Benie's Games Blog

What the hell happened to my desire to build a world in VRChat? ..Ohh yeah. Boredom and being nervous what happened to my second world would happen again (even though that was my fault for not uninstalling ProBuilder properly).
Anyway, a few days ago (in bed), I had this thought of making a house based off of the ‘Provo’ house of my very, very old log homes book (that would even have a stream with rocks and stuff).
It would look like the house yes. But there was a thought of having a secret basement of sorts where I could have the dancers that I did (with a stage and stuff, similar to how Kovo did it for his world). And somewhere there I would have a secret portal (that you would have to press a series of secret buttons in a specific order, then have a keypad turn up) to my own ‘sexy’ world (that Kovo sent to me some time ago). And there would be the.. well, you know. 🍆 Let’s just say I would try to look up how to make a VRCChair animate. But it will also cement in my head that this is my present (of having the group).

So when am I going to get started on this…? As soon as I get enough courage to do so, as I just don’t see myself being able to do the house right with the fantasy pack (I’ve already tried and failed miserably).
Plus I need to learn how to build worlds again. It’s been a very long time. And for reason of the  ones I have, the terrain is missing from them and I’m not remembering how to fix it.

To your left is the ‘Provo’ attempt I made, that I gave up on. The reason why is the lighting and.. just overall lost interest.

The reason for the lost interest is.. simply I couldn’t do it the way I wanted. The house is supposed to have a bathroom, but it would make the house too big (it’s supposed to be the size of a typical log cabin). Plus of not being able to find free models bugged the hell out of me.

Wanted to find a PS4 controller model. All I could find was a PS3 one.

The sad kitchen.

Didn’t even start working on the bedroom…

I’m going to have to do a brand new world from scratch if I’m going to do this. I keep seeing the basement in my head as a way to.. well, push Jero out of my head and focus on the present.
Maybe I should just focus on this basement first, then the house.

The past 4 days, I’ve been playing ASTRONEER solo… well, solo’ish. Let’s just say I wish the game had a ‘(Player name here) would like to join your save. Do you accept?’, instead of your friend able to join your save anytime they want.
Doesn’t feel safe, does it? ..Especially when I’m trying to teach myself how to play solo since… what, the update that allowed us to pick up base parts? It’s been that long. When getting Resin and Compound only showed you a general deposit and it was your task to find all the nodes in it. Now, it gives you an icon indicating a node is within your
crosshair– much better finding any resource nodes you might had missed.
Oh yeah, no more energy/oxygen nuggets in caves. Those were nice when taking a rover train underground (when looking for research, as there were no research nodes on the surface). Could almost give you infinite power, and made tethers kind of pointless.
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So, I have two saves.. and soon I’m going to have a 3rd. The first (original) save was getting the base ready, but after getting the tractor and trailer (using it to find research nodes on the surface), I was getting bored and clueless on what to do next. I was also in talks with Wufy, who said he would show me. After adding him on Steam, he was able to join the save and then started ‘cleaning up’ my base.
Told me that I should be ready to make a rocket and visit Barren (or ‘Desolo’ as it’s now officially named). Yet apparently I was going too slow for Wufy’s taste, and the next thing I know (after getting resources for the rocket), he’s now playing my save for me. He even said he’s now doing what he said he wasn’t going to do.
But before we even went to the moon, it was bedtime.

