It's finally here!
Well, in a month. For almost two years, we've been developing Compensation. Our original goal was to have creation tools,
limited not by what we want to implement, but by hardware and other technical limitations alone.
One of the best ways to put it is "Limited by other people's code, not our own." and we want to live up to that goal.
We believe our players shouldn't be limited by the confines of simple primitives, and this is no exception. You have granular control, down to every vertex and face.
You should be able to create anything you can imagine. Custom textures allow you to make things like posters, custom terrain, skyboxes, and more, simply by importing a texture.
Now, of course, you need a way to project your textures onto what you create. Simple triplanar mapping works great for some, but for posters, skyboxes, or anything with complex geometry, you need more precise control. Therefore, we're working on a full UV editing suite complete with fast auto-unwrapping tools for when you do only need a quick box project.
A mesh is only as useful as the details you can apply, and that detail is worthless if you can't control where and what it is. Therefore, you have control over the material of every single face on your mesh, just as if you were editing in a game engine.
Materials already support RGB colors, including an Alpha channel for transparency when enabled. This means things like glass, water and decals can be integrated into a mesh, without the need for a seperate object.
We have multple options for shaders you can apply to your materials, including opaque, transparent, emissive, metallic, and more. This gives you fine-grained control over every aspect of your creations without comprimising on performance.
We have a dedicated tool for flipping the normals of a mesh, allowing you to optimize down your creations as much as you need. This means if you only need the interior of an object, you don't need to make a seperate shape for every wall.
One of the most beloved features we have in the works is mesh intersection support. This includes cutting, merging, and intersecting meshes, similar to Boolean or Cut tools in 3D modelling packages. For things like windows, doors, and other holes in objects (which would normally require a large number of primitives), this can be a massive improvement to the user experience.
We want every single player on Compensation to be able to use these tools, from the oldest Quest 1 to the newest of gaming PCs. Therefore, every single tool, (even custom textures and OBJ file imports), can be used on every platform, and is tested thoroughly. When we support a platform, we give you a guarantee of creative parity with other platforms.
Even on standalone, we support importing .obj files for 3D models, and a multitude of formats for custom material textures. We feel this gives you the creative freedom you need to make what you want, no matter your platform or device specifications.
One of the worst things that can happen in a game is when a player falls out of the map, gets stuck, or otherwise has an issue with colliders. Therefore, when editing a mesh, what you see in front of you is exactly what the player can collide with. You can disable these colliders and make your own with a seperate object, or you can even disable rendering on the object and use it only as a collider. The choice is yours, and choice is what we're all about.
One of the most irritating things you can encounter with a permission system is not knowing what the side effects are. In Compensation, almost every action has an associated permission, whether it's using the creation tool, editing the description of the room, or even just changing the room photo. This gives you a huge amount of control over exactly what your moderators, users, and co-creators can & can't do in your room.
Another massive annoyance we've had with other creation systems is when you have a limited number of permissions you can assign to a user. In Compensation, you define the permission tiers, we just enforce them. Want a new role for only 3 people, that gives them the ability to save the room? You've got it! Want to make it so a certain group of people can't join the room, but can change the description? We're not going to judge! It's your decision.
We understand, not everyone wants to see blood. In some cases, you may even have a medical condition that makes it a health risk when you're exposed to some images or sounds. We have you covered with our strictly enforced Content Flags system. Every room can define a list of content warnings, which are presented to you whenever you join the room. These include normal warnings like violence, suggestive content, or flashing lights, but also includes things like potentially low-performance rooms, large amounts of motion, audiosensitivity triggers, or even custom warnings for things we can't describe well. Whatever the issue, we've got it covered.
Compensation v2.0.0 releases on January 1st, 2023, at around noon Mountain Standard Time. Players will recieve access to creating rooms shortly thereafter, once we make sure everything is in order.
We've still got you covered! A select group of creators from other platforms, and active members of our community, are welcomed into the Creative Tools Beta Program. If you are accepted, you will help us get everything in order, by testing and informing decisions on the Creation Tools and more.
Again, we've got you covered. We have a demo room of the creation tools coming soon, with more information to come.
It's been a loooong two years, and we've loved every moment of it. Our community is the best part of Compensation, and we wouldn't have made it halfway without you. Thank you for playing, and we hope to see you in-game soon. Have fun, and stay creative!