cyubeVR News

Hey everyone, Update 57 for cyubeVR is live!

This update adds localization support making cyubeVR now officially playable in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian and Klingon language! Also, cyubeVR now officially supports seated gameplay through a "Seated Mode", and there are significant CPU performance, GPU performance and RAM usage optimizations, improvements to the graphics, and as always, many more improvements and bugfixes!

Let's first take a look at the long list of changes, and after that, let's get into more detail for the biggest changes! Btw, are you in the official cyubeVR Discord yet?

• Added localization support to all text in the game!
  
• Added German language support
  
• Added Spanish language support
  
• Added French language support
  
• Added Italian language support
  
• Added Portuguese language support
  
• Added Ukrainian language support
  
• Added Klingon language support
  
• Added a "Seated Mode" that adjusts the height of the player by an adjustable offset and adds a crouch toggle button
  
• Many significant CPU performance and RAM usage optimizations
  
• Added new fancy shadows around the corners of blocks
  
• On "Basic" and "Medium" Ground Foliage Quality, trees have new distant LODs now that look much better
  
• Added a custom keyboard to the main menu for entering the world name and seed (instead of the SteamVR Keyboard)
  
• Renamed the "Ground Foliage Quality" setting to "Foliage Quality" since it affects both grass and trees now
  
• Added a "High" option to the "Terrain LOD Quality" setting. It's closer to "Ultra" than to "Normal" regarding the quality
  
• Improved graphics of "Light Shaft Quality" on "Low" and "Mid" settings
  
• Increased the default smooth turn speed, and also increased the maximum speed you can set smooth turning to
  
• Reduced brightness of sun shadows
  
• Reduced the nighttime cricket volume by 50%
  
• Fixed the floating recipe paper sound not quite being as "positional/3D" as it should be
  
• Reduced the default music volume (from 50% to 35% on the slider in the settings)
  
• Slightly increased the footstep sounds volume
  
• All block textures in the game are now loaded at runtime, in theory allowing for texture packs to easily be created
  
• Improved the perceived texture resolution of the furnace, bucket, stone pickaxe, and light tree
  
• Significantly optimized the performance of crafting large recipes like the furnace
  
• Made transition between outside sounds on/off much smoother when entering/leaving an enclosed space
  
• Optimized the performance of the button mapping view
  
• Optimized the briefcase UI performance
  
• Optimized CPU performance when having many objects placed in the level that can be dragged around with both hands
  
• Major performance optimizations to quickly mining a lot of blocks, primarily when using area damage tools (sledgehammers and iron shovel)
  
• Significant RAM usage reduction related to custom blocks, resulting in multiple GBs less RAM usage now if you have a lot of custom blocks installed
  
• Optimized the size of the WorldMetadata.important files in the save data, they're less than half the size now for large worlds
  
• Optimizations to chunk saving and unloading
  
• Optimized RAM usage while quickly walking around in the world
  
• Optimized the chunk LOD calculation, resulting in less vertices per LOD chunk
  
• Added a mesh optimization pass that reorders the vertices/triangles of chunks for more efficient rendering on the GPU
  
• Removed "Manual" tab in main menu since there is no reason any more to read the Manual in the main menu
  
• Slightly improved the animation on the logo when starting the game
  
• Improved the wording and positioning of the "You can't modify the world here yet" warning message
  
• Increased the size of the copper and iron shovel, and adjusted the grab rotation
  
• Added three new stats in the "Stats" tab of the settings: "Loaded Chunks", "Memory Used" and "Peak Memory Used"
  
• The manual tab in the briefcase defaults to the "First Steps" page now instead of the "Welcome" page
  
• Improved the loading screen % number, it jumps around less now while going up
  
• Uncategorized custom blocks are now automatically put in one or multiple "Misc" categories
  
• Custom block categories now display a number on them that show how many blocks are inside of that category
  
• Increased accuracy of the VRAM memory calculation for custom blocks in the crafting recipes UI (it was missing 341 kB per block before)
  
• Every custom block category in the crafting recipe list is now limited to at most 50 entries
  
• Added "Briefcase Open" and "Briefcase Close" event dispatchers in the BriefcaseBP (Unreal Engine Modding related)
  
• Fixed deleting or moving a tool out of a radial menu slot while it's active in the hand not removing it out of the hand
  
• Fixed deleting a tool in the inventory while another of the same type is in a radial menu slot making the tool in the radial menu slot become greyed out
  
• Fixed possible performance issue when collecting recipe paper
  
• Fixed "Low" bloom setting looking flickery on shimmerstones
  
• Fixed one grass side texture that looked slightly too dark
  
• Fixed a typo in the "Craft and place a chair" objective text
  
• Fixed "Pause" button for the recipe preview being visible even for custom block recipes
  
• Fixed some chunks staying loaded when they should unload
  
• Fixed deer moving in weird ways when it walks against a rabbit
  
• Fixed the flint stones in front of the furnace being affected by bucket suction
  
• Fixed the "Dual Wield Something" achievements and objectives not unlocking correctly
  
• Fixed the tool in the left hand not visually teleporting immediately with the player when teleporting
  
• Fixed there sometimes being one or two visible floating trees very far above the world
  
• Fixed a possible crash
  
  

cyubeVR can now finally not just be played in English language! This has been a popular request over the years from many people who are not super fluent in English language. But before the introduction of objectives, it was generally easy enough to understand everything in the game even without understanding much English - after all, you will likely understand what a dirt block is purely from its visuals even if you have no idea what "Dirt" means.

