Game Plugins – A General Overview
One of the unique features of SynthesisVR is the Game Plugins which add several different things including One Click launches, Audio Adjustments, Map Selections, and more. At this time, most of the games with the Game Plugins integration are ones delivered through our Content Delivery, but there are a few Steam games that have them. You may have noticed when looking at a game inside of the Games & Licensing section there was a tab called Plugins. For some games, you may have also noticed that there are some settings inside of there. In most cases the necessary Plugins are installed automatically. In some cases (possibly for a Language Plugin), this plugin may not be installed and would need to be installed by clicking the Install button for that specific Plugin. For the most part, once a Plugin is installed there’s not too much that needs to be done until you launch the game in a session at which point you may be given a variety of parameters you can change at the time of launch. There might me an occasion that you may want to edit those parameters in advance of starting the game in a session, maybe editing or adding durations, changing the default song selection, etc. In this case you would need to install a local copy of the plugin by clicking on that in the Plugins section of the game: Once the local copy is installed, you could then head to the Game Plugins section and edit that particular Plugin: Note that editing Game Plugins is slightly on the advanced level and will be discussed elsewhere in the Knowledge Base, this shouldn’t stop you from exploring to better understand what is happening.
Nested Game Categories
The first step in creating Nested Game categories is to come up with the structure you want, so something as follows: Main Category 1 Subcategory 1 Subcategory 2 Main Category 2 Subcategory 3 Subcategory 4 Once you have that mapped out, the next step would be to create all of the Subcategories first so they are ready to go (you’ll obviously want to rename them to something more obvious than “Sub Category 1”, etc. Go through the usual process of adding games as necessary and as found in this article: https://synthesisvr.com/knowledge-base/creating-and-assigning-game-categories/ Next you’ll need to create your top level Categories and within those Categories, you’ll add in the appropriate nested Game Categories at the bottom. Once you have your top level Categories and your Subcategories set up, it should look something similar to this: Next would be adding those to the Work Rules as per the instructions found here: https://synthesisvr.com/knowledge-base/creating-and-assigning-game-categories/ but with some slight variation. When setting up the order you want your categories to appear, the following has to be kept in mind. All game categories (both top level and nested) need to be added to the Games tab. The order needs to be: Main Category first followed by the Subcategories you want to appear underneath it. If you place a Subcategory either before a Top Level Category it’s supposed to be in (or following a Top Level Category it’s not in), then that Subcategory will show up on the top level vs nested inside of a Top Level Category. Another consideration when creating Nested Game Categories is you can got multiple levels of nesting, it doesn’t have to be just 2 levels, a top level and a sub level. So you could have (for example), the following: Main Category 1 Subcategory 1 Sub Subcategory 1 Sub Subcategory 2 Subcategory 2 Sub Subcategory 3 Sub Subcategory 4 Main Category 2 Subcategory 3 Subcategory 4 The only real limitation is how complicated or deep you want it to be. Although, of course, you want to keep it simple and direct for your customers, but it’s important to understand the extremes this could be taken to.
Content age ratings
After receiving inquiries from our customers, SynthesisVR is proud to present the “Content age ratings”! To activate the “ Content age ratings “ feature, from the Admin panel navigate to Administration –> Business Setup –> Operation Settingsand click on the “Edit” button for the desired Experience type: Then you will see the new “Enable Age Limit” option in the Advanced tab in the Experience Types edition, where you can enable it.Please note: This feature is not enabled by default, and if you want to use it, you must enable it manually for each experience. Select ON for the option and click the “Save” button. Now when you start a session from “Your Arcade” you will see a drop-down menu to select the age limit for the game: Please note that you also have the option to fine-tune “CONTENT AGE RATINGS” on a per-game basis. To do this, go to Administration –> Business Setup –> Games, Licensing, Categories On the Your Games tab Search or find for the desired game and click on the game icon: under the Settings tab change the “Required Player Age” dropdown to select the age restriction for this game: This feature is also useful for more detailed filtering when selecting games for the respective age group.Also, every game in our Game Catalog (https://synthesis.games) has an added Age rating, keeping in mind that “Age Limit: None” means that the game has no age restrictions:
Operation Settings
From Operation Settings, you have the ability to do the following: Set up and edit (or delete) Experience Types, which is a core element that all your system rules are built on Set up Work Rules which control when certain things in your arcade are “active” (or not active, depending on the rule) Assign Work Rules to your Experience Types Assign Experience Types to specific VR Stations To access the Operation Settings, head to the Administration section and from the Business Setup tab in the Advanced View or directly from the Simple View, click on the Operation Settings: If you have multiple arcades under your account, you will be asked to choose your arcade to continue (you can also change the arcade after you have chosen it during the rest of the set up): Select the arcade (if necessary) and you’ll now be in the Experience Type initial section of the Operation Settings. From here, you can create a new Experience Type via the New Experience Type button at the top. This will be detailed in the Experience Types Knowledge Base article. Below this New button, you will see all your existing Experience Types. For a new arcade, you will see the pre-generated VR Experience and the Parties Experience Types. Experience Types are listed alphabetically. Note that if you have just created a new Experience Type and are going to populate it with new Work Rules, you have the option of creating either a Duration Based Rule or a Per-Game Rule. Once you’ve created your first Work Rule based on that, the Experience Type is “locked” to that type of Rule. Hovering over certain parts of the Experience Types will give you more information about those settings. Examples below for a couple of those. Clicking on the hamburger menu brings up a menu allowing you to Edit, Assign to Stations, or Delete the Experience Type. More may be added to this menu in the future. Note that this menu is an off/on menu and will not go away after you Edit or Assign Stations. If you click on the Stations button to assign the Experience Type to your VR Stations, you are presented with all your stations at which point you can click on the VR Stations you want this assigned to. Or uncheck the stations you want it removed from. Clicking on Save will save your changes. To edit or add Work Rules, click on the Add/Edit Operation Settings which will take you to all Rules assigned to that Experience Type. Once in this section you can now Add a Duration Based Work Rule (or Per-Game Rule if that’s what you’re using the Experience Type for) Assign the Experience Type to your VR Stations (which follows the same method as above) Edit, Copy, or Delete your Existing Work Rules Specific details on creating and editing Work Rules is covered in a different part of the Knowledge Base. under each work rule, you’ll see a summary of the rule including durations available in this rule, dates it’s active, time of day it’s active, and days of the week it’s active. Note that the title at the top is internal only and is only referenced in this section to make it a little quicker to identify the rules you want to work on. From here, you can also Edit, Copy, or Delete the Work Rule.
