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Gear VR gets social with Oculus Rooms and Parties
A few months ago at Oculus' annual developer conference, the company announced a couple of social VR features known simply as Parties and Rooms. Parties is basically built-in voice chat, while Rooms is a virtual hangout space. Today, those features are finally live, at least for the Gear VR; Rift users will have to wait until 2017. Combined, Parties and Rooms are part of Oculus' continued efforts to prove that virtual reality can be used not just to play games, but also to connect people around the world.
Facebook Messenger public chats arrive in two countries
Facebook's plan to revive its public group chat feature just became official. The social network tells the Courier Mail that it's rolling out a test version of Messenger Rooms on Android devices in Australia and Canada. As leaked code suggested, this is similar to but not quite like the Rooms app of old. All you have to do is create (or search for) a room around a given topic -- after that, anyone can join. If you're worried that you'll get an influx of trolls, you can require approval for new participants.
Virtually hang out with up to 7 friends in Oculus' 'VR Rooms'
Oculus announced a host of new social features for platform during its OC/3 press event on Thursday. In addition to Avatars, which allow users to customize outlines of their faces with various accessories and skins, the company also rolled out Parties and Room. Parties are just what they sound like -- groups of up to eight users can band together and chat. And if you want a dedicated area to do that in, Oculus also announced Rooms. This collaborative space differs from the Facebook-centric chat app that we saw back at F8 earlier this year. Rooms is designed to behave more like a virtual living room where groups can congregate to play games or watch a movie, rather than a simple gathering of avatars.
Facebook Messenger has an unreleased public chat feature
Facebook's lovable but unfortunately short-lived standalone Rooms app might see the light of day again -- in some form at least. According to TechCrunch, Facebook Messenger has an unreleased feature, also called "Rooms," that allow users to create public, sharable group chats
Facebook shutters Slingshot and other Creative Labs apps
Facebook isn't throwing in the towel when it comes to experimentation, but it has shuttered the project that sought to encourage it. Three apps born from its Creative Labs have been pulled from their respective app stores and the website for the initiative itself is no more. Creative Labs began as a way to encourage experimentation among the social network's employees through hackathon-type sessions, and it led to the development of Slingshot, Rooms and Riff. Slingshot is perhaps the most recognizable of the three for its attempt to take on Snapchat in the realm of ephemeral messaging. Facebook says that since those apps launched, it has pulled features from each into its core Android and iOS app.
Facebook's anonymous Rooms is a chat app that feels like the old days
Facebook's new Rooms app is weird, and it isn't long after installation that you figure out why. You don't log in with your Facebook credentials. Your profile picture appears nowhere. It doesn't tap into your contacts. If Rooms' iOS-only App Store listing didn't proudly proclaim it was a Facebook product, you'd almost certainly never know it was brewed within the social giant's cavernous confines. Seems a little off-kilter for a chat app, especially one with this pedigree. Instead, it just lets you create those eponymous Rooms -- they're like those AOL chatrooms of yore, dedicated to any topic (or no topic at all) and augmented with the the ability to moderate posts like a power-tripping VIP on a forum. When it's spelled out like that, doesn't it all sound just delightfully anachronistic? Update: Did you have trouble downloading Rooms earlier? You're not the only one, but those problems should be resolved, click here to give it another shot.
Final Fantasy XIV previews private chambers
You devoted a lot of money to your free company's house in Final Fantasy XIV, and now you have it. It's yours. It's all of yours. Except, of course, for the fact that it's not quite yours. Sure, you get a vote about what's in the building, but not sole control. Wouldn't it be nice if instead you could have a part of that house to call your own? That's what private chambers are for, an apartment just for you set off of the main house. Private chambers cost 300,000 gil and require a player to have reached level 50 as well as the rank of Second Lieutenant in their grand company of choice. They can have 50 items placed therein, and just as with company houses, you can control who's allowed to enter the room. You can't leave your free company while you still have a private chamber, although you can vacate your chamber if you so choose. Read more details on the official preview; this feature will be added to the game with the launch of patch 2.3 next week.
Here's an early look at Star Citizen's room system
If you missed yesterday's Wingman's Hangar, it's worth watching to get an early glimpse of Star Citizen's room system. The room system is core technology that will be used to build out planetside locations, hangars, ship interiors, and more. Montreal-based Behaviour Interactive is currently building the system out, and the video shows off plenty of behind-the-scenes footage as well as portions of Star Citizen's asteroid hangar.
