Anarchy Arcade News

[p]Greetings! Today’s update features an improved image loader, fixed game mounting, fixed Steam store game spawning, and more![/p][p]In the past, the image loader had trouble working on certain sites which meant you had to try multiple image URLs before finding one that’d work. Today’s update resolves this by implementing SteamHTTPRequests as a fallback for loading images less-than 10MB. This means that pretty much any image URL you throw at it will be able to successfully load the images as textures in-game! (The UI menus may still have trouble displaying images from certain sites, but they’ll work on the in-game objects regardless.)[/p][p]It turns out the old way that AArcade detected mountable game’s install paths relied on the user having taken the Steam survey at least once, which resulted in many people needing a custom gameinfo.txt in order to mount their other games. Today’s update resolves this by improving the way AArcade asks Steam for the install paths of other Source engine games. Now it’ll be able to find & mount your other Source engine games automatically, even for 1st-time users who’ve never ran a Steam Survey before.[/p][p]Steam’s recent website upgrade broke the way AArcade detects that you are looking at a spawnable Steam game when using the wizard. Today’s AArcade update fixes this so that you’ll be able to spawn not only individual games from the Steam Store wizard, but also fixes the batch-import of all your Steam games (or just of your recent Steam games.) Just note that when batch-importing Steam games from your profile, you’ll have to scroll to the bottom of the games list BEFORE hitting Import Steam Games to make sure it detects them all.[/p][p]As usual, the batch-import options can be found in Main Menu > Settings Menu > Import tab > Steam Games button.[/p][p]Wizards are what let you easily spawn items from the in-game browser from specific sites. Sometimes the sites associated with Wizards become obsolete or the JavaScript used to spawn items from the sites becomes outdated. Today’s update hides some of the known obsolete wizards to tidy up the list some. The following wizards have been auto-hidden from the lists in today’s update: DC Universe, Giant Bomb, Oculus Store, and Origin.[/p][p]The only wizards considered vital & always kept in working order are the Steam Store and The Movie DB wizards. Several of the other wizards still work, but aren’t routinely tested so your milage may vary. You can expect more tweaks to the Wizards system (as well as improvements to the drag & drop features of AArcade) in future updates.[/p][p]You can CTRL + V paste URLs in to spawn them while in walking around mode, and you can always customize your items in the Edit Item menu or with the drag & drop features. Wizards are mostly being phased out, other than the ones considered vital.[/p][p]Do you want to jump high, man? Does Pinocchio have wooden knees? Now you can adjust how much air you get in your jumps with the new convar “jump_power”, default set to 1.0 Set it to 2.0 to get twice as much air! Or even higher if you’re feeling froggy.[/p][p]Under-The-Hood[/p][p]There were various other tweaks & additions (listed in the full change log) that mostly just apply to advanced users who write their own UI mods or dig deep with their key binds. “Full Media Library” exports of an arcade now properly include prop data. The “petattach” command now accepts “-1” as a target to indicate the play-as-pet. The Quests feature can be toggled between map loads with “quests_enabled 1/0”, and some tweaks to some internal methods UI mods use such as getNearestObjectToPlayerLook being able to include item types in its response.[/p][p]It’s been another stable year for AArcade without any major game-breaking bugs. AArcade: Source will remain on the 32-bit engine branch of the Source engine (as the 64bit branch doesn’t inherently provide it with many improvements.)[/p][p]2026 will be a year of QoL & first-time-user experience improvements and likely lead to AArcade coming out of Early Access. Many of us have been using AArcade: Source as our 3D desktop for the past decade, and it’s looking like it’ll remain functioning for decades going forward. (Which was always the plan - to float forever.) It’s open source & built on top of a classic vanilla game engine that has a very stable future.[/p][p]Beyond AArcade: Source, the Anarchy Arcade line of apps & experiments continues to grow with projects like The Anarchy Archives, AArcade: PlayCanvas, AnarchyTV, and many of the community characters appearing in virtual TV shows on Shmotime and LurkMode, including prototype integrations within AArcade: Source itself through UI mods.[/p][p]There is also the Arcade Core project that aims to modularize AArcade’s core personal media library, UI, and some Libretro features into an easily embeddable framework for use in future engines, such as an AArcade: Source 64 (a 64-bit engine branch remake), and potentially other AArcade clients built on top of other sandboxes such as S&Box or Minecraft. Each game engine / ecosystem offers unique pros & cons, and there’s no reason users wouldn’t be able to move freely between different frontends - bringing their personal media libraries with them - to find what suits them best.[/p][p]That’s all the news for now! If you’d like to connect with the AArcade community, check out the Community section of the Anarchy Arcade website. Otherwise, have a great end-of-2025 and I’ll see you on the flip side![/p][p][/p][p]Change Log[/p]

