New World Notes

Play Among Us in VRChat: New Fan-Made Version Adds Visual Tasks & VR-Based Body Language Gameplay to the Original

Attention AOC and other Among Us fans: There's a new community-fan, playable version of the hit deception and backstabbing game in VRChat: Click here to play. (No, not the horror-themed fan version of Among Us I mentioned the other week, that's another project still in development.)

While this VRChat version of Among Us is faithful to official original game, longtime reader Adeon Writer tells me, adds some new and interesting gameplay features only possible in a 3D, VR-enabled world:

"We had a group play it for about 3.5 hours straight." (Highlights in the video above.) "If you're one of the impostors in this one, you actually have to fake doing your tasks and stuff since everyone can see what you're doing with your hands and such, which is unexpected if you're used to the original, but kind of great. If you've got good players it opens up a whole new aspect of trying to deduct who's faking everything."

Here's how:

Among Us Inspires Full VR, Horror-Themed Version of Hit Game in VRChat

If anyone is interested, we are working on a VR Chat map based on #AmongUs Come check it out and join our discord! We would love to know what everyone thinks of it! https://t.co/cCfMGjaLSl#VRChat #VR #amongusfanart #AmongUsMeme pic.twitter.com/lGPtsyE3BN

— Shoobly (@Shooobly) September 25, 2020

Among Us, the wacky sci-fi party hit game of deception and betrayal, has quickly become the Fortnite of 2020. And because user-generated content communities inevitably schloop up and synthesize the interactive zeitgeist, it should be no surprise that a group of ten or so VRChat community developers have already been hard at work creating a fully playable VR-based version of the hit game. "Fully playable" might seem like hyperbole, but among the lead developers is "Markcreator", who also created this fully playable version of  Minecraft in VRChat:

"I'm working with a team of artists to make a realistic VR rendition of the game, fully playable using Udon scripting magic," he tells me. (Udon being VRChat's scripting system.) In other words, don't confuse it for Among Us-themed roleplay in VRChat.

In fact, to judge by the teaser video above and screenshots below, Mark and friends are turning Among Us into a game of goofball fun into a foreboding space survival game with the added suspense of being in immersive VR, with VRChat's voice communication enabled. (In VRChat space, everyone can hear you scream.)

Saying "Second Life is not a game" is an excuse for not demanding a better & more fun virtual world (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: A nightclub experience... in Grand Theft Auto V Online

While the "Is Second Life a game?" argument has basically gone since SL launched, reader "0xc0ffea" (who also co-hosts the largest SL community on Reddit) posts a fresh perspective: Whatever SL is on an ontological level, not treating it as a game has contributed to its lack of evolution:

 SL users and, more importantly, its developers need to play more games.

There is a shocking disconnect when switching between SL and modern games (even 7 year old games like GTA5). By comparison, SL barely runs, fundamentally fails to operate as a social platform the moment you get a few people in the same location (or try to converse in group IM), lags to hell and back, and it's users have been conditioned to blame each other for the overall poor experience.

A little gaming makes it very apparent that SL's technical woes are not caused by that one person who dared to wear those shoes with that hair, happened to have a scripted attachment, or had the audacity to load slowly.

"SL is not a game" has been a handy excuse to gloss over it being architecturally stuck in the days of single core processors.

Here's why, she goes on:

Get IncrediMarble: Free-to-Play, Physics-Based, Marble Slide Construction Game for iOS from Linden Lab Vet Dave Kap

IncrediMarble is a fun new sandbox construction game for iOS where you get to build gigantic marble slide worlds with real time physics, and earn points by adding more and better slides. The more points you earn, the more pieces you win to keep upgrading your slides, and turn them into massively deranged contraptions. (Android and PC/Mac versions coming soon.) 

The game is solely created by Dave Kap, an indie developer who got his start at Linden Lab. The game reflects both his time there, playing SL, and a dream he's had since a boy:

"When I was a kid," as he puts it to me, "I had a toy that was just this huge set of plastic slides and a bunch of marbles. You connected the plastic slides together, put the marbles into the top-most one, and watched them flow down from piece to piece. I always loved this toy as a kid in the 80s and it turns out that even kids now still have this toy. I always wanted more pieces and the ability to defy gravity so a video game version was something I've always wanted to play. It turns out nobody's ever made a good version of what I wanted, so here we are!"

Linden Lab helped hone his developing skills, while Second Life influenced IncrediMarble 's creative gameplay:

Epic Invests in Core to Expand Unreal's Metaverse Potential -- And Increase Its Competitive Advantage Against Apple

I've previously called Core, the new Unreal-based, user-generated game development platform from startup Manticore,  as a kind of Fortnite-meets-ROBLOX concoction. So I wasn't surprised at yesterday's news that Epic, publisher of Fortnite and developer Unreal, directly invested in the company:

[Core] is getting an injection of $15 million, thanks to a funding round led by Fortnite creator Epic Games, in order to expand even more. “At Epic we believe the industry is ultimately headed to games becoming more like open platforms where creators can build their own worlds,” Epic president Adam Sussman said in a statement. “Built in Unreal, Core exemplifies this future and goes one step further by providing the environment for anybody to create great multiplayer games, and a metaverse playground where players discover endless entertainment.”