But with Update 54 introducing the objectives as an important feature into the game, that meant the introduction of a lot of text that really should be understood for properly playing through the game. So with that, localization has become way more important than before, and that's why Update 57 now makes it possible to play cyubeVR not just in English, but also in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian and Klingon language! If your Windows installation is set to one of the supported languages, the game will automatically start in that language now. And if you want to manually set the language you play the game in, there is a new language selection in the bottom left corner of the main menu where you can pick any of the supported languages.

It was quite a lot of work to set up the whole game for localization support - it's not just a matter of translating some text, but actually a lot of work is simply making sure that all text is setup in a way that it can actually be translated. For example, the controller button mapping view in the lower half of the briefcase was an image before, an image containing text - images with text are a big pain for localization since they would require duplicating the image many times in every language, which would unnessesserily increase the size of the game (textures are what makes up most of the game size). So the button mapping view, and many other similarly implemented things in the game, had to be completely re-implemented with this Update as "real" text to be ready for efficient localization.

Since cyubeVR is "Made in Germany", a German localization was of course easy to add and German should be "just as perfect as English" already. For the other languages, it will probably take a bit of tweaking still to get all text in them fully perfect, and if you are a native speaker of French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian or Klingon, then please feel free to post in the Steam Forums or in the cyubeVR Discord about any issue you see with the translations (anything where you think it sounds not quite right in the specific context or could be translated better), and then it can quickly be fixed in the next update to make sure all translations are really perfect in every language :) And two important languages that are still missing are Chinese and Japanese - those are planned to be added with future updates.

I'll be most curious about the feedback from native Klingon speakers of course ;) All the languages the game supports are mentioned on the Steam Store Page now, except for Klingon, which is not mentioned there because the Steam UI does not actually support showing a game supporting Klingon language. I contacted Valve and asked if they could please add Klingon as a selectable language for games to show support for on the Steam Page, but unfortunately they said there are no plans for that. But still, the game supports Klingon! Qapla'!



Until now, cyubeVR always mentioned on the Steam Page that it only supports "Roomscale" or "Standing" Gameplay, but not "Seated". In theory cyubeVR always worked quite well seated, but the one thing that was really always missing for being able to ideally play the game seated was a way to offset your ingame height by an adjustable amount to make it feel like you're standing in the game, even while you're sitting in the real world, so that it doesn't constantly feel like you're way too short in the game.

So Update 57 now adds exactly that!

You can now enable the "Seated Mode" in the "Gameplay" tab of the settings, and if that's enabled, there is a "Seated Mode Offset" slider you can freely adjust to set your virtual height in the game. Also, since reaching the ingame floor will no longer be possible while you have an offset applied, enabling the "Seated Mode" also enables a crouch toggle (right thumbstick south) that let's you toggle between "full height" (including the offset) and "real height" where you can reach the floor.

cyubeVR is certainly still the most immersive when playing it standing with full roomscale movement, but for people who have to or prefer to play seated, it's nice that the option exists now :)



This update adds a lot of optimizations, both for CPU and GPU performance, and for RAM usage! Doing intense sledgehammering of tens of thousands of stones will feel way smoother now for example, and the game uses multiple GBs less RAM if you have a lot of custom blocks installed. And you might remember that if you've crafted a large recipe like the furnace before, there might have been a bit of a negative effect on the framerate from attaching so many blocks together - that's also fixed now and no matter how large the recipe you're crafting, there should be 0 noticeable effect on the framerate!

These optimizations are basically everything that was required for making the game run perfectly on PS5 / PSVR2 without a single framedrop, and this newest version of cyubeVR (Update 57) is scheduled to be released on PSVR2 later this month! And the nice thing about optimizations is really that everyone benefits from optimizations, even if you have the most high-end PC with a 4090 and a 7950X3D.





A big thanks to everyone for supporting the development of cyubeVR on Patreon! I'm working full-time on cyubeVR, and it's often quite hard to make a living purely off the Steam sales of the game, so any Patreon Supporter is really worth a lot for the continued development of the game. Thanks so much to all the Patreon Supporters (list sorted by total lifetime donation, highest first):


ChibiArcher, Arados, Ethernoctis, @B4nH4mm3r on Discord, Quill, Lucanes, Lynx, SkgBlaze, Trevor Berninger, Bhima, Plantmaster, Altair, ErrorNull, Sceptrex, Albertbz, KroyVR, Tom Hörberg, David R., Al Raw, David O, Saltshine, Eti the Spirit, Shanya / Sabrina, MightyDuck, VenturePopTV, DiamondHunter_, HeyMika, WillyVR, gunair, Austin Flores, TallOnTwo, Tiddlez, Michael Ballard, Yasha, M1kk3l, wherr, Talsma, WarChi1d, Alphie, Jackerino, Dark Slaughter, Curzek, Lucas van Leiden, mazzawoollza, RelativelyQuantum, Volpe, Netshaman, __mt, Dave Pearson, Bucket Codes, Lordoldmanrets, Daniel Crawford, texhnobees, Saul2000, TinyMrMan (MB), Solid Hernando, AnubisXtreme, Adrian Sawn, joerkig, MurphChops, Connor A, Algiz, nqeron, SingingFluffyUK, TNMPlayer


Patreon rewards are being mentioned in the list of Patreon supporters in the main menu, getting a special colored name in the official cyubeVR discord, and physical items like a sticker, mug, or T-Shirt with cyubeVR designs.





