If you're an existing Spawnpoint operator and reading this, chances are you've just updated your Spawnpoint software and have been greeted with a totally different user interface.
First of all: Don't Panic!.
And second: Welcome to the new Spawnpoint User Interface - it's more powerful than ever before, crammed full of brand new features, and also much easier to use.
If you're not an existing Spawnpoint operator, we recommend heading over to our Getting Started Section for guidance on setting up and running Spawnpoint in your arena.
This guide gives you a brief overview of where to find all the features you're used to in Spawnpoint, so you can get up and running with the new UI as quickly as possible.
The New Tab Bar
We've move the sidebar to be a tab bar at the bottom of the screen! Along here you'll find tabs for everything you need in Spawnpoint:
- Dashboard - From here you can check your arena's vitals at a glance, view the latest Spawnpoint news, and quickly access the Account Manager and Feedback Portal
- Play - For starting a session, log users into headsets launching games
- Devices - This is the equivalent of the old "Arenas" tab, from here you can manage your devices for the currently selected arena
- Games - From here you can update your games and add new ones to your arena
- Tracking - We've moved our map management out into its own tab, from here you can create new maps, assign them to the current arena and monitor map imports into each of your headsets.
- Settings - The equivalent of the old "System" tab, here you can edit your arena settings (including name and size), as well as enabling "Advanced Settings" to access Beta versions of Spawnpoint and other features for advanced users
Don't worry, multi-arena management hasn't gone anywhere either - you can quickly check the status of each arena you've added to Spawnpoint, add new arenas, and switch view via the menu button located in the top-left corner of the operator panel.
Running Games
The most important part! The way you start session hasn't changed, we've just given you access to more tools. To get started running a game, head to the Play tab and start a new session. From here you can add headsets individually or using the bulk login tool to add any number of headsets into the session (prioritising headsets that are currently online)
Once you've added your headsets, click "Game Controls" on the right-hand side of the screen. From here you can select a game to launch and operate it as per usual. The "Switch Game" button can be used to change game or close the current game while one is running, and "Manage Users" on the left can be used to go back to the user/headset login screen.
We've updated every game with a brand new UI, so make sure you update all your games before trying to run them!
New Feature Highlights
- We've added full battery monitoring for every headset platform - including Quest! Even when a game isn't running you'll be able to view whether each headset's controllers are connected and how much charge they have left
- Clicking the Magic Wand button on a headset will open up the Quick Actions menu, from here you can access a selection of important settings and commands you may need on a day-to-day basis while operating your arena. All of these settings work whether you're running a Spawnpoint game or not!
Adding & Updating Games
We've removed the feature that automatically added every game to all of your arenas once downloaded, in favour of a very quick and easy "Add Game" UI in the Games tab. Simply click on a game to add it to your arena. If a game update is available, you can easily view and update it from here too - which will automatically roll that update out to all of the arenas in Spawnpoint that you've added that game to.
To view the install status of a game, click the "Edit" button in the top-right corner of the game's poster, then click "Headset Installs" to view a full overview and retry a game install if there was an error.
We're also making it a lot easier to try out Alpha/Beta versions of games, you can now simply opt-in to a game's Alpha or Beta release channel from the Edit view on a game-by-game basis. Want to try out the latest Dead Corps beta? Not a problem, it won't effect any of your other games as Spawnpoint's version control system gives you full control over which games use a Stable release and which use an Alpha/Beta.
If you'd like to "pin" a specific version to an arena so that it doesn't update when you download a new version, you'll need to enable "Advanced Settings" in the System tab. This will then let you pick a specific version for a game's install on that arena via the game's Edit view, which then won't update any further until you change that option.
Enrolling New Devices
We've improved our headset enrollment process, adding the ability to pre-fill (and save) WiFi details to automatically join your headset to your network and for VIVE Focus Series users we've merged the VIVE Business+ enrollment process into our own headset enrollment window to make onboarding new headsets significantly easier. VIVE Focus 3 users may still need to manually upgrade their headsets to a more recent firmware to use VB+ enrollment, but VIVE Focus Vision users will be able to enroll their headsets into VB+ straight out of the box and be up and running in minutes.
To add a device to Spawnpoint, go to your Devices tab and click the "Add New Device" dropdown top-right, here you can select whether you'd like to add a Headset or PC to your arena and follow the guided process to onboard your device.
Managing Your Headsets
Headset management has been completely revamped with new features and a Quick Actions window that offers a selection of controls that are handy for the day-to-day running of your arena.
Headset Monitoring
Wherever you see your headset - whether that be the play tab, while operating a game, or in the devices tab - you'll be able to monitor the battery charge of your headset and controllers, even while a session isn't running and for all 3 headset platforms: Focus, Pico and Quest. If a StrikerVR Mavrik Pro is setup on the headset, we'll also display the battery and connectivity state for your blaster too, as well as in the operator interface for games that support the Mavrik Pro Blaster.