Daily iPhone App: Bad Hotel combines hotel building with music
Bad Hotel is a great game that you may have missed on the App Store earlier this year. I certainly missed it, though since it arrived (back around August), I believe, it's come up a few times in various game design and game reviewer circles. It's a weird mix of music and gameplay that is definitely easy to recommend, but hard to actually describe. The best way for you to see how the game works is just to go play it, so throw 99 cents down and go grab this one for yourself. Still here because you don't want to spend a buck without knowing what it's for? Fine then. Bad Hotel is probably best described as a weird sort of tower defense game, where you drag and drop various sacrificial additions onto a hotel tower, trying to defend it from incoming attackers (mostly birds, though I hear things get mixed up later on). But that core mechanic isn't the only thing happening. Bad Hotel is also a sort of musical instrument. Each room you drag onto the hotel pulses with a musical noise, and as you put more and more rooms out (and more rooms get destroyed by attackers), the music changes and warps as you play. It's really fascinating -- it's hard to explain just why this mechanic is attached to the music so strongly (you don't get points for matching up with the music or hitting anything in time, as in a normal music game), but again, the best way to see how well it all works is just to play it and explore for yourself. A recent update for the game opened up all of the levels completely, so now anyone jumping in to play has more options than ever for what they want to see. Bad Hotel is definitely a weird title, but a great one. If, like me, you missed it during the release, don't make the same mistake now.
Windows Phone 8 Rooms give every group its private space
Microsoft is already creating a safe, fenced-off area in Windows Phone 8 through Kids Corner, but it's expanding that to include nearly everyone through Rooms. A rough parallel to Groupme, Rooms lets families, friends or companies share calendars, chats, notes and photos without letting any prying eyes get a peek. And if others aren't following the Windows Phone way, they can still view some of the content from another platform. There's no doubt that Microsoft really hopes its communal addition is a way to squeak out an extra phone sale or two from those who like to stick together. For more, check out our Windows Phone 8 event liveblog! %Gallery-169556%
The Daily Grind: What does your ideal gamespace look like?
When you're younger, your game consoles and systems are usually put wherever the space exists, and your computer is generally tucked into a corner of your bedroom. But when you get a little bit older and move out on your own, you start having a much wider field of options for where you game and how you do so. Video games could be the centerpiece of your house, or you could have a special room devoted to just gaming in some corner of your apartment. And if you're going to be involved in a marathon session of Fallen Earth, wouldn't you like a minifridge nearby? Today we're going just a bit meta and asking you what your ideal space for gaming would look like. Would it be large? Small? What sort of furniture would it contain? The hardware isn't necessarily important -- what is important is what you'd build for your play if you didn't have to worry about space or budget. Games like EverQuest II let us create the environment we want in a virtual space, but if you had that same sort of power in the real world, what would you do? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
How to reserve a room for BlizzCon 2011
Going to BlizzCon 2011? That makes two of us! But if you're like other confirmed con-goers, you may have had trouble reserving a room; lots of hotels in the area are telling callers that they're sold out for the days BlizzCon takes place. This is not necessarily true! We've discovered that Blizzard and/or the Orange County Visitor's Center has reserved many rooms in the hotels surrounding the convention center specifically for BlizzCon guests. In order to claim them, though, you have to call the Visitor's Center directly. If you have a specific hotel in mind, you can ask for it, but they can also hook you up with other hotels that fit your price range. There's no cost to reserve a room, and you have until Sept. 1 to cancel the reservation with no charge. You just need a credit or debit card to have on file. The number to call for reservations is (714) 765-8868. They're open normal business hours, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time.
Rooms: The Main Building: A Trailer
If the Flash game Continuity were more slow-paced and puzzle-oriented, and swapped out its stick-figure aesthetic for a more opulent, woodgrain look, it would be Rooms: The Main Building. Hudson's DS (and Wii) port of the PC puzzle game, out next spring, turns the rooms of a building into a slide puzzle. By configuring the rooms in the correct manner, the player can navigate between them with doors and ladders. Why would anyone even dare to enter a building with sliding rooms that threaten to trap you forever? For a birthday party, of course!
Bitlbee and Rooms: Accessing AIM Chat Rooms from your iPhone
We're a pretty AIM-based blog around these parts. The fact that Weblogs, Inc. is owned by AOL may or may not play a role in that. Regardless, we TUAWians spend a lot of time in AIM chat rooms. The App Store's lack of AOL chat room support has been a real burden when we're out on the road with iPhones. I was delighted when a recent tweet put me in contact with Björn Teichmann, author of the iPhone IRC application Rooms [iTunes link]. Rooms, claimed Teichmann, could bring AOL chat rooms to our iPhones. Teichmann sent over a promo code for his app, which normally retails for $1.99, and spent a few hours getting me up to speed on AOL chat rooms using his software. Let me explain: It's not that setting things up ended up being difficult to accomplish, but rather there weren't a lot of clear and available instructions for doing so. What Teichmann worked out over those hours was a somewhat reliable way to access AOL chat rooms via IRC. Read on to learn more about his solution...