Recently, one new custom block was added to the cyubeVR Steam Workshop!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068085926&searchtext=

You can install it with a single button click. Make sure to regularly browse through the Steam Workshop and subscribe to anything you find useful for building in cyubeVR, or easily create your own custom blocks!

And it's also super easy to create your own custom blocks! Did you know there is a super easy to use GUI tool now for creating cyubeVR custom blocks? Everything you need to know about how to create custom blocks you can find here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/619500/discussions/3/1640917625019543783/

And if you want to create more sophisticated mods for the game, that's possible too! Check out this page that explains all the different types of modding possible with cyubeVR: https://github.com/cyubeVR-Modding



As usual, thanks very much to our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord who tested this update as part of 44 separate beta builds! If you want to test new features earlier when they come out in the beta branch, make sure to join the discord and take a look at the #beta-build-patch-notes and #beta-build-discussion channel!

That's all for today! If you like the game, don't forget to tell other people about it and write a review on Steam if you haven't done that already, even if it's simply "good game". Writing a positive review is the easiest way you can support the game because indie devs like me are very dependent on the Steam Algorithm recommending the game to new people to be able to afford to keep working on it!

Thanks for caring about the game and as usual, make sure to report all issues you see and give me as much feedback as possible in the official forums or the official discord server, join it before its full ;) We're over 3800 people there already, come and join us! If you don't like something about the game, please tell me there and I'll try to improve it! I'm available to chat with anyone in Discord :)

There's also the official cyubeVR subreddit on Reddit, if you're active on Reddit, make sure to subscribe to it and maybe post some great screenshots there!

You can also follow cyubeVR on X/Twitter or follow cyubeVR on Bluesky (a new Twitter alternative).

And lastly, don't forget there's an official roadmap with voting features.

Looking forward to hearing what you think about the new update :)

Cheers!

Santa flew over your world, and a bunch of Christmas presents fell off his sleigh! Now there's Christmas presents scattered all across your world, and no one will be there to pick them up, unless you find them!

Until December 31, you can find Christmas presents in your cyubeVR world!



Inside of the christmas presents you find items - could be gold, could be rainbow dye, but might also just be normal dye or some coal.

Someone also managed to hide some presents in some of your chests - you have no idea who would do that, but they are there, and you're happy about that!



Let me also use this opportunity to thank you all for being a great community! Thank you to everyone who supported development of cyubeVR in any way this year - that's everyone who bought and played it, or streamed it, or made videos of it, or gave feedback in the Discord, or tested beta builds, or did any modding like creating custom mod blocks, or told other people about it, or wrote a review on Steam, or supported it through Patreon!

Let's mention all the awesome Patreon supporters here too (list sorted by total lifetime donation, highest first):

ChibiArcher, Arados, Ethernoctis, @B4nH4mm3r on Discord, Quill, Lucanes, Lynx, SkgBlaze, ErrorNull, Trevor Berninger, Sceptrex, Bhima, Plantmaster, Altair, KroyVR, Tom Hörberg, Albertbz, David R., Al Raw, David O, Eti the Spirit, Shanya / Sabrina, Saltshine, MightyDuck, VenturePopTV, WillyVR, DiamondHunter_, HeyMika, Austin Flores, gunair, TallOnTwo, Tiddlez, Michael Ballard, M1kk3l, Yasha, WarChi1d, Alphie, Jackerino, Talsma, wherr, Dark Slaughter, Curzek, Lucas van Leiden, mazzawoollza, RelativelyQuantum, Netshaman, Volpe, Dave Pearson, __mt, Bucket Codes, Lordoldmanrets, Daniel Crawford, texhnobees, Saul2000, TinyMrMan (MB), AnubisXtreme, Adrian Sawn, joerkig, MurphChops, Connor A, Solid Hernando, Algiz, nqeron, SingingFluffyUK



Here are two cool screenshots of builds from the cyubeVR community that make sense to showcase here today:

Christmas Tree | Built by: ChibiArcher

A Winter Scene | Built by: Sceptrex



That's all for today, and probably also this year! If you like the game, don't forget to tell other people about it and write a review on Steam if you haven't done that already, even if its just a few words. That's one of the the best christmas presents you can give me :)
Thanks for caring about the game and as usual, make sure to report all issues you see and give me as much feedback as possible in the official forums or the official discord server, join it before its full ;) We're over 3700 people there already, come and join us! If you don't like something about the game, tell me there and I'll try to improve it! I'm available to chat with anyone in discord :)

There's also a cyubeVR subreddit available on Reddit, if you're active on Reddit, make sure to subscribe to it and maybe post some great screenshots there!

Also, don't forget there's an official roadmap with voting features.

Cheers and Merry Christmas!

Hey everyone, Update 56 for cyubeVR is live!

