It's the first release!

For those of you who had a play with my prototype, there isn't a huge amount of change in terms of features. Most of the work has been in fixing unseen problems and working through all the properties that the YAML file allows, but I wanted to get a release out so anyone who finds useful can start playing with it (and letting me know all the things that are wrong with it).

So, what can you do with it?

• Load AoJ cabs from folder.
• All materials will be automatically applied as they are in the game, including most normal maps, properties like metallic and smoothness, and material types like marquee and bezel.
• The CRT and coin slot placeholders are be replaced as they are in the game.
• You can fly around your cab, get in close and make sure it's how you want it without having to put on the headset.
• Blocking meshes are shown as neon green grids (can be deactivated in options).
• You can turn the environment off if you want to get screenshots of your cab.
• You can change the intensity of the ambient lighting.
• There is a vertices and material counter (little information on that below).

What CAN'T you do (yet)?

• Currently the app won't load from zip files, but it's first thing on my list now that I have a proper release out.
• There's no Android build yet. Building this out for Android is not quite as straightforward as I'd hoped, but I do plan to make it work ASAP.
• The app currently only supports cabs with custom models. Cabs that use the built-in cabinet styles won't load.
• The app currently only has the plastic, rubber, scratches, treadplate diamond, treadplate round, and wood normal maps. The other maps won't show.

Things to be aware of!

• It's worth restating, other than using some textures and models, this app is completely independent of the AoJ project. Different codebase, different render pipeline. There's been a lot of tweaking variables "by eye" to get them looking right, and those of you who use AoJ regularly will probably notice all the ways they're not right. I plan to keep improving as I go, but for the time being, geometry (rotation/scale), bump maps, and material types should be totally reliable, but material properties (like smoothness), just take with a little grain of salt as they won't be exactly like they are in the game.
• The material counter is probably unreliable. Right now it's counting every material the cab uses. I don't know if the game optimises this to use shared materials where possible, which would reduce the number of materials used. I'll be digging into the source code or asking people in know when I get to that.
• The vertices count will be showing a different number to what you saw in Blender, this is normal. Unity will almost always report more verts than Blender due to the way 3D modelling software handles meshes vs how a game engine does. Also, the vertices count in this app does not count placeholder meshes (like the mock screens) which would show up in Blender. But the app does count the replacement parts (the actual CRT used, for example). Basically, the vertices count should be accurate to the game.

Okay that's it. I need to take a week off of this project now because I sank all my free time into it for the past week and I've got some catching up to do! I'll be checking for feedback/bug reports/feature requests/complaints/death threats/marriage proposals on here and in the AoJ Discord.

- b3agz