Mixed Reality Update + 31 other minor fixes/changes
Lots of small improvements and bug fixes this week.
[H1]IMPROVEMENTS[/H1]
Added Mixcast SDK! This makes it much easier to film mixed reality videos, with or without a green screen.
Removed some redundant objects / models for slight FPS boost.
Improved spatial audio for 4 different Nightmare sounds. The breathing dentist adds a lot! Nightmare is activated with 666 on the number panel.
Changed billboards. "THE MORE I THINK ABOUT IT, THE BIGGER IT GETS" is graffiti found in our home town, Brisbane Australia.
[H1]BUG FIXES[/H1]
Fixed falling bug if plank is raised too high.
Stopped 666 from working if user isn't looking at numbers.
Turned off forced AA for Oculus.
Fixed shoe model. (this is why controller was disappearing in feet tracking mode)
Fixed bug with phone ringing too much after the fall in nightmare mdoe.
Fixed elevator sound if using warp to ground whilst elevator was moving.
Bug fixes with skybrush pallet. Color selection works better now.
[H1]MINOR IMPROVEMENTS[/H1]
Game now saves which object you added to end of the plank and will add it for every user until you select "none" again.
Reduced brightness of leaf falling particle.
Reduced opacity of dust particles.
Put fog levels back to where it was.
Made the rocket glow with a little more red.
Improved smooth snap turning for Oculus touch
Slightly shortened length of logo scene of nightmare.
"I'm Short" button is now higher.
Added Korean Translation.
Updated Oculus SDK.
Fixed dirt in nightmare mode.
Increased volume of city traffic.
Fixed Pro Builder errors.
Lowered Donuts, Rockets and cake when added to the plank
You can now add rockets to the end of the plank for easy flying. This should improve the user flow when you want players to walk the
We now sell custom versions of Richie's Plank to help your event or product launch party.
Added shortcuts 1,2,3,4,6 for shortcuts to add objects on plank.
Added ability to add custom objects to VR Menu -> Bonus options.
[H1]COMING SOON[/H1]
Umbrella mode. Umbrella added to the end of the plank to float slowly around the city.
Space Y rocket launch
Congratulations to the SkyBrush Competition winner!
Congratulations to Mars S Malo for his entry into the SkyBrush competition. Impressively, he completed his entry in costume and in Mixed Reality. We really liked the result and was also very timely. HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018!
He wins naming rights to a building in Richie's Plank City and the $50 steam voucher.
After over 12 months of development and improvements, Richie's Plank Experience is finally out of Early Access.
Here's how it looked then and now.
Plank View
THEN
NOW
Flying
THEN
NOW
Thanks again for your support.
Merry Christmas!
BANNED. It's time to say goodbye to Reddit /r/Vive.
Toni and I have come to the sad realisation that we can no longer be a part of the /r/Vive community.
What the Hell Happened? Yesterday we posted about our grand opening update to /r/Vive. This update isn't a regular update. It is essentially a remake. Rebuilt from the ground up by a 3D artist, feet tracking, a nightmare mode and a bunch of surprises. For perspective, it cost us 8X more than the original Richie's Plank.
Minutes after posting, upvotes started coming in. It was upvoted to #4 spot and for a short while, it was the only post in 2 pages that wasn't about Fallout 4 VR. (which does deserve 2 pages. It's pretty damn epic) We were thrilled. Unfortunately, it was removed by the moderators before most people saw it.
We Broke the Rules Around this time last year, we released the Santa Simulator update. I was so excited, I asked our Steam fans to upvote the post on Reddit. This broke the rules and it was removed by the moderators. Desperate, I broke the rules again to post Santa on /r/Vive. Then I doubled down and tried to mislead the moderators about this. I tried to reconcile with the moderators througout the year. I didn't receive a response.
Yesterday, we Broke the Rules Again For the first time in a year, we broke the rules again by posting about the grand opening update. We were excited for /r/Vive to see our surprises. We used a 3rd account. The post is deleted and we're now banned again for ban evasion, probably beyond reconciliation. Please don't blame the mods. They were just following the rules.