This update adds significant VRAM optimizations (over 2 GB less VRAM usage!), RAM optimizations, significant GPU performance optimizations, a much better looking dark tree, new fancy shadows for trees, improved sky colors and a generally much improved sky, plus many more improvements, optimizations and bugfixes!

Let's first take a look at the long list of changes, and after that, let's get into more detail for the biggest changes! Btw, are you in the official cyubeVR Discord yet?

• Significantly optimized the VRAM usage of the game, it now needs over 2 GB less VRAM!
  
• Replaced the dark tree model with a better looking one
  
• Added "voxel shadows" below trees, making the area below trees darker, without any performance impact
  
• Significantly changed the color of the sky, it's now way more blue during daytime
  
• Changed the color of light shafts from the sun, they are now less blue and a bit less strong
  
• Significantly optimized RAM usage of the near-infinite view distance system. On large view distances, the game needs many GBs less RAM now
  
• When launching the game, there now is a "Stonebrick Studios" logo first before you enter the main menu
  
• Added new SSAO setting in the "Visuals" tab of the settings
  
• Improved visuals of the tree trunks near the ground, they fade to a dark green at the bottom now, so the transition from grass to tree looks much smoother
  
• When using LIV mixed reality, the hands are now invisible in the LIV view
  
• Significant GPU performance optimizations, especially during night
  
• Optimized the speed of loading the existing view distance when loading a world, it's significantly faster now
  
• Significantly optimized GPU performance of foliage
  
• Improved visuals of the sky, clouds look more interesting and more detailed now.
  
• Improved foliage LOD transitions, they are less noticeable now
  
• VoxelAPI mods like cyubePainter can now correctly remove grass and flowers
  
• The strength of the snow on grass/flowers now matches the strength of the snow on ground around them much better, making it look much more correct
  
• CPU performance optimization for tree spawning
  
• Modified the furnace recipe video, it now zooms into the center to make it easier to see that there is a gap there
  
• Until the player has opened the briefcase at least once, there is now a floating hint text above the left hand that explains how to open the briefcase
  
• Slightly improved the grip position of the hand on the stick
  
• When selecting a torch in the hand, the preview on the hand is now translucent instead of opaque, to make it more clear that it's just a preview for placing it
  
• Fixed rainbow flowers not being visible
  
• Adjusted texture streaming settings, it should no longer happen now that the bucket texture often looks blurry for half a second after enabling the bucket
  
• Added a voice saying "Objective Completed" when succeeding an objective
  
• After the "green arrow" animation finished playing in the objective UI on the currently succeeded objective, it now automatically moves forward one page to display the new objective
  
• When starting a new world, the first objective visible is now the first "real" objective (Radial Menu) and not the always-succeeded objective to open the briefcase
  
• The "Objectives" button in the briefcase UI is now called "Interactive Tutorial" until the first 20 objectives are done, to make it more clear to a new player that it makes sense to pay attention to it at the beginning of the game
  
• Added new screenshots to community screenshot showcase in the main menu
  
• Adjusted the text for the "Recolor torch" objective to explain how a torch can be recolored
  
• Crafting a copper axe and copper shovel will also unlock the objective for stone axe and stone shovel now
  
• Crafting an iron shovel will also unlock the objective for the stone shovel now
  
• Fixed that the chunk mesh optimization code was disabled
  
• Optimized the general save file format, slightly reducing sizes
  
• At the bottom of the crafting recipe list, the game now tells you how much VRAM in total all the custom blocks use
  
• Fixed block items sometimes incorrectly teleporting up while mining something like coal
  
• Fixed that it was possible that when dying, and then respawning far away, the "dead body inventory" was not being saved
  
• Decreased maximum burn time for all non-fuel block items (e.g. copper) from 25 minutes to 2.5 minutes
  
• When it snows, the ambient sounds during day (birds, wind) are now only 5% the regular volume
  
• Updated C++ compiler to latest version
  
• Small improvement of aurora visuals
  
• Slightly reduced the brightness of the grass side texture
  
• After dying, the red "Respawning..." screen now stays active until the chunk around the respawn location is fully loaded
  
• Fixed that dropping a ghost item from a radial menu slot onto a tool in a regular inventory slot created a ghost tool in the radial menu slot
  
• Fixed that trees would often disappear incorrectly after cutting down more than ~4 trees
  
• Fixed that it's possible to walk into/through the furnace and trees, both with smooth locomotion and teleport
  
• Fixed that trees would sometimes stay on the lowest LOD for way too long when using very high view distances
  
• Fixed crash when teleporting far away while standing close to a cactus
  
• Fixed there being an incorrectly rendered grass below every floating recipe paper
  
• Fixed recipe paper instantly disappearing when releasing it immediately after grabbing it
  
• Fixed a possible crash when unloading a tree before it has become visible
  
• Fixed that it was possible to stick an axe backwards into a tree
  
• Fixed typo in objective (if -> is)
  
• Fixed the main menu background sometimes looking too low res
  
• Fixed that the "Torch Flickering" setting did not have any effect on block items
  
• Some other small CPU and GPU optimizations
  
• Fixed a possible crash
  
  

This is a big optimization!

