VAM 2.0

[VaMDeV]

 

[meshedvr]

I should have also added that during those 3 years on VaM1 before being public I was doing so with almost no distractions. Now there are endless distractions while attempting to get VaM2 done, and it requires some serious discipline to stay on task on any give day. A few examples:

• Managing the team. It isn't just me anymore. I have a business to run. There are quite a few regular business tasks I have to attend to.
• While I have a team to handle most of this, moderation and other Hub development sometimes requires my attention.
• Endless PMs and other messages that often need a response. I like to respond if I can.
• Discord vam2 channel. I have said I will be active there and I plan to keep that going even if it takes time to participate.
• Listening to criticism and feedback. I like to take into account other's perspectives, but it can sometimes be draining and I temporarily lose hope and/or productivity. I'm human.
• Threads like this one.

 

[Toonen1988]

@meshedvr As a SHE (safety health environment) officer in education, I can tell you that 80 hours a week is a lot of hours, and not very healthy especially if you don't have enough sleep. It's not only bad for your health, but can also affect other things in your life aswell. It's good that you don't do this anymore.

It's indeed hard to run a business, develop and manage everything at the same time. You can simply solve this issue by hiring more people. But that's not always possible, because of finance. But maybe you can ask for more volunteers who can help you with different tasks. Maybe you can also ask someone of the team to take over some of your PM's. Maybe appoint someone as a community manager, that handles everything between you and the community.

A lead moderator, who moderate moderaters for example. I also want to do everything myself, but that's not always possible. So, I also started to give work out of hands, so I can focus on other things.

Working so much hours is never good, especially if you want to do everything yourself. You might like it now, but how is it in a few years? I've seen enough people who loved their job, but eventually still got a burn out and stayed home for weeks with mentally issue's.

As for the rest, I fully agree. I'm staying with VaM 1.x for now and I will see when VaM 2 is going to be released. I've got my patience, and I know how hard coding is.

 

[HolySchmidt]

I believe you. Keep doing what you are doing and I'm excited how the final product turns out. Nonetheless it would be nice to share some screenshots from time to time so we can participate a little. But I could understand you won't share something cause competitors are "lurking" or whatever. I fully understand you wanna do this right rather than fast, 100% agree, same with me. Thanks for responding!

 

[dusty]

I should have also added that during those 3 years on VaM1 before being public I was doing so with almost no distractions. Now there are endless distractions while attempting to get VaM2 done, and it requires some serious discipline to stay on task on any give day. A few examples:

• Managing the team. It isn't just me anymore. I have a business to run. There are quite a few regular business tasks I have to attend to.
• While I have a team to handle most of this, moderation and other Hub development sometimes requires my attention.
• Endless PMs and other messages that often need a response. I like to respond if I can.
• Discord vam2 channel. I have said I will be active there and I plan to keep that going even if it takes time to participate.
• Listening to criticism and feedback. I like to take into account other's perspectives, but it can sometimes be draining and I temporarily lose hope and/or productivity. I'm human.
• Threads like this one.

I exercise and eat well in order to increase my chances of playing 2.0. Keep up the good work sir.

Also, can we just take a minute to remark on how a single individual is in charge of software development as well as the business side of things, but also takes time to comment in threads like this? Imagine GabeN commenting on a Half-Life 3 thread...

I can relate to OP's frustrations, and like everyone else I wish 2.0 were ready to play tomorrow. However that's not how life works. You have to wait for the really good stuff. If you are looking for something to do in the meantime and have gotten bored with 1.x, check out the rapidly evolving sex tech scene (e.g. the Kiiroo Keon, or the Handy). The killer app that makes adult VR a trillion-dollar-per-year industry in 2035 will be one that combines this kind of tech with a game like VAM.

 

[misterx]

well ... i'v been reading all this here .
when vam 2.0 is released you will get alot of free great scenes from me again untill then , im waiting for starfield LOL

 

[Bobnosh]

There is a pretty simple explanation if you all are willing to accept it. And if you can't, there probably isn't any way to convince you other than for me to actually release something, which is exactly what I'm trying to do.

Summary:
This shit is hard and it takes years to develop an application like this. If this were easy, there would be more competitors.