Unfortunately, we have now come to the realisation that we can't be a part of the /r/Vive community anymore. If you don't see us being involved, it's not because we don't care.
Memories We immediately felt connected to /r/Vive. There was this constant buzz with the giant leap in technology with proper room-scale VR. We still feel it. Here's some of our fondest memories...
What Now? In future, we'll spend more time on the Steam Community and over at /r/SteamVR and /r/Oculus where we'll be happy to respond to any questions or comments that arise.
Goodbye /r/Vive. We will miss you.
Sincerely,
Richard Eastes
EDIT:
I want to clarify something about our vote manipulation ban. Yes, our initial ban was because of vote manipulation. It was the wording we used when we shared the Santa Simulator reddit post in 2016 on steam. The wording was "If you like the Santa Simulator update, please share the love on /r/vive" Although an honest mistake, we agree that this was technically vote manipulation. We suspect it was filtered by a sensitive bot/tool. Interestingly, at the same time, it was organically voted to the top of /r/gaming so I doubt the /r/vive vote manipulation made much difference.
Our 2 intentional offences after that were from creating new accounts out of desperation to stay involved in the /r/vive reddit. After 12 months of attempted reconciliation with no response, we had to say formally say goodbye. I hope that clears some things up.
The Grand Opening Update
This is Toni and Richard from Richie's Plank Experience.
Below you'll see details of a rebuilt city, feet tracking, nightmare mode and a few other surprises that came out today. Announcement video here (8min)
If you have any questions, we're here to answer them for you.
REBUILT CITY
The city has now been rebuilt from the ground up. Textures, buildings, rooftops, interiors, sky, roads, the plank, elevator. Pretty much everything has been rebuilt. We admit, the early versions looked pretty bad.
Old Version
New Version
New Version from the Ground
FEET TRACKING
Here's how it works:
Vive Controllers Using a rubber band, attach the controller upside down, with the head of the controller on the outside of your shoe. This works pretty well, straight out of the box. Attach additional rubber bands if it's not tight enough. Please note that flying and other levels won't work since you obviously won't be able to use your hands. Feet tracking enables hands free mode.
Vive Tracking Pucks Great for arcades and serious VR demo fans. Screw the tracker onto some immitation Crocs (or real crocs) for a universally fitting shoe. Purchase the screw from a hardware store. You'll need to dampen harsh vibration with some rubber bands. This stop the shoe from glitching slightly. Please note, the latest update is still being uploaded to the Vivestore.
Oculus You'll need two rubber bands for each controller. Both individually looped onto the wrist strap. Then, run them under the shoe and finally use the touch controllers' "circle of lights" to hook the rubber bands. See announcement video for details. We noticed that with most Oculus setups, camera's can't see the ground. Please promise you won't attempt this if your Oculus cameras can't fully see the ground. You'll be setting yourself up for frustration, otherwise.
NIGHTMARE MODE
Press 666 into the number panel in the elevator to enable Nightmare mode. Hope you enjoy the surprise! We'll be improving this over time. Not suitable for children.
FLYING IS MORE FUN
Faster sounds. Tuned Rockets. Note: If you enable Ludicrous Speed mode in settings, you can easily die if you hit something at high speed. Pressing code 112 on the number panel will automatically give you rockets.
SKYBRUSH COMPETITION
To celebrate coming out of early access, we're hosting a competition. Win a $50 Steam voucher and naming rights to a Building in Richie's Plank Experience. Post a photo or video of your skybrush art to Steam, Twitter or Instagram with #SkyBrush hashtag. Winner picked December 31st.
NEW GAME
Yes, we're working on a new game. All we can say for now is that it'll involve flying and a super hero academy. ETA 2019.
UPDATED SANTA SIMULATOR
It's that time of year to say Merry Christmas!
It looks better and works more smoothly. There's also an option in settings to have the sleigh automatically center itself to the center of your play space. It does this when you first enter the sleigh. Required for smaller play spaces. HO HO HO! My best score is 59 presents delivered. Can you be a better Santa?