• [p]Hid the following obsolete wizards by default: DC Universe, Giant Bomb, Oculus Store, Origin.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted the Pet Context Menu to auto-close when setting a behavior.[/p]
• [p]Fixed bug of Always Animated Image task clustering up the Main Menu.[/p]
• [p]Improved exporting arcades w/ full media library to also include prop model definitions.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted the "petattach" command to accept "-1" as the 2nd parameter to indicate "just use the play-as pet entity."[/p]
• [p]Added jump_power (default 1.0) that is a multiplyer to the jump force applied.[/p]
• [p]Added convar quests_enabled 1/0 (enabled by default.)[/p]
• [p]Fixed Steam Store wizard for spawning individual games from the Steam Store.[/p]
• [p]Fixed bulk import of Steam games through Main Menu > Settings Menu > Import tab > Steam Games button. (You have to scroll to the end of the page before pressing the Import Games button now.)[/p]
• [p]Added optional variable for "include type" to the getNearestObjectToPlayerLook and getNextNearestObjectToPlayerLook internal UI methods.[/p]
• [p]Improved Awesomium data source handling to properly return a failed request response in all cases where IO failed.[/p]
• [p]Improved the image loader to have the ability to use SteamHTTPRequests as a fallback to direct image loading. (Only for images < 10MB.)[/p]
• [p]Added options for image loader to use http variant on fields. (But disabled by default because SteamHTTPRequests handles this case more robustly.)[/p]
• [p]Fixed auto-detection of mount paths of other installed Source engine games.[/p]
• [p]Added global define of AA_USE_GENERATED_CODE 0/1 to the C++ to exclude AI-generated code blocks from being compiled into the Steam version. (There is currently no way to enable these experimental code blocks other than compiling from the GitHub source code yourself.)[/p]

Today's update just expands the vcredist and directx redistributables to work on a wider range modern systems. Microsoft has depreciated some of the older redistributables, so today's update tries to bring things back up-to-date to address some issues some users were encountering.

These changes don't have an impact on actual gameplay, but may help some users avoid errors when launching into the game.

Added were:
- DirectX June 2010
- Visual C++ Redist 2010

Plus the already existing one which was:
- Visual C++ Redist 2013

Today’s update contains several bug fixes, mostly related to pets.

Change Log

• Added a notification when you click the Add/Update Pet button.
  
• Fixed a bug that made you have to BE a pet in order to see the Add/Update Pet button in the Build/Transform Menu.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the transforms in the Build Menu to apply to your current pet even if it wasn't the model you were adding/updating.
  
• Fixed a crash bug that occurred on maps that used scaled models (especially on entity rigs.)

Today's update adds a basic & customizable Pet System that lets you turn any model into a pet that can follow you around, or you can become the pet & use it as your own avatar.

You can also create outfits for the pets by attaching models to them.


You can play as the pets - so to start you off there are 5 default pets you can spawn & play as from the classic set of AArcade NPCs: Hacker Haley, Fit Frank, Timbo Tyson, Cowboy Carl, and Zombie Joe.

They each now have unique idle, walk, run, and fall animations. (Plus swimming, dancing, & a few more.) So they are well suited to show you how the pet system works. But the real fun comes when you setup your own custom models to be pets.



Pets can be any model in your library, but to look good they need idle & run animations. Some things (like floating droids) don't need any animations at all to look good. Toy cars & helicopters, birds & animals, lots of stuff makes sense.



The F9 button is now the Pets Tab. It lets you switch between any pet you have living in your world wherever they are.

There is a ? help button there that has instructions on how to do various pet-related things.

You can have as many pets alive as you want, but keep in mind the entity limit per-world is 2048. (The status console command shows how many are used.)


You can attach things to your pet. Everything you attach remembers its attachment point on that pet so you can quickly attach/detach it later with the Pet Attach Object command.