2nd save, I wanted to take everything I learned from that experience and finally made the rocket (and a Solid-Fuel Thruster). Had everything I feel like I needed, but the ‘comfort’ of the small shuttle confused me on what I should bring for this mining mission (to get the Wolframite I need to make a medium shuttle and other stuff (as it’s not a shuttle you can store stuff in).
Took off, then forgot I needed something back at the base and landed. Little did I know that was a mistake (and would find out just how dire it was later on). But I got some tethers and took off again. Went to the moon and landed at a random LZ (in a crater). Started running a tether line and made a cave entrance down. Almost immediately I noticed how ridiculously slow it’s taking to generate power (as I had the Boost and Wide mod on my terrain tool).
Back on the surface, I tried to think of my options. I know I needed to generate power, and thought of going back to Terran (‘Sylva’ is it’s official name) and making a solar array (as Desolo shows ‘High Sun, Low Wind’ on the wiki). …But, I didn’t bring a beacon with me to mark my LZ. This would be the least of my concerns when I took off and noticed.. OSHI– I can’t GO back to Sylva! The thruster’s broken! FUCK!! I was forced to land back where I was.
This was about the time Kovo was talking to me since yesterday (when his crappy internet connection got even crappier and it no longer works, so he’s having to use a hotspot). Asked him for help as I didn’t know what to do (I never made a base on another planet as I usually got bored by this time! HELP)!!! So he did (after I joined general voice chat in his Discord), made a second rocket and got to
me (after I moved mine out of the way). Then he sent up a temp base, but said he was getting bad framerate and had to leave. Appreciate the help, but now I feel this wasn’t really done by me.. and was unsure if I should continue.
Wufy was about ready to come on, so I took off from the planet and went back to
Sylva, switched saves when Wufy joined the chat and the previous save. I told him about the save, and this is when we finally went to Desolo. He showed me how to properly set up your first base on another planet (solo), by using the starter platform and the starter medium printer. He also showed me the importance of landing at one of these alien
bases (known as ‘gates’). He even showed me the importance of heading down to the core of the planet..
And HOLY FUCK is it different than what I seen from Youtube videos!! It looked very alien. It’s called a ‘Gateway Engine’. Wufy explains them as a way that you can teleport to another planet with these, and how to link a ramp with this purple pillar which fucks with gravity. Way cool!
We did the same thing with Sylva (but we couldn’t get to the core as Drill Mod 2 or 3 is
needed), and my lord is the way down nothing like I’ve ever seen. There’s a mushroom biome down there! Too fucking cool!

Though I was was getting tired watching him run around, giving me almost nothing to do. Wufy, I asked you to help me, not play my save for me.
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Next day (while I was waiting for my headset to arrive), I was thinking of going back to the second save. But I kept thinking of how I’m going to be able to do that, when Kovo’s rocket is there. Finally I got on, made some fresh tethers (thinking I would need them), two solid fuel thrusters, and blasted off for Desolo (on a recovery mission). Found an LZ (Landing Zone) a few clicks away from the rocket. All I needed to do was carry it to the other LZ and get Kovo’s rocket out of there. Got there just fine and grabbed the solar farm. Luckily my rocket has a spot to carry the medium storage I originally brought.
As for the beacon, I had to leave it there (as I had no room on my backpack). Blasted off again and attempted to land at the LZ right at the gate. But almost immediately as I touched down (almost in the center of the gate), the rocket lifted back up and the thruster was used up. Though I’m glad I made that backup, this created a problem.. where do I land now? Luckily there was an LZ about 4 clicks away from the gate, and landed there.
Carried the rocket further than before, and found a good flat area at the gate. Trying to find a spot for the solar farm (where the gate’s shadow doesn’t block the system’s
star) took awhile, but I found a good spot (and then started setting up what I needed). Joined general chat by myself, thinking Kovo or someone would join and we can talk while I attempted to set up my first base on another planet.

About an hour later… Wufy joined the chat (and the save, without warning.. which is why I need a thing giving me control on allowing someone to join it), and I stupidly said “yes” for him to clean up my new base on Sylva.
My mind was also “mind coming over here and seeing if I did it right?” Tried to fight it but it leaked out. He however felt I got this, but I asked questions on what do I grab and stuff. He told me to simply gather enough Wolframite to fill my backpack, so I did and headed back to Sylva, seeing the new base.
Ok, I actually like this new base design idea. It looks streamlined and has similar characteristics of what I did when I first played with this thing (of doing a custom base). Think I’m going to use this design for now on.
Had to go back to Desolo as I needed to retrieve some things I left to deliver that Wolframite. But this time I know I can use the Oxygenator’s spot for a Medium
Storage (and load that up with Wolframite). That way I’ll have some room on my backpack.
Leaving Sylva, suddenly I’m all “shit, I forgot to grab a beacon!” Wufy claims I don’t need one. Get back to Desolo.. uhh, why are the tethers not active? FUCK, I forgot to grab an Oxygenator! ..And that’s when Wufy (once again) started playing my save, making my base on Desolo better and doing other things.
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Now it’s got to the point he has a Large Shuttle and blasts off for his base on Glacio, trying to find me something to do (and can’t think of anything). This isn’t really teaching me anything, except making me less and less interested in playing with you (and this game in general).

