess in.
[h2]What’s Next?[/h2]
Our main focus is still the facet, container and workspace system for Radiant UI. The first technical phase of getting those systems setup in the first place is the most significant one, once those pieces are up and running we’ll be able to start replacing all of the old UI pieces and reworking them under the new framework.
We’re still waiting on some more feedback for the blocking functionality, please let us know so we can decide the priority better!
Thank you again for reading the weekly update and see you with the next one!