There is also a new Player Look-Spot Toggle command that shows an indicator in the world to help attaching things easier.


Go from basic bot to stylish gentlebot just by attaching props to your pet. And save as many different outfits as you want.


With Pet Persistence enabled (by default), it will remember which pets are alive in each world & the outfit they are wearing. And if you are playing as a pet, you take your pet & its saved outfit with you between worlds.


If you press USE on a pet it brings up the Pet Context menu. This lets you quickly change the pet's behavior, animation, outfit, and a few other useful commands.



For more help w/ pets, check the help button in the Pets Tab. And feel free to jump into the Anarchy Arcade Discord or Twitch streams if you have questions.

That's about summarizes it for pets. Note that pets are singleplayer-only for now; however, they are likely to become our main avatars in MP also in the future.


The NUMPAD on keyboards now auto-binds to the cinematic camera commands. CTRL + [0-9] sets a camera position, and just the number [0-9] itself cuts to that camera.

There's a "create_torch" command now that can be fun to use on dark maps. It attaches a dynamic light above your character's head - pointed down.

The Servers Menu has a searchable drop-down for universes now. And the bug that caused the infinite "Please Wait" screen when trying to host has been fixed.

(Note that everybody will be a default question mark avatar in multiplayer as part of the fix. This is another reason why pets are likely to become our main avatars in the future.)

Ladders are fixed. (Woohoo!) And there are several improvements related to people who create their own maps in Hammer & AArcade's ability to properly sync them. If you're interested in creating your own maps or just learning how to do advanced stuff in AArcade, you're invited to the Discord & Twitch streams as well. (The official website has the Discord invite.)

As always - the change log is below. And the GitHub repos have been updated w/ the newest versions of the code. Happy new year, and have a good time!

NOTE: At 3:42pm Pacific I pushed a hotfix that added in the "Player Look-Spot Toggle" model & material asset that I forgot to pack. And later this week I'll be fixing a bug that makes you turn into an existing pet before you can create new custom pets.

[h3]Full change log:[/h3]

• Added Pet System that lets you spawn models that follow you around or you can play as.
  
• Added the Pets Tab (F9) to the Tab Menu.
  
• Added the following pet-related commands to the Commands Tab: cmd_pet_wear, cmd_pet_remove_all, cmd_pet_target, cmd_pet_next, cmd_pet_prev.
  
• Added the CONSOLE COMMAND of "petplayanimraw SEQUENCE_NAME_HERE" that can be used to bind buttons to play "sitfloor", "attack", or any other named sequence that a pet model has.
  
• Added Pet Persistence to the Settings Menu > General tab. Enabled by default, it causes pets & their outfits to be remembered per-map.
  
• Added 5 DEFAULT pets: Zombie Joe, Fit Frank, Hacker Haley, Timbo Tyson, Cowboy Carl. (You can also add as many custom pets of your own as you'd like.)
  
• Changed the list of universes on the Servers list to be a searchable drop-down list.
  
• Added "create_torch" and "destroy_torch" console commands that spawn a dynamic light of the provided color above the player.
  
• Fixed unable to host bug (by defining a default question mark avatar image for all users .)
  
• Fixed the NUMPAD button binds for cinematic camera. (CTRL + NUMPAD 0-9 to set a position, and just NUMPAD 0-9 to cut to that position.)
  
• Fixed bug of NPC model eyes looking in random directions.
  
• Fixed bug of props flashing bright/dark.
  
• Added new commands to the Commands Tab: cmd_cam_collision_toggle, cmd_lookspot_toggle
  
• Modified VBSP to allow for up to 65536* entities (instead of default 8192.)
  
• Added smoothing group fix on func_detail brushes in maps you are creating yourself.
  
• Added fix for CS:S-style ladders.
  
• Added fix for seamless cubemap generation with buildcubemaps command in maps you are creating yourself.
  
• Improved material adopt & sync to include the following material variables: basetexture2, bumpmap2, blendmodulatetexture, emissiveblendbasetexture, emissiveblendflowtexture, emissiveblendtexture, phongwarptexture
  
• Improved AArcade's point_viewcontrol class to be less broken to better support use in custom maps.
  
• Improved quest objects to use their current position rather than their object-defined position. (To allow for quest objects that are parented to moving objects.)

Today's update includes 2 hotfixes for:
- Users being unable to host MP servers.
- Web browsers failing to render.