This is especially impactful because most players use a GPU with 8 GB VRAM and play the game on a Quest 2. Actually, Windows itself often uses ~2 GB VRAM and the Quest 2 requires much more VRAM than using a native SteamVR headset, due to requiring two compositors running at the same time (Oculus + SteamVR) which combined also easily use ~2 GB VRAM for themselves.
So that often just leaves ~4 GB that is left to be used by a game then, which means a 2 GB reduction in how much VRAM the game needs is a major improvement for many players!

The VRAM improvements are also almost independent of the ingame settings, even on the lowest possible settings the game will now use almost 2 GB less VRAM than before, without looking any worse.

Additionally, this update also significantly optimizes the RAM usage of the near-infinite view distance system. On large view distances (100 chunks or more), the game needs many GBs less RAM now!

Those VRAM and RAM improvements together look like this in the case of running the game at high settings (All settings mostly at Max, View Distance 100, Terrain Quality "Ultra"), in a large world, comparing the RAM and VRAM usage between Update 55 and Update 56:

VRAM: 8.6 GB -> 6.2 GB
RAM: 14.2 GB -> 12.6 GB



This update significantly improves the visuals of the sky in multiple different ways.

First, it significantly changes the color of the sky, making it way more blue during daytime. You might think "just a color change?", but it's actually a really major difference to the "average color" you see in the game, since the sky often fills half your view! This change makes the whole game generally feel a bit more happy and uplifting.

Here you can see a Before / After comparison of the sky color:

Before:



After:



The detail of the clouds has also been much improved with this update: Before, the sky often looked a bit boring and blurry, but now, the clouds look way more detailed (not visible on the screenshots above, they both already have the better details active).



The dark tree in the game has been replaced with a completely new, much more detailed model - the previous dark tree didn't quite fulfill the "everything should be super 8K" requirements any more that cyubeVR puts on all it's visuals ;) I think the old dark tree, which has been added to the game in 2016, really would have won the award for the most ugly object in the whole game, so it absolutely was time to replace it with a tree that looks like a proper 2023 high-resolution tree!

Here is a Before / After comparison of the old and new tree:

Update 55 Dark Tree:



Update 56 Dark Tree:



And here's one more Before / After comparison, from a bit further away from the tree:

Update 55 Dark Tree:



Update 56 Dark Tree:



And even though this new tree is way more detailed than the old one, it's actually faster to render than the old one as well! So it's a win-win in every possible way :)

There also is a technical reason for this change: The old tree heavily relied on tessellation to look acceptable, and Unreal Engine 5 actually removes the support for tessellation. So relying on tessellation for visuals is no longer an option once cyubeVR will be updated to Unreal Engine 5, so it's good to start now already with making sure everything looks great with no tessellation.



This update adds "voxel shadows" below trees, making the area below trees darker. These shadows are "free" on the GPU since they are calculated on the CPU as part of the chunk update, so they significantly improve the visuals of the game without requiring any more GPU performance! And the CPU-side is so well optimized that the time it takes to calculate them is completely insignficant.

Here you can see a before/after comparison of how the game looked like before, and how it looks like now with the new shadows!

Before:



After:



Independently from the new shadows, the grounding of the trees has also been improved by fading them to the grass color near the ground, which is also visible on the screenshots above already, but here's a comparison where the new shadows are active in both cases and only the improved grounding is compared to better illustrate that (Thanks Mika for making this GIF):





There generally are many GPU performance optimizations in this update, so you should see cyubeVR run as smoothly and nicely as never before, while also looking better than ever :)

Currently, there is a big focus on optimizations because optimizations are also very beneficial for cyubeVR to run ideally on PSVR2, which will be a great platform for the game: It's the first time that a non-PC platform exists that supports VR and can actually run a very beautiful game like cyubeVR. And cyubeVR should be one of the best looking VR games on PSVR2 as well, just like it is on PC, so it's important that it's as optimized as possible so that the graphics can be set as high as possible!

Of course, PC's with RTX 4090s are still far superior in the performance and visuals they can reach, but not everyone wants to buy such overpriced GPUs, so for many players, the PSVR2 will likely be an ideal platform to play cyubeVR on. A PSVR2 release is planned to happen in 2023! After the PSVR2 release is done, the focus of development will shift from optimizations to more gameplay-oriented features again then.

But here's an interesting statistic that shows that adding more optimizations will always remain important on PC as well: Even now, in the years 2023, over 5.5 years after cyubeVR originally was released on Steam, while the min specs for running the game never significantly increased in all those years, the most often picked reason why people refund cyubeVR on Steam, even if it's overall just a small percentage, is still... that their PC can't run the game with good enough performance. So, let's see how much this big optimization update helps to improve that statistic :)



These new screenshots of very cool builds have been added to the community screenshot showcase in the main menu of the game:

Observation Tower | Built by: ChibiArcher



Church | Built by: ChibiArcher



Pixel Art | Built by: ChibiArcher



Village | Built by: Backofen



Castle Area | Built by: Talsma & Community World







Today is not just the release of Update 56, but also the release of a new video on the official Stonebrick Studios YouTube channel! A video showcasing the amazing reactions from streamers playing cyubeVR. Here's a separate announcement post about the video:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/619500/view/3650784879032982145





A big thanks to everyone for supporting the development of cyubeVR on Patreon! I'm working full-time on cyubeVR, and it's often quite hard to make a living purely off the Steam sales of the game, so any Patreon Supporter is really worth a lot for the continued development of the game. Thanks so much to all the Patreon Supporters (list sorted by total lifetime donation, highest first):