To be fair, no one in this thread (unless I missed a post and certainly not mine) disagree with this point or have said otherwise. The issue is this isn't THE reason development is going slowly and why the project has some risks as well.

The reason? You do not wish to hire on extra help that can build your skills faster and mentor you, split the workloads, or have specialized (physics, rendering, etc.) or greater skill sets than you that could dramatically multiply VAM 2's development progress several fold. This isn't even a "it takes time and money to bring people up to par on an already existing project" issue because the timeline is very clear additional manpower would far outstrip this issue by orders of magnitude.

To be completely fair, as well, I've also spoken prior why I understand your approach even though I'm not a personal fan of it. However, me and others have also pointed out the inherit risks of that approach as well, not even considering the negative aspect of your supporters "wait".

As for the "more competitors" comment this isn't really a proper claim. Porn games, inherently, have a niche development base even in the professional world where Illusion stood as reigning king for well over a decade despite their lacking quality or improvements over the years and finally still folded. However, adult game acceptance is gradually growing. Further, as was pointed out prior this game is in a similar boat to the Star Citizen example provided where it was highly dominant and way ahead at the forefront of the industry for its genre but now simply no longer has the position it once did despite still not even having a proper release date much like this project's extended but at least honest timeline. Further, as mentioned, development tools such as recent AI developments both in the realm of art, programming, and built in capabilities within development tools (ex. environment or city generation like Unreal Engine 5 recently added, etc.) mean we could see projects literally pop up over night far exceeding VAM 2. In fact, we've already seen a few in the past year that have had such potential quite exceeding VAM 2 to be frank but developers suddenly go totally mute or have other issues (notably an oddly frequent case of clear and rather severe mental illness among adult game developers, a topic I wont go into too much here). Others still exist but had rapid development then went into drip mode similar to VAM 2. Then we have a rare case of a proper team like Wildlife which simply dwarfs VAM 2 and other projects in aspect of development, scale, content, and any potential (granted they're also hyper niche interestingly enough thus not resulting in any particular market dominance as of yet). Anyways, the short version is I wouldn't just assume your timeline is safe even with the still immature but gradually growing adult game industry. Still, even despite this fact at least on your end from a financial and work life balance standpoint your approach is still the most ideal state at the expense of the project and its supporters so I can't blame you, either, and don't think you're necessarily in the wrong.

I also think it is fair to mention even as Mesh is clearly learning, yourself, those same AI benefits can potentially help expedite Mesh's own development as such technology evolves (something Mesh and others discuss somewhat regularly on Discord) including programming assistive tools while learning new skills as a developer so we could also see Mesh have a realistic and radical boost to efficiency, skill, and a reduction of timeline down the road. In the end, we're only really talking possibilities, not certainties.

On an unrelated note, perhaps the aspects I can most appreciate about this project is its developer (you) are much more transparent, you speak and listen to others on Discord quite actively including feedback and development even this far into the established project, and clearly despite any viable profit intent of this route there is a clear passion in the project from you where other developers seem battered and faded in this passion. I only mention both sides because I think it is worth discussing.

 

[StyleMavin]

Can we get back to wanking now that we have established how much we want to wank with the best software possible? At the moment, that is Vam 1.x.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Can we get back to wanking now that we have established how much we want to wank with the best software possible? At the moment, that is Vam 1.x.

What? Discussing mental health among people who wank to hot VR bodies performing unreal acts of depravity? I am shocking!

 

[meshedvr]

I have tried to hire developers. It isn't easy. I would really only like to draw from someone already in the community and familiar with making VaM plugins to ease the startup cost and also use that as the screening process. I'm beyond the point of being able to hire someone for VaM2 and speed up the time it will take to get VaM2 beta out. I would only be slowed down. I made this decision earlier in the year and stopped trying to hire another dev.

I wish I could have hired someone a year or so back, but I struggled to find the right fit. The budget is also not quite right to hire some of the people I would want to hire. I will be looking to hire some more help after the 1st beta is out.

I did hire @AshAuryn earlier this year to work on the Hub and offload all of that work. That has been a tremendous help to free up more of my time for VaM2 development.