Headset Settings
Changing headset settings and other more administrative tasks have all been consolidated under the cog you can find for each device on the Devices tab. The new Device Management Window offers an even larger suite of settings and tools to manage your headsets - from game installs and Spawnpoint settings to peripheral management and a wireless environment analyser.
You can also now bulk-manage headset: simply Ctrl-Click or use the dot in the top-left corner of the headset's card in the Devices tab to multi-select headsets, then you can click the Bulk Manage button top-left to manage all of the selected headsets at once. Some settings may not be available in bulk management mode, but we've tried to allow access to as many settings as possible!
Some options are hidden by default to make the initial onboarding of the new UI easier. To enable a selection of additional modules, just open up the settings view for one of your headsets, switch to the "+" tab, and you can globally enable any of these modules for all of your headsets.
New Feature Highlights
The new Device Management window is a huge leap forward for arena management tooling, and there's so much to cover. But to give a few highlights of the amazing new features we've added:
- Vitals - this offers graphs of the last 2 hours of various device vitals including RAM usage, battery health and more. We'll be adding more stats to this over time, but we think this will be incredibly helpful for operators to diagnose issues not only while running Spawnpoint content but other content too. During the development of Dead Corps, we were able to use the Vitals Tab to identify the reason for a game crash being due to the headset running out of RAM!
- WiFi Analyser - this offers a graphical representation of the 5Ghz and 6Ghz networks in your environment, helping you to better understand what channels you should be using on your router for the best performance and to check that your own WiFi networks are using the correct settings for multiplayer games and PCVR streaming
- Peripheral Management - after enable the peripherals addon via the "+" tab, you can monitor the connectivity of your bHaptics vests and onboard StrikerVR Mavrik Pro blasters directly from Spawnpoint. From here you can install the StrikerLink software required to use the Mavrik Pro, and quickly set the StrikerLink mounting type to match your hardware configuration.
- Pico users also benefit from the ability to quickly pair Mavrik Pro blasters and bHaptics vests using the "Pair New" button, which will seek out and pair the relevant device over bluetooth if it's in pairing mode
Headset Quick Actions
Volume control and locking, power controls and more are now found in the Quick Actions window. You can access this window from the user management view of the Play tab or the Devices view. Here you can issue a pair controllers command to a headset, control the volume or even lock the volume to a certain value, reboot/shutdown the headset, toggle our Kiosk Mode setting and more.
You can also issue Quick Action commands in bulk from the Devices tab: use Ctrl-Click or the dots on the device cards to multi-select your devices and then click "Bulk Quick Actions" in the top-left corner of the window.
Tracking Map Creation/Sharing
We've dedicated a whole tab to our popular Tracking Map management solutions, providing a better overview of the map status of each headset and an improved step-by-step interface that will guide you through the mapping process, ensuring the map has been saved to the headset before copying it over to Spawnpoint. This tab is only available if you have at least one Pico Enterprise or Focus Series device present in your device list.
To get started click the Create New Map button in the top-left of the tracking page. If you have enabled the Roomscale Switching addon you'll be asked if you'd like to create an Arenascale or Roomscale map:
- Arenascale maps are for running freeroam content via Spawnpoint and other platforms, where each headset shares the same tracking map
- Roomscale maps can be assigned to individual headsets, so that you can quickly switch between Arenascale and Roomscale mode to operate both types of games in the same space
After you've picked your map type you'll be given the option to create a new map or copy an existing one from a headset. If you are creating a new map, Spawnpoint will walk you through the process and provide links to our documentation with detailed mapping guidance. For VIVE Focus Series headsets the button to proceed beyond the mapping phase will not be available until the map is ready, avoiding the issue where map exports may fail if the map has not finished saving to the headset's storage.
Once you have exported the map, you can apply it to the arena and monitor the map import status of each headset from the tracking tab. You can also delete old maps, and if you have enabled the Roomscale addon you can check which map is assigned to which headset too.
We've also added improved boundary management for VIVE Focus Series devices: you can now set a specific boundary size on a per-arena basis, or let it synchronise with the arena size set through the Settings tab.
To enable these features for VIVE Focus Series devices, you'll need to enable Advanced Spawnpoint Integrations in VB+.
Changing your Arena Size
We know how confusing and hidden away the arena size option was in our old UI, so we've moved it to the Settings tab to be easier to access. As always, the first value should be the shorter of the two sides and if you enter a larger value in this box Spawnpoint will swap the two values around when you save.
The arena size is used to set your Spawnpoint in-game boundary size, is used to filter out or auto-select map sizes in certain games, and can be used to synchronise your VIVE Focus Series boundary.