ChibiArcher, Arados, Ethernoctis, @B4nH4mm3r on Discord, Quill, SkgBlaze, Lucanes, ErrorNull, Lynx, Sceptrex, Trevor Berninger, Tom Hörberg, KroyVR, Bhima, Plantmaster, Altair, Al Raw, David R., David O, Albertbz, Eti the Spirit, Shanya / Sabrina, MightyDuck, Saltshine, WillyVR, VenturePopTV, Austin Flores, DiamondHunter_, HeyMika, TallOnTwo, Tiddlez, gunair, Michael Ballard, M1kk3l, WarChi1d, Alphie, Jackerino, Dark Slaughter, Yasha, Talsma, Curzek, Lucas van Leiden, mazzawoollza, wherr, RelativelyQuantum, Netshaman, Dave Pearson, Bucket Codes, Lordoldmanrets, Volpe, Daniel Crawford, texhnobees, TinyMrMan (MB), __mt, AnubisXtreme, Adrian Sawn, Saul2000, joerkig, MurphChops, Connor A, Algiz, nqeron, Solid Hernando, SingingFluffyUK


Patreon rewards are being mentioned in the list of Patreon supporters in the main menu, getting a special colored name in the official cyubeVR discord, and physical items like a sticker, mug, or T-Shirt with cyubeVR designs.





Recently, new awesome custom blocks were added to the cyubeVR Steam Workshop! Let's mention some of them here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3015633395&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3015077341&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3013610902&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3013610829&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3013604365&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3009047028&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3009040733&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3009038785&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3009036682&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007118234&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007118070&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006324119&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2990638872&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2990638751&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2968569369&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2959194547&searchtext=

Great new blocks! You can install every one of them with a single button click, and immediately use them for building in the game. Make sure to regularly browse through the Steam Workshop and subscribe to anything you find useful for building in cyubeVR, or easily create your own custom blocks!

And it's also super easy to create your own custom blocks! Did you know there is a super easy to use GUI tool now for creating cyubeVR custom blocks? Everything you need to know about how to create custom blocks you can find here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/619500/discussions/3/1640917625019543783/


And if you want to create more sophisticated mods for the game, that's possible too! Check out this page that explains all the different types of modding possible with cyubeVR: https://github.com/cyubeVR-Modding



As usual, thanks very much to our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord who tested this update as part of 25 separate beta builds! If you want to test new features earlier when they come out in the beta branch, make sure to join the discord and take a look at the #beta-build-patch-notes and #beta-build-discussion channel!

That's all for today! If you like the game, don't forget to tell other people about it and write a review on Steam if you haven't done that already, even if it's simply "good game". Writing a positive review is the easiest way you can support the game because indie devs like me are very dependent on the Steam Algorithm recommending the game to new people to be able to afford to keep working on it!

Thanks for caring about the game and as usual, make sure to report all issues you see and give me as much feedback as possible in the official forums or the official discord server, join it before its full ;) We're over 3800 people there already, come and join us! If you don't like something about the game, please tell me there and I'll try to improve it! I'm available to chat with anyone in Discord :)

There's also the official cyubeVR subreddit on Reddit, if you're active on Reddit, make sure to subscribe to it and maybe post some great screenshots there!

You can also follow cyubeVR on X/Twitter or follow cyubeVR on Bluesky (a new Twitter alternative).

And lastly, don't forget there's an official roadmap with voting features.

Looking forward to hearing what you think about the new update :)

Cheers!

Hey everyone!

Today is a great day! Update 56 for cyubeVR will be released in exactly 1 hour from now, but there's not just a new update coming out today, there are two cool things released today! First, there's a really cool new video that was just released on the official Stonebrick Studios YouTube channel.

It ever warms the heart to see streamers find solace and joy in the wondrous worlds of cyubeVR. So let us take a moment to marvel at some of their amazing sincere and awe-stirring first reactions to playing the game! Watch the new video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfjhzuPVWDI

Thank you very much everyone for enjoying the game so much!

And now see you in the next announcement post 1 hour from now that will be all about the awesome new Update 56 :)

Cheers!

Hey everyone, Update 55 for cyubeVR is live!

This update adds completely new, realistic graphics for the grass and flowers with a whole new system for efficiently rendering them, significant reductions in save file size reducing the required disk space to 1/4 of what it was before, plus many many more improvements, optimizations and bugfixes!

Let's first take a look at the long list of changes, and after that, let's get into more detail for the biggest changes! Btw, are you in the official cyubeVR discord yet?

• Completely new realistic graphics for the grass and flowers and completely new system for rendering them
  
• Significantly optimized the save file format of the game, it's now only 1/4 the size as before
  
• Added an optional, much stronger compression algorithm for the WorldData_InstaLoad files, reducing them to 1/4 of their regular size
  
• When you launch the game, there's now a voice saying "Welcome to cyubeVR!". Finally everyone will know how to pronounce cyubeVR ;)
  
• Improved the LOD distances and LOD visuals for trees. LOD transitions of the trees are now significantly less noticeable.
  
• The floating recipe papers in the world now rotate, making them easier to see from different angles
  
• Grabbing recipe papers now looks better. The hands now have a specific pose for grabbing them.
  
