Where we are with online multiplayer

[emalafeew]

Players have asked about our online multiplayer plans beyond head-to-head.  This is just about synchronous multiplayer, where you can see and talk to the other players, not asynchronous multiplayer like our event leaderboards or ghost players.

Our original games offered up to 8-player online gameplay, and we used extra buttons on our original bike for emoticons and taunts.  We are working toward better matchmaking and we may get there again.  But there were problems with that related to the number of players we still have.  

Multiplayer games generally need millions of players to ensure that anyone looking for a match can be joined by 10 other people also looking for a match.  People already in matches do not count toward that.  Our original games tried to deal with drop-in/drop-out behavior in every game, like Journey if you're familiar.  So everyone didn't have to start at the same time, people already in matches did count.  

The first problem with that was you still need a lot of people online playing the same game to every see anyone else, much less 3 or more people.  We rely on VR and a bike together which limits our market compared to free-to-play games on any phone, and Play has 11 different levels which fragment users.  Next, our users have to prepare for workouts and generally have a set time in their day, so don't adjust their play times for online matches. Next, drop-in/drop-out multiplayer meant you couldn't have any "winners", and we couldn't ramp the intensity of waves for your workout if someone could come along at any minute and need to share your environment.  Finally sometimes you just want to play alone, and don't want to be joined by another tanker who keeps killing you.  

So that evolved into VZfit Play's head-to-head behavior, which better suits our player base size, offers synchronized starts so you can have winners, and players can choose to be a part of.  You get to play single player while you wait for a matchup.  And we got to optimize our games for mobile VR without worrying about 7 other players.

Our tank game was the most fun with greater numbers of players, so that's the first one we'd want a larger multiplayer battle option for.  We know we can afford 4 tanks at least in that game.  Making our racecar game like Mario Kart would be a close second. But the first thing on our backlog for Play multiplayer is simply to get "Restart" to work again, so you can play another match immediately with the same opponent.  We had to disable that due to technical difficulties with voice chat but would love to bring it back.  

We've tried to bring people together with our weekly head-to-head events but that hasn't done much, probably for the "everyone has their own workout time" reason.  Snowpelt started our Discord site for gamers to synchronize their matches, and we're working to automatically announce when players are looking for matches in our games on it.  We're also looking for a calendering solution where players can indicate when they want to play, and other players could signup for that time.  If anyone knows a good solution for that already please let us know!

Regarding VZfit Explorer, we kept drop-in/drop-out matchups because they are social not competitive.  It's two riders for now, but we could easily scale that up to 6 to replace all the AI riders with live riders.

[ProfeSilva]

Hi,

In regards to your last comment: "It's two riders for now, but we could easily scale that up to 6 to replace all the AI riders with live riders." When is this going to happen?  Thanks for your response.

[emalafeew]

Each time somebody asks we move it up in our backlog priority! It didn't make our current sprint, but the code and UI are already architected for it, so could be a quick add.

[ProfeSilva]

Nice thanks for the response.
I noticed that cadence is reading perfectly well. Can the explorer and the games read speed as well? It would be interesting g to add more options in this regard for better accuracy. For example, when the trainer suggest for me to go light, I switch it to the light gear but pass him easily, and it just feels not realistic. Or when the opposite happens and he says to go hard, I switch to a hard gear which of course will make the cadence go slower and then he passes me easily. Do you understand what I am trying to convey? Thanks for your thought in advance.

[Shon_T]

Nice thanks for the response.
I noticed that cadence is reading perfectly well. Can the explorer and the games read speed as well? It would be interesting g to add more options in this regard for better accuracy. For example, when the trainer suggest for me to go light, I switch it to the light gear but pass him easily, and it just feels not realistic. Or when the opposite happens and he says to go hard, I switch to a hard gear which of course will make the cadence go slower and then he passes me easily. Do you understand what I am trying to convey? Thanks for your thought in advance.

I think the trainer is referring to how fast or slow you are pedaling. Medium for the trainer is 80-90 RPMs range. I set the trainer for "touring" when I want to go a consistent speed, but different modes like "interval" training will have you pedaling faster or slower.

[emalafeew]

Nice thanks for the response.
I noticed that cadence is reading perfectly well. Can the explorer and the games read speed as well? It would be interesting g to add more options in this regard for better accuracy. For example, when the trainer suggest for me to go light, I switch it to the light gear but pass him easily, and it just feels not realistic. Or when the opposite happens and he says to go hard, I switch to a hard gear which of course will make the cadence go slower and then he passes me easily. Do you understand what I am trying to convey? Thanks for your thought in advance.

We understand and short answer is yes!

The Explorer trainer was designed to provide a cadence-based rather than resistance-based workout.   So it expects you to change your pedaling speed for light, medium, and hard sections.

If instead you want to maintain cadence and change resistance instead when the trainer says light/medium/hard, you'd have to change HUD difficulty at the same time to simulate changing speed at the rear wheel.  I.e. for lighter resistance you would increase difficulty to make virtual bike go slower for same pedaling speed.  

At least, that's true if you registered VZfit with a cadence or VZ Sensor.  But as you asked, yes you can register VZfit to read your speed sensor instead of your cadence sensor.  The Explorer trainer would then work like you expect for a resistance-based workout, by making the virtual bike go slower when you downshift, and faster when you upshift to keep up.  Just send an email to support@virzoom.com for us to reset your sensor registration, then reregister with only speed sensor attached to your bike.

But note VZfit can't currently read both cadence and speed sensors at the same time. It always infers the other measurement, presuming a 3:1 gear ratio with 27" wheels at the default HUD difficulty of 5.  So if you register with a speed sensor, expect the HUD cadence reading to be off except in that condition. In the future we'll add support for reading cadence and speed sensor combos, to show proper cadence in the HUD while your motion reflects wheel speed.