I am working on a table based multiplayer game for RIFT and GO. I would like disable the syncing of Avatar Positions so that all Multiplayer Avatars are in a fixed position around the table - is this possible?
if I’m reading this correctly, you want to restrict the movement of the Rift player as they appear to the Go player.
In general I’d advise against doing this for a couple of reasons.
On the one hand, if you’re allowing the Rift player to move, but then throttling the translation of their lateral movement to the Go player over the network, you could cause some weird asymmetry disconnects (e.g. where the player thinks they are going for a hi-5 and they get left hanging, what a loser!)
On the other hand, restricting the movement of Rift player by actually limiting their movement will feel deeply uncomfortable to a Rift User who expects to be able to move. It will feel like the app dropped framerate and they may think something has crashed.
The alternative is to get a little creative with teaching the Rift player their boundaries within this context, a couple examples:
- If you are trying to prevent abuse, you can make another player fade out as the two intersect (see Brass Tactics for a good reference of this), that way no one can ‘get in your face’. It’s important to visual mute both players to one another AND anyone else, as otherwise Player A can mess with Player B for the amusement of Player C, and so on. It’s also worth dialing down the audio if the players intersect, so that there’s no ability for someone to shout loudly in a way that feels like it’s coming from within your own head! Overall benefit of this method is that the Rift user can freely traverse the play space and check out your cool environment, without risk of spatial abuse.
- The alternative to this is to restrict the environment browsing and dial the screen out to white if the player leaves their ‘spot’. This has the benefit of enabling them to still move in 6DOF in a really comfortable way, while showing them very clearly that ‘they can’t walk over there’. If you don’t like the visual method, you can also weave it into the game (e.g. ‘Player B just abandoned their post, unless they return in 3 seconds’).
Both are pretty reliable mechanisms, neither causes weird asymmetric experiences or discomfort for users