• Added a day counter to the "Stats" tab of the settings, showing you how many in-game days have passed in this world since you started playing in it
  
• Updated the Unreal Engine version from 4.27 to 4.27+
  
• Updated the LIV plugin to the latest version
  
• Added a "Gravity Gloves" objective. It's an early objective, before crafting the stone axe
  
• When opening the briefcase for the first time, the default selected tab is now the "Objectives" tab
  
• Free torches are now also affected by the suction of the vacuum bucket
  
• Fixed that crystals, dye, or any other block items could sometimes fall through the world when dropping them with too much speed
  
• Optimized CPU performance of picture frame custom image loading
  
• Optimized CPU performance of chest spawning and despawning
  
• Updated the "Greetings" text in the main menu to no longer recommend to "read through the tutorial", and instead recommend checking out the objectives
  
• The DLSS setting now has the options "Disabled", "Performance" and "Quality"
  
• The "Ultra" option on the "Shadow Quality" setting has been renamed from "Ultra" to "RTX 3090"
  
• Renamed the old "Tutorial" everywhere to "Manual", since the objectives are now supposed to be the interactive tutorial into the game
  
• Fixed Shimmerstone and Starstone not showing any "need better tool" message when trying to mine it with a Stone Pickaxe
  
• Added a hint text when putting a crystal on the head as a mining light, explaining the feature
  
• Fixed the "Cloak a torch" objective only unlocking when cloaking a regular torch and not a colored torch
  
• Fixed that trying to cloak a cloaktorch turned it into bottom stone
  
• Deer now dissolve a few seconds after their touchdown
  
• Added a mention in the respawn torch objective text that respawn torches can also be crafted later
  
• Added a hint text when adding more than 25 items into the upper chamber of the furnace, explaining that any amount over 20 is wasted
  
• Made it so that crafting a copper pickaxe also unlocks the objective for crafting a stone pickaxe now
  
• Crafting two copper pickaxes now also unlocks the objective for crafting two stone pickaxes
  
• Slightly reduced the default music volume
  
• Destroying a cactus now makes the cactus drop green dye
  
• When you overwrite the stick slot or the bow slot for the first time in the inventory, there now appears a hint text explaining that the bow and stick are always available
  
• Improved the moon circle cutout to be less noticeable
  
• Fixed Razer Cortex warning "Continue" button not working
  
• Added code for automatically calculating if it's currently easter. Previously, the easter date was hardcoded
  
• Adjusted the date at which easter eggs spawn: Instead of only between Easter Sunday and Easter Tuesday, it's now between Maundy Thursday and Easter Tuesday
  
• Added new "Dynamic Resolution" setting, allowing to completely disable the dynamic resolution. Only visible if the "Expert Settings" are enabled
  
• Changed the text of the first objective to make it more clear that especially at the beginning the objectives are supposed to serve as an interactive tutorial
  
• A handheld torch now also illuminates grass and flowers correctly
  
• Updated the text on the "Welcome" manual page and replaced the three "First Steps in the Game" manual pages with a single page that just mentions doing the objectives
  
• Being on an unloaded chunk now no longer counts as being "inside of a block" with the fade to green and teleport back to the last free location happening
  
• Fixed the April 1st feature of the game even happening when the deer were dead already, and made it a bit quieter
  
• Added a hint text that comes up when hitting the flint stones against each other with too little speed, explaining to use more speed
  
• Made it possible to grab the flint stones from the furnace with gravity gloves. No more bending down, yay!
  
• Added a "Hint Texts" setting that makes it possible to disable hint texts. VoxelAPI hint texts and the "No free space in inventory" hint are excluded. Only visible if the "Expert Settings" are enabled
  
• Desert grass is now also affected by hand-held torch light
  
• Slightly improved the texture quality of the desert grass
  
• Fixed multiple crashes that could happen when using mods like cyubeGate to teleport very far
  
• Fixed a possible crash
  
• Multiple small CPU performance optimizations
  
  

There is a new setting in the game now: "Ground Foliage Quality". It offers the options "Basic", "High" and "RTX 4090". If you choose the "Basic" option, the grass and flowers use the old graphics, and do not require any more performance than before - but if you use at least the "High" option, you get the much better looking new grass and flowers, featuring fully realistic looking high-poly photogrammetry meshes with every individual blade of grass being actual real geometry, and an overall higher density of grass in the world!

The better graphics do need slightly more performance, but it's actually only a relatively minor difference, anyone with at least a RTX 2060 or so should enable the much nicer foliage!

Here are some more screenshots of the new grass and flowers:



The new grass and flowers is not just a visual change, it also involves a lot of new code, to make grass and flowers in this quality possible the game needed a whole different foliage rendering system. Before this, grass and flowers were considered "Blocks", while now they are considered "Trees". So they use a totally different rendering system now, which has many advantages (and the disadvantage that it's a lot more complex, so it was a lot of work to implement).

One of the advantages of the new system is that grass and flowers should now work out of the box with Nanite once cyubeVR will be updated Unreal Engine 5 in a future update (yes, that's definitely planned!). With the old system, Nanite support would not have been possible, as Nanite does not support any procedural geometry, so "Blocks" cannot be Nanite. But "Trees" can be!