 

[vertiphon]

I don't have much to add but I would like to thank @meshedvr for giving us an update of sorts. Good luck to you, sir. For now I think folks should keep a closer eye on Voxta as that is something that will hopefully be available for us to play with this year.

 

[Toonen1988]

It's amazing to see that someone from the community got hired. The success of VaM doesn't only comes from the developers, but also driving by the community.

It's great to see that some talented people have the chance to help the dev team.

 

[keycode]

I don't have much to add but I would like to thank @meshedvr for giving us an update of sorts. Good luck to you, sir. For now I think folks should keep a closer eye on Voxta as that is something that will hopefully be available for us to play with this year.

about keeping closer eyes (even with better perspective through my new glasses for short-sight) : please, if you find some minutes to waste for sharing a simple noob-proof resume on "Voxta" argument we would appreciate very much your technical impression on what you think it will be the animated synergy vam-AI_dialogues.
Considering the very involved advanced expert-nerdyknowledge I see manifested in all related Discord talk, even some basic ground level help to understand what we can expect is/should be welcome.

 

[omegasix456]

This is the best Indie game for adults with character creation that I know, I discovered this game almost by accident compared to Honey Select and Koikatsu, this game seems better to me, since you can create your own scenes, put mods and other functions I never saw Illusion games (Today it's called ILLGames), I don't have the money to pay for Patreon, let alone a PC to play it, but when I have a good PC, this will be one of the first games I'll look to pay for on Patreon to ride and play.

If creating a game like this for a large company would be moderately difficult, I don't want to imagine a small group of indie developers.

One question: What are the differences between VAM 2.0 and VAM 1.0? If you have the link you can send it to me

 

[keycode]

This is the best Indie game for adults with character creation that I know, I discovered this game almost by accident compared to Honey Select and Koikatsu, this game seems better to me, since you can create your own scenes, put mods and other functions I never saw Illusion games (Today it's called ILLGames), I don't have the money to pay for Patreon, let alone a PC to play it, but when I have a good PC, this will be one of the first games I'll look to pay for on Patreon to ride and play.

If creating a game like this for a large company would be moderately difficult, I don't want to imagine a small group of indie developers.

One question: What are the differences between VAM 2.0 and VAM 1.0? If you have the link you can send it to me

you can find lot of answers in this wiki or in vam discord, but I did not understand: can you play vam at least in desktop mode with your actual pc or not?

Official - 05. Community Links

Of course, we wouldn't be anywhere without the support of our incredible VaM community making this the spectacularly pornographic fantasy land that it is! We have members across all kinds of platforms, find us at the following links: Patreon: VirtAMate Social Media: Twitter DeviantArt...

hub.virtamate.com

 

[omegasix456]

I almost completely saw what you want to do with Vam 2, it seems very ambitious to me that it can be done but if a small group of programmers does it, it can take many years to be careful if it does not reach the year 2030 and I still don't know finished.

If MeshedVR wanted to finish it sooner, it would have to hire a more or less number of programmers that I don't know if it's enough unless it hires South American programmers like the ones in my country (Venezuela), it's better to let them make the game at their own pace, We already have enough of the news that the big video game companies exploit the programmers to finish the game so that we become the exploiters of MeshedVR because we want the game now.

Let's not be like Activision shareholders by pressuring companies to release crap games.

MeshedVR is a human being, not a robot.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Murphy's Law of Programming: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

 

[EthicalZamora]

I think someone is making a lot of money while delivering nearly nothing.

Meshed VR: Patreon Earnings + Statistics + Graphs + Rank

meshedvr Patreon earnings, statistics, graphs, and popularity rank updated daily

graphtreon.com

I hope there will be VaM 2.0. But right now, it looks like a fraud to me. Just my honest thoughts. I hope I'm wrong.

Tell me you have no idea what game development is like without telling me you have no idea what game development is like.

Fraud? Get real man.

 

[HolySchmidt]

I have no idea how game development works, so? Am I not allowed to have an oponion on atomic bombs until I know how to build one?

Whats your point?

Nice entrance btw. Welcome on board!

