Compensation VR 2.1.0 - The Final Update
Yep, you read that right. While 2.0.0 was the last major update for Compensation Social, 2.1.0 is the last official update that will release for Compensation Social. We are pushing this update to Oculus App Lab, SideQuest, and itch.io, and then development work on the official version of Compensation Social will cease.
Will the servers stay up?
Unfortunately, we are choosing to reclaim the computing resources used for hosting the Compensation Social official servers. However, this will not make the game unplayable, as you will see later. However, you will not be able to play on Compensation Social official servers after 1 July 2023. In addition, the production and development APIs for Compensation will go offline as well. This will result in Compensation Social being completely unplayable for users on the main server.
Moving Forwards
Now, the astute among you may have noticed that I kept saying "official servers" instead of "servers" in the paragraph above. This wasn't accidental, and here's why.
We are releasing Dedicated Server support.
After a significant amount of refactoring work in the internal codebase for the Compensation Social client, we have added
support for users to specify a custom server address for their client to connect to. This means that, after 1 July 2023,
you will still be able to play Compensation Social with your friends, as long as you have a server to connect to. This
server can be hosted on your own computer, or on a dedicated server.
All that said, Compensation Social is not an easy game to host. While computing power isn't typically an issue, the setup
for a server instance is extremely difficult, even for developers of the game. We're looking into simplifiying our API code
to make it more easily self-hostable, but it's still very difficult. That said, we're extremely interested to see what the
community will do with this system in the future.
What about the game itself?
We are looking at open-sourcing the Unity project of the game on GitHub along with the already open-source API. Unfortunately,
this is a rather complicated process, not due to any technical issues, but rather because of licensing. We are working to find
a way to open-source the game's code under a unified license, but it's not a simple process. In addition, this is not our priority
at the moment due to working on Relay and other Subsurface Studios projects.
That said, even if the Compensation Open Source Project does not release, we still wholeheartedly support our modding community.
We will do our best to be helpful if you encounter any issues while making changes to your game client or the API, and we'd love
to see the incredible things you can do.
Will my data remain intact?
Due to the fact we will no longer be using player data for a specific purpose, we are obligated by regulations to delete your data.
That said, your data will remain intact until 31 July 2023 (or until you request deletion, whichever is earlier) and you can request
a copy for yourself as always. You can use this to copy your player data into the game if you choose to host an instance,
or you may be able to ask a custom server administrator to do so for you.
Please note, your player data may contain relatively sensitive information like your IP address and some TOTP data.
If you do not want to share this, we recommend taking a close look through the data and removing sensitive information
manually. Your password is not stored in plaintext, so you can safely distribute the
CVR/Conclusion
What's in the update?
Glad you asked! This is a fairly small update besides Dedicated Server support, but it's still a good one in our opinion.
Major Changes
- The Login screen now has a button for setting a custom server address. This will serve as your account server and WebSocket server while you are playing, and will have full access to whatever you do in-game just like the normal servers.
-
Added a new CVR original,
CVR/ .Conclusion
Minor Changes
- Added support for the Oculus User Reporting API! This allows you to select the "Report User" button from the Oculus Quest menu and it will open the Players menu in search mode, allowing you to search for and report a user at will. We hope this makes it easier to quickly report problematic users.
Bug Fixes
- We've made some near-invisible stability improvements to our API handling to allow us to better use Dedicated Servers.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
from @avery, Co-Founder / Multiplayer Developer
Boy, oh boy... How do I start this?
So I guess I'll briefly go over Compensation Social and how I began it.
Compensation Social is a VR Multiplayer game I developed with the help of Raven,
Opabina, June, 9021007 and many more amazing people. Over my time working on it I have produced
most of the OST, ranging from the first ever Menu Track to "Goodbye, CAS", all of
which had horrible balancing in-game. Compensation was a project I initiated with one
of my only friends back then, Raven. And honestly since then I was like... addicted to working on it.
Raven and I would always mess around in these horrible and poorly optimized builds that
I'd show to my parents... which always resulted in negative feedback.
Am I doing this right? This seems way too professional to be honest.
I guess I should talk about how this game affected me. So, working on
Compensation Social for over 2 years has gotten me into probably one
of my favorite things ever, programming. Ever since working on Compensation
I like never wanted to stop working on it. It got me addicted to programming
and just making stuff. Compensation gave me like this... creative spark to
just make whatever I wanted. While working on the game I experimented and
learnt new languages, C/C++, Rust, a bit of HTML/CSS and JS and so much more.
Honestly working on this buggy little mess of a game has gotten me to love
writing random, useless, software that sometimes have the worst code you could
ever imagine behind them. I remember the time I left a horrible line of code
inside of one of the scripts for CVR, I wrote
Overall, I'd say that Compensation is probably one of the biggest
things I have ever done in my life. No matter how bad it is. It's
what jumpstarted my love for mathematics and computer science and
I will forever be grateful to have had this amazing opportunity to
work with such amazing people like Raven, 9021007, Opabina, June,
alizard and any other member of the Compenstion / Subsurface Studios
staff team. I can't thank you all enough for how amazing you guys are.
Thank you all for this journey,
- Avery
from @raven, Co-Founder / UGC Developer
I already got some of the sappy stuff out of my system on 2.0.0, but it's not over yet.
I've been a developer on Compensation Social since the beginning, working on super poorly optimized art for
what was then called Bad Room (a play on Rec Room) and I've been
hooked ever since. From working purely on art and letting Avery handle code all the way to writing our UGC ecosystem
and API code from near-scratch, Compensation Social has massively advanced my programming skills and even got me further
ahead in college and taught me invaluable skills for my upcoming career.
I've had the opportunity to work with and meet some incredible people, from co-workers to life-long friends along the way.
I'm extremely glad I had the chance to meet Avery, Jai, Opabina, June, and 9021007, all of whom are people I value more than
I can express with words. It's been a crazy ride, from the anger of fighting with Unity crashes in Vigor XR all the way to the
pure unfettered euphoria of finishing our release on Oculus App Lab.
While I would likely have made some different choices along the way during our development process, I wouldn't trade the
friends and experiences I've had along the way for anything in the world. I'm extremely hopeful to see where things go for me
and my new friends in the future, and I'm happy that I've made it this far.
Thank you for playing, and I really truly mean it.
- Raven
from @jai, API Developer & In-House Kotlin Expert
Honestly I didn't work on CVR all that much, my timing didn't always work with the timeframe things needed to be done in, but from what work I did do on CVR, I not only learned a lot but I earned a group of friends that I've retained to this day. Given the chance to redo it I'd likely work on it more and maybe finish a few more things but I'm proud of where everything went and I'm glad that everything and everyone is where they are today.