INTERFACE

Game

Nintendo Power

Right when the Switch came out I had to try it because I love the idea of modularity, but it was so poorly executed I had to draw an alternative for them. The interface is as easy to use as the PS3's T UI. A couple years later they came out with a similar device the Switch Lite.

No Man's Sky

Inventory management isn't fun to me but No Mans Sky needs an overhaul.

I tried to design solutions to this.

Here's my second attempt.

RecRoom Metaverse

With x10 Quest2s and a crew, I've been stress testing one specific metaverse candidate.

First thing I tried is modeling my family's house to 1 to 1 scale with the real world so teleporting and thumbsticks arent' needed. This was trippy, the most emersive experience in VR.

Next, with derby cars, ramps, basketball courts, paintball guns, trampolene beds, I turned that house into a playground for my family to enjoy. Because of how permissions work(all or nothing) it is very easy for any collaborators to destroy the house so as we built together the hole house would disapear over and over.

Next I pushed the limits of the engine by developing a terrain tool. Unfortunatly a collision bug kept this being usable as a traversable landscape.

Now I'm working on bringing my favorite game to VR multiplayer "A Short Hike"

As this news got out the developer sent me the map models for perfect reference!

Lets rank how close RecRoom

completes CoOS principles

Tools ★★☆☆☆

Shape Tools ★★☆☆☆

Unfortunatly the tools are comparable to Secondlife but with less features; just primitive shape placing, 3 axis scaling, and hand drawn tubes. No surface editing, custom materials, and only 1 level of groups. Comparing this with CAD software, its almost useless. The best rooms like Recrally, and Recroyal are created with tools outside RecRoom; Maya, Unity, and C#, including models, terrain, shaders and interactivity coding. Everything made in-game is one step above Minecraft.

MOD tools ★★★★☆

Thankfully they have visual programming, and animation, though the abstraction may not be appropriate.

Space ★★★☆☆

Seemless Space ★★☆☆☆

Recroom is divided into Rooms, individual instanced universes that you must teleport to. Fortunatly a workaround is putting triggers at the edge of one room to teleport you to a virtually adjacent room automatically.

Limitless Space ★☆☆☆☆

Creation is limited by Ink, an artifical limit to keep your device from exploding. More intention constraints, aggressive LODing, asset streaming, and game streaming would elimitate this limit.

Shared Space ★★★★☆

Recroom gets a high rank since all experiences can be shared, the only exception is paywalls on some objects.

Interface ★★☆☆☆

Concise interface ★☆☆☆☆

Recroom has the opposite of a concise interface with a new interface to learn for every 10 buttons.

Here's my early attempt to consolidate all these into one interface.

Elegant interface ★★★★☆

There are some solid Card Designs here.

Empathetic interface ★★☆☆☆

These interfaces are usually legible at the cost of seeing more at a glance.

Forgiving interface ★★☆☆☆

While you can undo, you can't surf through the history of each object only the whole world. Plus there is no autosave, just a manual world save.

Humble interface ★★☆☆☆

There are no customizable interfaces.

Intuitive interface ★★☆☆☆

Can you find what you need when you need it? There is no feature search, and little logical structure to the location of features. Most likely you will need to google the location of a feature in a browser.

Last Thoughts

I'm excited to see Recroom and other developers are trying to build the metaverse on purpose. This is early access when compared with the ideal, so we greatfully celebrate the developers hard work, recognize the intense challenge, and patiently share principles as we hope for a virtual paradise.