Major Project Shift
This week, our project went through a major shift.
Rec Room announced that due to financial issues, the platform will shut down on June 1: School’s Out for Rec Room
Starting immediately, Rec Room no longer supports creating new accounts or adding friends. This has a direct impact on our project. Since our entire experience was built in Rec Room and designed around its social features, it is no longer possible to host an alumni event on the platform.
Platform Transition
After an urgent team discussion, we began researching alternative platforms, including ARENA, Spatial, and VRChat.
We decided to move away from hosting a one-time alumni event and instead shift our goal to building a reusable virtual world for ETC on VR Chat, which can support future events.
Why VR Chat
- Multi-platform support (mobile, PC, VR)
- Supports C# and Unity workflows
- Avatar customization
- Creator worlds
- Live streaming support
- Add friends and invite system
- Up to ~80 users per instance
- Easy to set up
Challenges
VR Chat also comes with its own limitations:
- Limited built-in interaction systems
- No interactive props like Rec Room
- No wearable asset system
- Each avatar is independent
- Requires an upgraded account to publish worlds
Currently, since we do not have an upgraded account, we can only test with one player in the room.
Because of these constraints, we will focus more on environment design and showcasing content, rather than complex gameplay systems.
Development Progress
After making the decision, we immediately started building in VR Chat.
- Set up a VR Chat world
- Completed initial environment setup
- Successfully tested basic build pipeline
Scope for VR Chat World
- Only focus on playground and gallery spaces
- Implement simple interactions (grab objects, in-game camera)
- Polish environments (models, textures, lighting)
- Add video content (ETC promotional videos and project demos)