This investment adds some financial heft to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney's ongoing battle with Apple, which he's described as a war for the future of the metaverse. If Core is successful, it'll become an alternate marketplace for Unreal-based games beyond Apple's control -- and a potential candidate for an Unreal-based metaverse.

New World Notes Notes New World, New World

Sorry not sorry for the title for this news:

My preview of New World, Amazon Game Studios’ forthcoming massively multiplayer online PC game, would be limited to eyes-on, thanks to my stone-age potato of a gaming laptop. This is a game that touts 50-on-50 smackdowns, after all. Even if a new MMO sounds like as much of a 2012 enterprise as my rig, New World is trying to meet 2021 expectations of gameplay and environment...

New World’s preview event — which is open to those who have pre-ordered the game, or signed up for the beta prior to July 9 — gets going Tuesday at noon ET. Progression from this beta (and prior alphas) will be wiped prior to the game’s launch. That is coming sometime in spring 2021; it was delayed (for a second time) last month. In July, the developers said they wanted to respond to player feedback from the game’s alpha tests, and develop more mid- and end-game content, which the War represents.

Another preview video (one of many popping up everywhere) above. Ironically New World is not actually the kind of world New World Notes usually notes -- no robust content creation tools that I can see, for one thing, and shouldn't a world called New World be more about exploring the new world, not killing other people new to the new world? -- but given that it is called New World, I feel obliged to note it nonetheless.

Gridiron, 1st Physics-Based, Fully Multiplayer Football Game, Becomes Viral Hit on Steam Early Access

Gridiron, the first physics-based, fully multiplayer football game that I briefly mentioned last year, launched on Steam a few weeks ago, and has already gained impressive traction, especially as it's still in Early Access. Player reviews run Very Positive (difficult to achieve with Steam's highly critical userbase), and even more notable, has been embraced and made viral by some popular YouTube streamers.  (As above and below.)

I've played Gridiron and can confirm it's goddamn good, capturing the "oh shit oh shit shit" waves of mayhem players feel when two teams collide, and crash into the unpredictability of real time player and ball movement. It's perfectly poised to be an esports/Twitch streaming hit like Rocket League -- but with actual humanoid players instead of you know, cars.

Surprisingly, Gridiron was basically created by a single developer, Brandon McDuff, with art assets created by his wife, Gizem Mishi McDuff. (Who regular New World Notes readers will know by her massive Second Life-based Blueberry fashion brand.)

"Yes this our first game," Brandon confirms to me. 

 

"Actually," he adds, "I did make a game for Mishi for her birthday using Game Maker Studio. Does making a game that only one player played count?" (Why not?)

 

More from the McDuffs on making Gridiron, and the husband/wife team's plans for its future:

As Apple Bans Fortnite, Tim Sweeney's Recent Words "Apple has outlawed the metaverse" Seem Prophetic -- And a Call to Action

Update, 8/16: Bumped up for weekend conversation!

Epic posted this Fortnite-made machinima inspired by Apple's 1984 ad very soon after Apple banned Fortnite from the App Store

This may be surprising news to some except it was definitely not a surprise to Epic Games' Tim Sweeney:

In an announcement this morning, Epic Games implemented permanent discounts on Fortnite's in-game V-Bucks currency across all platforms -- if users paid using direct payment...

"Apple has gone crazy," wrote Epic CEO Tim Sweeney in a tweet in late July. "If colleges hold virtual classes through an iPhone app, Apple could demand 30% of the tuition. Truly, Apple has no right to take any percent of any company's revenue just because they made the phone people use to access the stuff.

Speaking of Tweets From Tim, he made these just last week, in response to the news that Apple had also banned cloud streaming apps:

The Metaverse Needs a Unique User Identifier (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: Jeff "AM Radio" Berg's famed Second Life art recreated by his son in Fortnite

Good conversation responding to Tim Sweeney's belief that there should be many competing metaverses rather than just one world that's The Metaverse. My response to that was calling for shared standards for 3D content that enable virtual goods and other creations to freely move from one metaverse to another.

Reader "irihapeti" argues otherwise, calling for a unique identifier across metaverses as the more important first step:

Why Elder Scrolls Online's Bugs Are More Enraging Than Bugs in... Second Life (Comment of the Week)

Lots of conversation last week around what it would take to upgrade 17 year old Second Life, with an intriguing point of comparison made by longtime virtual world user Jumpman Lane, who contrasts SL's performance with that of a 6 year old virtual world:

I just recently returned to Second Life after 3 years of playing The Elder Scrolls Online (fun game). I'll say this about the performance of SL vs that of ESO:

I really don't mind SL's issues, lag, whatever.

In ESO I [played] player vs player and it was a highly competitive environment. Death is frowned upon to say the very least. Killing someone involved tbagging, hours of arguing, 1v1's, and feuds that lasted YEARS.

But that's not why he's taking a break from Elder Scrolls Online for SL. Here's why: