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This is definitely an issue for many VR developers, and I think is an issue with game engines in general.

XR tools and similar toolkits offer you a shortcut by providing loads of functionality out of the box so you can hit the ground running, but it also means that you're skipping over the fundamentals. Especially if you're new to Godot you're not only skipping over the fundamentals of XR development, you are also skipping over the fundamentals of building games in Godot.

As more and more developers choose Godot and get experience with this, and as a result more and more information is made available through blogs, devlogs and tutorial videos, this becomes less and less of an issue, but right now it is easy to get on the wrong foot with things.

Godot itself has a few quirks that don't help either, for instance Godot 4.0 introduced the ability for you to add nodes with a script attached automatically through the `add node` button, but most of XR Tools scripts are design to work in conjunction with a scene and you need to use the `add child scene` button or things won't work properly.

No, you are right. The XRCamera3D is tracked in relation to the XROrigin3D node (which is on the floor) and gives you the height of the player. Obviously if a player is sitting down on a chair, that height will be fairly low, while if they are standing it will give a real indication of the height of the player (or atleast the eye height), and you can detect if a player is crouching.

However, in many games you can have a good reason for "fixing" the player height. For instance if in game your player character is standing and walking around, while you allow the player in real life to be seated. Or if you want your game to not care whether its played by a short or tall person, but fix the height to the actual character you are playing.

XRTools implements this by allowing you to specify the desired height of the character. It will then compare the height of the player to the desired height when the player body is added to the scene tree, and adjust the height according to the difference. You can turn this behaviour off (property is called `auto adjust height` from memory. 

And so we reach the end of this game jam.

Congratulations to the team behind "Who's a good boy" for taking the win!

And thanks to everyone who participated this time around. It's really nice to see the level of quality of entries.

Sadly yes, that is a hard limitation on most XR platforms. There is a lot of division on whether this is a good thing or not within the industry. Meta kinda started the trend and there is merit to the argument, everyone else followed suit We'll see if things change under market pressure. Apple has already swayed a little allowing access for business XR applications but not consumer applications (e.g. not for apps on the AppStore).  

I'm not sure, I think you can add collaborators to your submission but whether they than also get to vote... I would assume they do

Its a funky order thing when using ViewportTextures, where the size isn't known in time. It should resolve itself after a single frame and you can thus ignore it. 

Index controllers should just work through SteamVR without requiring any layers. Possibly requires a restart.
I have noticed that SteamVR gets confused sometimes depending on how the action map is submitted but again a restart usually helps. Someone also mentioned that his project name got in the way (we sent the project name along with the action map so Steam VR can display it in the bindings editor, but I guess it doesn't like all characters)

Wish you could DM on here. If you're on discord sent me or Malcolm a PM there, we can give you a late submission link. Not going to withhold a submission just because you couldn't publish it to itch.io in time. 

Note, this is an entry by one of the hosts, will not take part of any wins :P

Forgot to add my own stream, though we probably won't submit in time (as a host I'm just in it for the giggles):

Indeed for simple elements Label3D and such childed to the XRCamera3D work well as a HUD.
The other option is to use the new composition layer objects in Godot 4.3 to present a 2D UI. They need to be children of the XROrigin3D node so you need to make them follow the players head by updating their position but when natively supported by the XR runtime, there is a noticeable quality improvement.

Defo sent you an invite on linked in, not sure yet if I'll add something to the jam (seeing as a host my entry doesn't count) but music is an often forgotten but important part of a good jam game. 

It's a grey area, it depends a bit on what you did in that week, if its just general framework/setupwork I see little difference between that and using say the Godot XR Template. I think many jammers will take something they have already build as a base or copy stuff from existing projects to save time.

If you had been working on something for months and decided to reskin it to the theme, that would be a clear violation.

But after only a week, even if it is "half finished", unless you had prior knowledge of what the theme would be I don't really have a problem with it.  Especially seeing that right now our jam is just for fun. If we had prices up for grab I might be taking a closer look at what "half finished" meant :)

Hmm, that's a tricky question. I don't have anything against it from a game perspective if it is fully free to play. It's not really in the spirit of a game jam if those wanting to check your game out so they can vote on it have to pay money. 

If anyone who is entering the game jam is either streaming their progress or uploading videos of their progress, please link your twitch/youtube/etc channel in this thread.

Ok, looks like itch fixed it, thanks for noticing Nub!

I don't know, I keep posting the link to my twitter from time to time, but indeed we're lacking a good place to really advertise it

Thanks everyone for joining in on this first Godot XR game jam. I hope everyone had a lot of fun, I sure enjoyed trying out all your creations.

So I'm not entirely sure if itch has an overall winning category, I think we just marked the first as primary... My take on it is that we have a tie between Super Steam Hands and Cloud Shepherd, both taking 2 out of 5 categories.

That said, I was super impressed by the quality of the entries, amazing how much people put together in 3 days especially was I noticed we have a few new people amongst us that were still learning the ins and outs of Godots XR implementation.

Same as Malcolm, wasn't able to download it. It's best to use itch.ios ability to upload a game

Very well put together, I had some troubles with the 2nd puzzle, nearly got it working but obviously doing something wrong :)

It took a minute to figure out movement, but it is a nice approach, just felt a little strong. Really liked the concept. 

This was a lot of fun! Took awhile to get a hang of it but managed to get through a few levels.

Great use of VR, could use a little more precision in chipping things, I always made shapes too rough and the gas got stuck. But excellent execution on the theme!

Very fun concept, got 999 score :)

Nice little game, shows a lot of progress, didn't feel any haptic feedback but that might not have been part of the game. 

Ok, I know how to give you a link that you can still submit the entry, but not sure how to DM it to you :) chuck me an email on mux213 at gmail dot com
I'll be out for an hour but we'll see if we can add it still. Might not get enough votes but atleast you'll be properly on the list :)

Ah ok, that makes sense, that would have been good to have explained somehow because it is a bit confusing. I would have like to be able to walk up to things to examine them a bit better, or wonder whats behind something and whether that is part of the things I need to escape.

yeah that is actually my fault, I've had that on my todo list for about 2 months now, DigitalNumbers actual made a nice solution for that, I was cleaning that up, still need to finish that **shame on me**

Oh, and I managed to clip the bottle through the wall and loose it outside the sauna :)

Especially when it's written on the door that you should! Maybe the cookies are ok then? Or is it trying to trick us?

Love the look of this, I couldn't move around, not sure if that was intentional. Eat the cookie, made the steam, wasn't able to escape :)

Very possibly, I think haptics is one area of VR that hasn't got enough information about how to do it well and there are definitely differences in the platforms that make settings that work well on one, not work well on another. 

HEY! Judges don't get to compete :P :P

Seriously though, this is a really fun little project that shows Godots Tiltfive capabilities off nicely. A few teething problems on the TiltFive drivers we still need to work out. Shame not many people will be able to try the entry just yet.

Note that there is a video of the gameplay on the games page.

Technically impressive, though I couldn't get the browser to do anything. Not really fitting the jam theme though. 

Really nice looking entry, got a lot of potential. I love the hud, I love the general look. Found the plane to be a bit hard to control, then again, I'm a little out of practice when it comes to flying games.

Would love to be able to play this with a HOTAS

Very cool entry, can definitely see this has a lot of potential. It looks amazing too! I was surprised I did not get any motion sickness even though you're flying around like crazy, a bit more control would be nice but I probably just need more practice.
I do suspect people who are much more susceptible to motion sickness than I have might like a warning :)

I loved everything about this, perfect usage of the theme, great visuals, only thing I missed was the ability to rotate which I think could be added to the movement mechanic easily. The movement mechanic btw is SPOT ON. 

Did I miss something re haptics? I didn't experience any rumble.. so maybe there is an issue on Index and I feel bad for scoring haptics low :)

Definitely a cool entry, if it wasn't for watching the video I wouldn't have known there was a button to show where I still needed to steam. That could have used a hint in game. 

Sorry that you missed it by less than half an hour. I don't know if itch has a way to allow us to sneak in people who just didn't make it in time. Hope you had a good time building though!