Introducing, for the first time ever, the Creative Tools Beta!
We are introducing a way to experience current in-development creative tools, the Creative Tools Beta. In each room you create, you have the option to enable Beta Content and are free to use this content anywhere in the room, and subrooms. This gives you an early preview of upcoming creative features, and offers you the opportunity to provide early feedback. A few important points about enrolling in the Creative Tools Beta are outlined here, including significant risks of using in-development tools:
- We may make drastic changes or even completely remove beta content features, which could break your creations in these rooms.
- Any room that uses beta content forfeits the ability to be entered into official Rec Room creative contests.
- You cannot create inventions in beta rooms. This may change.
- Rooms that use beta content will be marked with the #beta tag.
- Beta rooms may receive special UI treatment in the future to inform players of unstable content
We hope you enjoy these new tools, and more importantly we hope to hear your feedback about these tools so we can make them better before release. Speaking of new, and exciting creative tools…
# Circuits V2 Beta
Today marks a day we've been looking forward to for over 2 years. Since launching circuits in 2018 we've known they aren't for the faint of heart. With time and patience circuits can be used effectively, but their limitations make some creations impossible and their complexity makes building tedious. Every once in a while we make a fundamental improvement in Rec Room that expands the universe of possibilities for creation. We believe that Circuits V2 is one of those improvements and we are excited to share it with you!
The functionality we're giving you today is new and exciting, but also experimental. As per the experiment, any and all aspects of Circuits V2 may be changed before being moved out of Beta. - there is also still missing functionality provided by Circuits V1 that we intend to provide over time. Things like buttons, trigger volumes, and gizmos won't interact with this new system just yet. That being said, if there is a specific usability issue or missing feature you'd like to see changed in the future we'd love to know about it. With your help, we can make Circuits V2 even better!
The CV2 functionality we are shipping today focuses mainly on AI scripting, and while functionality outside of that is still fairly limited, there are a bunch of other chips present that can be used to make some fun stuff. (We've made things like a text-based combat system where you initiate a fight by punching someone, and a "quiz show" that asks you arithmetic questions.)
# Other Beta Additions
You can find these in the “Other Gadgets” section of your Palette once you enable the Beta Content in your room.
## Spawner Gadget V2
This is a Circuits V2 version of the Spawner Gadget that provides much more flexibility. It works almost identically to the V1 spawner, but has more pins on it, like an input for you to override the spawn location directly. Note: AIs and Path Points have Control Panels on them which provide the flexibility to script your very own AI behavior. Read more about these in the CV2 getting started guide!
## Path Points
These are handy ways to set up paths for your AIs to follow. Drop these in your room and connect them with the wire tool to create a directional path. You can connect the “Self” output pin of a Path Point’s Control Panel to an AI Path To chip to get the AIs on your new path. Note, you will also need a “Creation Object To AI” CV2 node connected to the output of the Spawner Gadget V2.
# Spawner++
We have updated the Spawner Gadget so you can now configure the object that is set to spawn. Examples include setting an object as grabbable, tags, respawn delays, etc. However, much more exciting options have been added to AIs! Note, this upgrade applies to both the CV1 Spawner, and the CV2 Spawner Gadgets.
On AIs, we’ve made it so you can change the speed, health, team and other options. Note: some AIs may have extra configurables, so be sure to check them all out.
You can also recolor AIs to any color in the palette, just like you can for props.
We have also added the ILS Rum Jug to the spawner.
We also took a look at teleporting, which has been upgraded to allow a lot of the functionality Walking has had for a while. Teleporting now includes the ability to:
- Climb
- Fall when room scaling past an edge
- Bump/Push other players when the role setting is enabled in your room
- Platforms that use Pistons/Animations now provide proper support for teleporters. An example of this are elevators and moving platforms.
The comfort settings page has been slightly expanded to include more comfort options for the newly added features. These include vignettes, as well the ability to fully black out the screen during these scenarios, such as falling.
We’ve also combined the checkboxes for Motion Teleport (previously found in Settings > Experience) and the teleport vignette (under Settings > Gameplay > Comfort options) into a single “Teleport” slider on the Comfort Options screen. Please note: We weren’t able to carry over everyone’s settings perfectly. If you previously had motion teleport disabled, you might need to manually set the new slider to Full one time.
General improvements:
- You might have noticed that ever since creator announcements launched you've been seeing fewer room published announcements in your messages screen. Whoops! This build re-adds room published notifications to the messages screen, as well as invention published notifications, and general creator announcements. If you ever feel like you're seeing too many announcements you can toggle off the 'Subscriptions' message group in your options to stop seeing them.
- Fixed floating Goblin Elites in GT, CCC and UGC
- Fixed issue where duplicate club events sometimes appeared on a club details screen
- Enemies will trigger proximity mines
- The Desktop Sharing Speaker finally supports selecting different audio sources!
- Fix for an issue where volume settings would sometimes not save correctly.
- Reduced how frequently we warn you of the weekly limits when changing your display name.
- Avatar mouths should now only animate when players are actually talking
Some quality-of-life improvements to ^3DCharades:
- Maximum drawing time is slightly longer, 1 minute for Co-op and 45 seconds for Team Lightning. Game length has been adjusted accordingly.
- Guessers can no longer interfere by grabbing the drawing when it is not their turn.
- “Away from keyboard” prevention measures have been added to paintball and lasertag. Tokens, Tickets, and leaderboard stats will not be issued for these 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...