There are some very clever development teams out there doing very clever things with avatars. Unfortunately, we have neither the time nor resources for ‘clever’. What we aim for is ‘release ready’. At least for our first release. That seems like a good goal. Once we’ve got the basics up and running, and people trying out the game, we can go back and add in some technical brilliance to show off a bit. Avatars are one area where we are definitely cheating. And we’re ok with that!
To negate having to deal with all the complicated mechanics of getting joint movement to match the limited amount of data coming in from the VR hardware, we’re removing joints entirely.
NPCs will be more easily identified by the fact that they don’t look like Rayman characters (do any of you remember Rayman? Amazing 90s game!) whereas player avatars of all types will have ‘floating’ limbs. So it’s a useful way to quickly recognise when other sentient beings are around. In fact, we should probably pretend it was a deliberate (and very clever) design choice and just not cutting development corners!
Wanderers Weird 