This Update significantly optimizes the regular save file format (The "WorldData" folder). It's now only 1/4 the size as before! This has no downsides, it's simply always more efficient now due to optimizations in the way the data is stored. It's still using the same compression algorithm as always, so it's not in any way slower.

Additionally, there's now an optional, much stronger compression algorithm for the "WorldData_InstaLoad" files, which is where the game stores the data for the near-infinite view distance system, reducing them to 1/4 of their regular size at the cost of world generation taking twice as long. This is useful if you are low on disk space, want to have a very large cyubeVR world, and have a good CPU where world generation speed isn't an issue. Or when you have a world like the "Round Robin Community World" that cyubeVR players in the cyubeVR Discord are playing in (basically asynchronous turn-based multiplayer) where no new world generation is being done anyways and where size matters because it's something people regularly need to download. This new optional stronger compression algorithm is a a per-world option that is disabled by default and can be enabled in a Config.ini file in the world folder.





It's this time of the year again! Every year at this time, there's a special seasonal event going on in your cyubeVR world: The easter bunnies visited your cyubeVR world and hid easter eggs everywhere outside in your world that you can search for now! Some of the easter bunnies even hid easter eggs in some of your chests. And some of the easter bunnies them kept their easter eggs for themselves and will only give them to you once you grab and lift them up in the game!

The easter eggs have been further improved this year, they can can now be collected very nicely with gravity gloves, collecting them is easier, and they contain a bigger variety of items, including the new Starstone, Shimmertiles and Cloaknuggets that were added with the recent Update 53! So make sure to go on a hunt for easter eggs in your cyubeVR world. This special event is active between Maundy Thurday and Easter Tuesday!

Oh, and you might also find some rare colored easter bunnies riding on the back of deer ;)





A big thanks to everyone for supporting the development of cyubeVR on Patreon! I'm working full-time on cyubeVR, and it's often quite hard to make a living purely off the Steam sales of the game, so any Patreon Supporter is really worth a lot for the continued development of the game. Thanks so much to all the Patreon Supporters (list sorted by total lifetime donation, highest first):


ChibiArcher, Arados, Ethernoctis, @B4nH4mm3r on Discord, Quill, SkgBlaze, ErrorNull, Sceptrex, Trevor Berninger, Lucanes, Tom Hörberg, Lynx, Al Raw, KroyVR, David O, Bhima, Plantmaster, Altair, Eti the Spirit, Shanya / Sabrina, MightyDuck, David R., WillyVR, Austin Flores, TallOnTwo, Tiddlez, Saltshine, DiamondHunter_, HeyMika, Albertbz, Michael Ballard, VenturePopTV, M1kk3l, gunair, WarChi1d, Alphie, Jackerino, Dark Slaughter, Curzek, Lucas van Leiden, mazzawoollza, RelativelyQuantum, Netshaman, Talsma, Dave Pearson, Bucket Codes, Lordoldmanrets, Yasha, Daniel Crawford, texhnobees, TinyMrMan (MB), AnubisXtreme, Adrian Sawn, joerkig, MurphChops, Connor A, wherr, Algiz, Volpe, nqeron, Saul2000, __mt, SingingFluffyUK, Solid Hernando


Patreon rewards are being mentioned in the list of Patreon supporters in the main menu, getting a special colored name in the official cyubeVR discord, and physical items like a sticker, mug, or T-Shirt with cyubeVR designs.





Recently, two new mods were added to the workshop! Let's mention them here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2949188791&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2926121820&searchtext=

If it looks interesting to you, just install it with one click from the Steam Workshop. cyubeVR is highly moddable. If you're interested in creating your own mods for cyubeVR, take a look at this high level modding overview:
https://github.com/cyubeVR-Modding/.github/blob/main/profile/README.md#cyubevr-modding-overview



New custom blocks were added to the workshop too! Let's mention some of them here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908059608&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908029747&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908029681&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908029123&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908028541&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908028154&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908027674&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908027581&searchtext=

Great new blocks! You can install every one of them with a single button click, and immediately use them for building in the game. Make sure to regularly browse through the Steam Workshop and subscribe to anything you find useful for building in cyubeVR, or easily create your own custom blocks!



As usual, thanks very much to our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord who tested this update as part of 24 separate beta builds! If you want to test new features earlier when they come out in the beta branch, make sure to join the discord and take a look at the #beta-build-patch-notes and #beta-build-discussion channel!

That's all for today! If you like the game, don't forget to tell other people about it and write a review on Steam if you haven't done that already, even if it's simply "good game". Writing a positive review is the easiest way you can support the game because indie devs like me are very dependent on the Steam Algorithm recommending the game to new people to be able to afford to keep working on it!

Thanks for caring about the game and as usual, make sure to report all issues you see and give me as much feedback as possible in the official forums or the official discord server, join it before its full ;) We're over 3800 people there already, come and join us! If you don't like something about the game, please tell me there and I'll try to improve it! I'm available to chat with anyone in Discord :)

There's also the official cyubeVR subreddit on Reddit, if you're active on Reddit, make sure to subscribe to it and maybe post some great screenshots there!

You can also follow cyubeVR on Twitter.

And lastly, don't forget there's an official roadmap with voting features.

Looking forward to hearing what you think about the new update :)

Happy Easter! Cheers!