Work Rules By Duration
Where things like Experience Types and Discounts and Game Categories are core components of SynthesisVR, Work Rules are where all those core components come together and is where the full power of SynthesisVR is realized. This allows you to have multiple combinations of pricing, durations, times, etc. Once you have an understanding of how to set up all your Work Rules, these will branch out to things like Booking Widgets, etc. From the Administration section, click on the Operation Settings button (you need to be in the Business Setup tab if using the Advanced view). From the Operation Settings section, from one of your Experience Types, click on the Add/Edit Operations button. Note that if you haven’t added any Experience Types, please review the Operation Settings and Experience Types sections in the Knowledge Base. Once in the Experience Type, you will be presented with the option to create either a Duration Based Rule or a Per-Game Rule. In this article, we’ll be focusing on the Duration Based Rule. Clicking on the Add Duration Based button and that will open a new Work Rule. The tabs are set up in sequence to help follow the proper work flow. In creating a new Work Rule, start in the first tab, Time Management which determines when this Work Rule is going to be active. Open Time: This is what time the Rule is to begins. Note that time will show in 24 hour, but when entering in times, you can use “5pm” or “10am” Close Time: This is what time the Rule ends. Same point about time as above. Cleaning Time: This is the number of minutes that a VR Station will be in cleaning time (and not bookable) after the end of a session. First Date: This is the day the rule would be being to be active. Active Until: This is the last day the rule will be active The days of the week can be checked off to determine what days of the week this rule is active. If you check “Days” it will reverse the checkboxes. So if something is checked, it will be unchecked and vice versa. Not that if you are creating a 24 hour rule (typically something you would do if you are NOT using the SynthesisVR booking system), then the Open Time would need to be 00:00 and the Close Time would need to be 24:00. Once you have the Time Management set up, it’s time to move to the Billing tab where you can set up you your durations and pricing. Title: This is an internal Title and is only visible to you and in the Experience Type section. It’s best to make this something that you would recognize (like VR Sessions – Mon-Fri” or something. Add Experience, Duration and Billing + section: This is where you would be adding in your durations and pricing. The blue bar is a button and when you click on it, you add a new line item below which contains the Experience Type, the Gameplay, and the Cost. Within the section, you can delete a line item by clicking on the red x. In the Experience Type column, the appropriate Experience Type will be chosen as you’ll be creating the Work Rule from within the Experience Type, you can use the drop down menu to change that. It is advised to keep the Experience Types the same in a single Work Rule, but we will discuss an exception further down. Sales Tax: If your state or country requires you to charge tax, then this is the place to put it. Leave blank if you don’t charge tax. Discount IDs + section: You can add Discount Rules in the section. Click on the blue bar to add any quantity of Discount Rules to the Work Rule. You can remove Discount Rules by clicking on the red x. Note that Discounts have their own set of rules and may not actually apply this a rule even if attached to it. One thing to keep in mind in this section is that prices and discounts are only important if you are taking (or recording) payments within SynthesisVR. If your plans don’t include that, then you can put in 0 in the Cost column, but it’s generally a good idea to have pricing in there to avoid having to go back and fill that in later. Once you have your Billing filled out, next up is the Games tab. Max Games Per Session: If you want to limit the number of games played in a session, this is where you would enter it. Note that this doesn’t limit the total number of games, it limits the different games played. So if you have it set to 4 and someone plays Elven Assassin, Arizona Sunshine, Skyfront, and RevolVR, then that will lock them out of other games but they can keep switching between those 4. Assign Game Categories + section: In this section, you would add the game categories you want to assign to this Work Rule. Clicking on the blue bar will add game categories and you can use the drop down menu to choose which categories you want. Clicking on the red x will delete that category. The order in which they appear in this section is the order they will show in the menus in the headset during a session. One note on Game Categories, if you don’t assign any Game Categories, SynthesisVR will show all games it has detected installed in the menu in the headset during a session. If you add one category, then only the games in that category will show and there will be no categories shown. Once you have more than 1 category, customers will then see categories first when going into the menus (or when clicking on the Library icon in the SteamVR menu in the headset). You can find more information about Game Categories in the Knowledge Base article about them as
Updated Access Point to Beta Version
If you need to update SynthesisVR to the latest Beta version (for testing and/or directed by the SynthesisVR support team), go to C:\SynthesisVR Exclusive Content\4301 folder where the Updater app is installed and with right-click create a new shortcut to the Desktop for the SynthesisVR-Update.exe: Then right-click on the shortcut on your Desktop and select Properties then go to the Shortcut tab: Add ” -beta” but without the quotation marks at the end of the Target. Be sure there is a space between the -beta and the text already in the field. Click on “OK” and launch the app via the shortcut and if there is a beta available you will be prompted to update the Access Point. To go back to the standard update, edit the shortcut as above, but remove the ” -beta” portion.