For a day I’ve been plagued by another kind of issue that refused to go away. But instead of it being my headset or my computer, it was something affecting my dancers (related to the new mods I had installed).
I had just finished mass-rebuilding every VRC_Inventory of all the base avatars and began standard testing (making sure they’re firing on command now). Most of them were working as expected. Then I went to the all dancers one.. and holy shit my framerate tanked after it loaded up!! What was worse is my wings were folding into my head and my tail was pointed straight up.
Clearly a collider problem.. yet this thing was kicking my ASS!! Even going as far as cloning one of the existing base avatars and deleting the old one, nothing was working to fix the problem! Even deleted the colliders of the base avatar, still nothing! WHAT THE FUCK?! This is an exact copy of a working base avatar!! THIS MAKES NO SENSE!!!
But I did get some funny pictures when it was happening;


*internal screaming face* 🤣😂
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Ok, so it’s got to be the songs now. Tried disabling them, and somehow they’re still active! WOW. Made a dupe of the problem and deleted the songs off of the original (knowing this was my last option). Prayed when I switched to it.. the problem’s gone?! YES!! Confirmed issue with the songs. Odd though as I never made any changes to them since what happened when trying to debug a fuckup.
Wanted to see if it was all songs, or a specific one. Tried moving just one of them to the original and uploaded it.
Now we’re getting somewhere! No issues with the song! Testing continued until I finally narrowed it down to ‘Shake It Off’ being the culprit song (no other song was causing the issue).
And THIS.. is what was causing it;

Blue’s floor collider, 10x larger than it needs to be.
This is what it’s normally supposed to be as;

Culprit found! Problem is, both colliders were using the same size. So I copied a working Blue and hand-maneuvered it to the messed up one, then deleted the old one. Song still works just fine.
Uploaded the changes, and confirmed fix! So, that’s about it. Sorry if this post feels it was rushed, but I’ve been working on other projects instead of finishing the ones I already did.

“I’m a helicopter!! 🚁” -Cola, if he actually said this
Boy it’s awesome when I can post pretty much anything on my website, and send it to friends. Anyway, as you can see, this is what I’ve been having to deal with in Unity yesterday.
I discovered you can move two bones at the same time, such as legs (to make things symmetrical). But… apparently for some unknown boneheaded reason, you cannot mirror bones (like arms) for perfect symmetry. Such as having both hands meet eachother (but from different angles). That sort of thing is what I’m talking about.
And I..still don’t understand the reasoning of why I cannot do this.
Asking the VRChat Discord for any sort of hotkey that will do it, waiting pretty much all damn day for an answer. SURELY Unity would have this!!
While I waited, I tried looking online for something, anything that could help. The closest thing I got was something about Unity scripting. Uhh.. nope, not for me. I’m not that advanced with Unity.

A nice soul by the name of ‘Artist_shawn’ (on Discord), wanted to help me by posting a help request (for me) in Unity’s forum. But at the time of myself typing all of this, it hasn’t received a single response– and I doubt it ever will, for I posted this yesterday on DJ’s Discord server and got a not-so-hopeful response this morning.

Going by that response, it’s now highly unlikely there even is a way (even in a future Unity version). And lets also think realistically here; Unity is a game engine used by lots and lots of Inde devs for their games and what not, so why pray tell would it need the ability to mirror poses for one game?
But speaking of future versions of Unity, a few days after I made this post, the devs have made it official that by the end of the month (via an open beta period), they’ll be moving to Unity 2018 (calling it the ‘Unity 2018 VRChat Open Beta”). The current version they’re beta testing is Unity 2018.4.9f1, and warn that this version may rise during the open beta period.
They also promise improvements dating all the way back to Unity 2017 version 5.6. You know, that old version where we were able to hide limbs by disabling them.
Lastly, I saw talk of this ‘Udon’ in the open beta discussion channels. Not sure if this thing is going to replace the need for Unity, or when it’s going to come out. But from what I see, probably not ’till next year (as something about more 2018 fixes are planned).
If you’re an avatar/object/world creator (especially ones that do scripts for shaders), you are recommended to participate in this beta to help the devs bug fix your issue(s).