Ten Whole Years - A Rec Room Archive Event
It has been ten whole years since the first publicly accessible build of Rec Room hit Steam. Since then, so much has happened and this game has evolved in ways nobody could have ever possibly imagined.
To celebrate this milestone, we're taking a trip back to where it all began. Join us in revisiting the first ever (public) build of Rec Room from all those years ago!
But Why?
This is a question I've got a lot while teasing TenWholeYears in the Radium Discord server, with the biggest thing I've heard being:
"Why work on this instead of Radium 2023?"
Radium is still actively being worked on, and TenWholeYears is simply a separate solo project made by me (splooty).
Mainly though, I think it boils down to people not playing very many old builds anymore (2020-2023 don't count!), and because this is just a fun milestone for Rec Room!
If you went out and bought a birthday cake for this build (for whatever reason...) you would need to buy TWO candles because it's in the double digits now! You could also buy one of those ten packs of candles too and that'd work but that kind of takes the fun out of it.
...What?
What Is There To Do?
Maybe the better question is: what isn't there to do?
Punch Up!
Some of you may have heard of a "lost boxing RRO" in Rec Room from 2016, called 'Punch Up'. What if I told you that there was an actual functioning prototype of Punch Up hidden inside this build?
Granted, there isn't much to do other than hit people with floating orbs, but it's cool to see that there's at least some media of it!
Punching others yields a notification playing saying who hit who, as well as a notification for blocking, although I haven't been able to trigger that :(
Frisbee!
Frisbee is pretty much just 'RTX ON' Disc Golf. It replaces the regular trees with these super weird realistic looking ones. It's super weird seeing these realistic graphics in such a cartoony game, and I can see why they didn't go with this...
Frisbee also holds the first ever version of Paintball! Just behind the fourth hole you can find a super early paintball setup with two sides and a fort in the middle.
This may come as a shock to some of you but there are lots of weird visual issues in not just Frisbee but every scene of this project that weren't there in the original first build. If you'd like to see exactly what Frisbee was like in 2016, I'd recommend opening up the real build for yourself. (this is pretty darn close though!)
Horseshoes!
Horseshoes is another scrapped activity that never made it into Rec Room that you might've heard about. It involves...horseshoes.
Unlike Frisbee, Horseshoes is not very functional and doesn't have any game logic attached to it. If you really want to end up playing this you'll have to keep score yourself and whatnot...
HOWEVER. Because Horseshoes is so boring, nexusverypro stepped up and tried making a real game mode out of it! (it isn't finished yet though...)
Horseshoes is now a 1v1 game mode where two players try to throw their horseshoe onto the stake, with the person closest getting a point. I think it's lots of fun (for 2016) and believe that you all should try giving it a shot!
And again, if you REALLY want to see what Horseshoes was like back then in 2016 without out modifications, go check out the real build! You can find it on SteamDB or online, and there are lots of old Rec Room modding tutorials for versions as simple as this.
Rec Room! (The old Locker Room!)
There's an older version of the Locker Room that can be found inside this build, and it's called 'RecRoom'.
For the record my restoration of it isn't very good...lighting is messed up in a lot of spots, as I didn't have much time to polish it up. If you REALLY want to see what this old Locker Room was like back then, I'd recommend checking out the real build for yourself or checking it out in Yanvar, especially for Quest players.
These aren't the only activities in this build of course, so go on and get in-game to check the rest out!
The Museum
The Museum is a collection of Rec Room goodies from over the years! Sadly, it is not finished yet and will not be in the main release of TenWholeYears. So sorry!
Please just know that it's still being worked on and we're super bummed that we couldn't get it in at launch...
Platform Support
TenWholeYears has support for Windows, Oculus Quest, and Linux, which makes cross-play super easy and neat! Quest players will not be able to change their name in-game, on account of us not being able to fetch Oculus usernames... Instead, they will be served random adjective-animal names, like a junior.
Performance on both Quest and Linux isn't super ideal, but it's being worked on! If you catch any weird performance stuff or visual stuff tied to your platform, please let me (@splootybean) know!
Come check out TenWholeYears at https://recroom.baby/ (or in the Radium Discord!)