Save Game Progress
In simple terms, it just works and there’s nothing you specifically need to to make it do anything. Games that have the Save Game Progress will have the following icon in our list found at https://games.synthesisvr.com You can also filter on those by using the “Save Game” filter on the top of that page. If there’s a game you think should have the same game option activated, please reach out to us at info@synthesisvr.com, we just need to know where the save game data is stored. Please note that as of the time of reading this, save games will only work with a single station setting. Customers information should be attached to a session prior to a game that you want to save information from (ideally it should be done prior to a session start to avoid errors). This is the case for both saving game data as well as restoring it.
How to setup discounts
Discounts are an amazing way to entice customers and up sell your experiences and add ons. With SynthesisVR you can easily create discount rules that will activate in real time during online reservations or can be setup to be activated at your location or according to operator preference. Step 1 Login to your admin portal and Click Administration from the left menu. Under Advanced – Business Set up – Click Discounts Step 2 To add a new discount rule click the Three Dots in the top right corner and click Add New Discount Rule as shown below. If you have any existing rule click Edit to make changes. Step 3 On the discount pop up Settings Tab Fill in the details. Code – Make sure no spaces or special characters are used Discount Type: Regular Promotion – Will be applied to all reservations if conditions are met while booking Requires a Customer Account – Will only be applied if a customer account exists and conditions are met during booking Operator Discretion – The operator can apply this discount code to any reservation Discount – Input the discount percentage or amount in this field Step 4 Experience Types – Choose the experience types you want to the discount to be applied to. You can select more than one experience. Locations – Make sure to select your default location Minimum and Maximum stations to apply – This is important so you can control how the discount is applied. For eg: If you want the discount to be applied only when two stations or more are booked then Minimum Stations to Apply will be 2 Valid From and Until: This can be a permanent discount or something that is applied during special holidays. Apply For Durations: Which days the discount is applied to, This is a good way if you want to give additional discounts during weekdays than weekends. Step 5 Maximum times the code can be used per account: Leaving it empty or 0 indicates unlimited use. Save Step 6 Now that you have created your Discount Rule you will need to add this to the Business Hours Rule so you can apply to the correct business hours. If you are not familiar with setting up Business Hours please click here. Now when you make a booking the discount will get applied if the conditions are met.
Loop through a list of titles on a predefined period
1. Create a new experience type 2. Assign it to the stations that would be in use 3. Create a new game category and assign all the games that are part of the playlist 4. Create a business rule that combines the new experience type and the game categories 5. Download and extract the following archive in the exact same folder on all your VR stations: https://svrstorage.s3.amazonaws.com/software/playlist_scripts.zip 6. Edit the basic_playlist.bat file in a text editor. Keep the first 2 lines and then add a line of that type for each of the games: curl.exe http://localhost:8080/control/startGame/<GAME_ID> You can find the game ids by going to games.synthesisvr.com/all >> lookup the game and get the id: Between the games, add the line for delaying the event. A 10 minutes delay is defined the following way: timeout /t 600 /nobreak > NUL Once you are done editing the file, don’t forget to get it copied on all the other stations. 7. Create a new Command Call rule and specify the path to the basic_playlist.bat file, as well the experience type: 8. Click the Refresh button on your stations – this will sync the new settings locally on the PC. 9. Start a session for the new experience type. Selecting a game is unnecessary, as that is now handled by the basic_playlist.bat script.
Finding Your Invoices
To download all past invoices, go to the SynthesisVR Subscriptions section (depending in if you’re looking at the Simple or Advanced Interfaces): (Here is the video link to the Tutorial). Once in the SynthesisVR Subscriptions section, click on the Payment History which will bring up a popup showing all prior invoices that you can download. Note that the topmost invoice is a pending one that will be essentially ready to be filled in with data at the end of the month. If you’re looking for the most recent invoice, it will be the 2nd one down. As an example, this article is being written in October 2020 and the topmost invoice in the example image above shows November 1st, which has not been fully generated yet and will be filled with zeros.