OUT OF EARLY ACCESS
Thank you to everyone who has supported us while in early access! We hope you enjoy this update. The early access price will finish when this post is 48 hours old, so if you've been sitting on the fence, consider buying it now. We will strive to keep bringing you bug fixes, improvements and a SPACE Y launch late next year.
First person to guess what this phone does, gets a building named after them.
So our update is delayed by a few days. Really sorry about that. We wanted to add a little more polish and make sure Santa Simulator is still included.
In the meantime.... First person to guess what happens when you answer this phone, will get a building named after them.
Special Announcement and Price Increase coming late November
In late November we'll be revealing a surprise update to Richie's Plank Experience. We can't wait to share it with you.
This date also brings us out of Early Access, so the price will be increasing to $US15.99 PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, if you are sitting on the fence about buying, or waiting for a discount, please purchase now, to avoid disappointment.
A note from Toni. Richie's Plank is 1 year old today.
A little over a year ago, Richard & I sat at the table behind us in this picture and decided to work full-time on making a VR experience. We were newly married and probably still ‘living in a dream’ to think it was a great idea to both start working full-time in an industry that we had no experience in.
Today marks one year since we released Richie’s Plank Experience. I remember sitting at that table and agreeing “If we make 1000 sales by the end of the year we will consider continuing to build a VR studio”.
We originally planned to release Richie’s Plank Experience on 1 September 2016 until a few big bugs appeared and set our launch date back. We eventually got it working again and released it one year ago today and 5 days before we departed on our honeymoon!!
The day we released Richie’s Plank Experience we were fixated on the Steam store, waiting for our first sale. We were so excited and nervous. We would refresh the page every few minutes to see if the sales increased. Surprisingly, every couple of minutes we would make a sale. We were thrilled. On the first few nights of our honeymoon we were on our phones watching Youtube reviews from people around the world including Jacksepticeye and PewDiePie.
If you have followed our journey you will know we made over 1000 sales within the first week. So we made it official, Richard & I now were now going to make VR games as a family business.
So what have we learned one year later?
Today, we sat at the same coffee shop table. This year we were joined by Danny our talented 3D artist. Once again, We had planned to release Richie’s Plank Experience (out of early access) on 1st September. Once again, we have a few bugs that have stopped us from releasing the update. Today, we are 5 days from our first baby due date!!
We have learned one thing though. We value the support of the VR community and industry. We wanted to take a minute to say thanks to everyone who has supported us. The community on Steam, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube who have shared videos and provided feedback. HTC, Oculus, and Microsoft who have offered us help and amazing opportunities. The businesses using our experience for exhibits, events and arcades and anyone who has taken the time to try Richie’s Plank Experience. We really appreciate your support.
The past year has exceeded our wildest dreams! Thanks to you guys.
We desperately wanted to publish our latest update of Richie’s Plank Experience by now. We have made major graphical improvements and added 2 new features. We can’t wait to share it with everyone.
Once again, we are excited and nervous about releasing the next update and ask for your support and patience. Our next release will bring Richie's Plank Experience out of early access. The release date will depend on which comes first… all the bugs fixed or the arrival of our baby!
Wish us luck for another year. We can only imagine what we are in for in the next 12 months.
2 Dead Bugs
Fixed bug which meant user sometimes fell through the ground.
Gravity is adjusted in a more natural way when flying now.
7 Dead Bugs
Bugs Fixed
Mixed reality is working again.
Cake can be picked up with the trigger again. Mmmm. Cake.
Fires are now neverending again. Car fire is back!
If you fall off the plank, the app menu buttons are temporarily disabled. This stops accidental game menu opening when in panic mode. When demoing, we also recommend enabling arcade mode in the steamVR console to also disable system button.
Rotating plank in VR setup mode doesn't move the start position anymore.
Warp to Ground is now "Go to Ground" and easier to press.
Drop down menu for selecting cake has a mouse color highlight.
Graphics Improvements
3 new buildings
Higher quality detail and lighting near the plank.
Lots of small improvements and bug fixes this week.