 

[Umemaro1488]

Considering that there are currently issues of THIS nature in the first VAM, I think it's worth forgetting about the second part... Instead of completing the first part, let's create a new one... It's frustrating how with good ideas and enthusiasm, I have to burn out because of such thing...

 

[mikael]

First rule of VAM2.0 club is...

 

[Zeeko]

View attachment 286694

Considering that there are currently issues of THIS nature in the first VAM, I think it's worth forgetting about the second part... Instead of completing the first part, let's create a new one... It's frustrating how with good ideas and enthusiasm, I have to burn out because of such thing...

I feel your pain!!

 

[johnqaz]

Considering that there are currently issues of THIS nature in the first VAM, I think it's worth forgetting about the second part... Instead of completing the first part, let's create a new one... It's frustrating how with good ideas and enthusiasm, I have to burn out because of such thing...

RIP headphone users (me)

 

[capta134]

There is a pretty simple explanation if you all are willing to accept it. And if you can't, there probably isn't any way to convince you other than for me to actually release something, which is exactly what I'm trying to do.

Summary:
This shit is hard and it takes years to develop an application like this. If this were easy, there would be more competitors.

Longer explanation:
I was developing VaM1 for several years before I even showed it to the public in any form. VaM2 required something similar. At first I thought I could reuse a lot of code and work from VaM1 so the transition to VaM2 would be shorter, but I'm essentially rewriting everything from scratch. After digging further into VaM2 it was obvious that I had to lay completely new groundwork to meet all the goals I had set out for performance and improvements in rendering and physics. For VaM2 we are now somewhere in the middle of those 3 years of development it took before presenting VaM1 to the public. I won't say where we are because it is too hard to predict exactly. I know it has already been more than 3 years since the first mention of VaM2, but along the way VaM1 was also still being worked on, including the Hub, which was a huge amount of work to pull off and maintain. A sizeable % of the Patreon earnings go into running the Hub ad free. I also took VaM1 off the shelf to help with the retail launch and help ease the large time gap between VaM1 and VaM2. So VaM1 got some much needed love to improve usability to help extend its lifetime. Another thing to consider is during the earlier VaM1 days I was also working 80 hour weeks and it was costing me a great deal in the rest of my life. I'm no longer willing to do that as it isn't sustainable. I would rather it take longer than burn out or worse.

Like many of you, I don't like how long it is taking to complete VaM2, but I'm doing the best I can with the resources I have. Thank you to those that have been supportive and understanding. If this were easy, there would be more competitors. I have seen competitors come and go. Many of those projects that looked promising as a competitor (that I even supported!!) have kind of dropped off the map. My guess is because this is not an easy thing to create and they got stuck and lost hope. There are challenges every day that often require custom workarounds, clever solutions, or compromises. The work can be frustrating and sometime solutions to problems take weeks or months to work out. But with the proper drive and persistence, it is possible to bring a project like this to completion.

I'm loving working on VaM2 nearly every day. I'm very excited about the possibilities and improving the parts of VaM1 that I was not as proud of (mostly usability and performance). I want to keep enjoying making it and make a quality product that improves upon every aspect of VaM1. If I love what I'm doing, it will show in the end result. That is how VaM1 came to be, and I believe it is the correct path for VaM2 as well.

In my opinion, you did something above and beyond when making Vam 1.X. VAM is so realistic and technically advanced that makes every single erotic VR product I have seen so far, look like a cheap joke. I even use VAM to set up my guided meditation session scenes and it works better than those paid apps in the Quest store! I assure your real fans will be patient while you do your development.

 

[keycode]

In my opinion, you did something above and beyond when making Vam 1.X. VAM is so realistic and technically advanced that makes every single erotic VR product I have seen so far look like a joke. I even use VAM to set up my guided meditation session scenes and it works better than those paid apps in the Quest store! I assure you real fans will be patient while you do your development.

Maybe you should consider (that) even real fans are not eternal
[end of macabre kidding]

Being patient is rational, wise and peaceful: but what we care the most (about our beloved vam gaming) is the pure extatic fun it can give. On this important context (of distilled feelings) any honest polemic talk can merit the same value as flattering... just widely merited flatteries of course.