Hey everyone, Update 51 for cyubeVR is live!This update adds super powerful new modding capabilities like a native modding API and native support for UE4 mods, including Steam Workshop support, categories for custom blocks, an update to the latest Unreal Engine 4 version, a really cool craftable smoothbrain statue in honor of habie147, much improved performance with LIV, and many other significant improvements, like being able to grab rabbits and geckos with gravity gloves!
Let's take a look at the long list of changes first, and after that, let's get into more detail for the biggest changes!
- Awesome new modding feature: Added native UE4 blueprint modding support
- Awesome new modding feature: Added a native modding API, the VoxelAPI
- Awesome new modding feature: Added Steam Workshop support for both new types of mods
- Awesome new modding feature: Added categories for custom blocks
- Awesome new modding feature: Added ability for mods to show their own tutorials in the list of tutorials in the game
- Added an awesome smoothbrain statue that can be crafted, in honor of habie147 (see below for more details!)
- Updated Engine to the latest UE4 version (4.27)
- Gravity gloves now work on rabbits and geckos. It's an amazing feature.
- Updated the LIV plugin to the newest version, hugely improving performance of LIV
- Improved gravity gloves, they now always prefer objects in line of sight over those out of sight
- Some improvements to the "Manage Mods" menu
- The crafting type indicator on the bucket now also works with custom blocks
- Added some light haptic feedback that indicates when you can drop an item behind the shoulder
- Updated DLSS plugin to latest version
- Switched to using Clang instead of MSVC as the C++ compiler for the whole game
- Updated SQLite library to latest version
- Added a new graphics setting: "Placed Torch Brightness"
- Tools now no longer pass through animals
- Added three new possible options to the Properties.json for custom blocks
- Added ability to make a custom block that can't be crafted
- Added new SimilarTo value 4 for custom blocks
- Adjusted the "Terrain LOD Quality" setting, the old "Ultra" is the new "Normal", and the old "Normal" is the new "Low".
- Improved sharpness of block textures
- Small GPU performance optimization
- Added the ability to make the game crash by pressing Shift+Ctrl+Win+Alt+C
- Made the sound effect when dropping an item into a chest audible from a bit further away
- Added version number to the top left of the briefcase
- Slightly improved the lighting on the dandelion seeds in the air
- Improved wording on the "Crafting" tutorial page
- Slightly increased outline size on font on the main 4 briefcase buttons
- Fixed movement of animals not always working correctly
- Fixed crash when dying before walking around enough in the world
- Fixed the funny april fools feature in cyubeVR not working
- Fixed main menu buttons not always being guaranteed to all be visible
- Fixed a bug that could in theory have caused a crash
- Fixed a small bug with custom block texture import code that usually wasn't noticeable
- Fixed "You need better tool to mine this" message coming up when trying to destroy bottom stone
- Fixed a possible crash when leaving the world within less than a second of mining a block
- Fixed a possible crash when placing thousands of blocks at once (basically only happening when using the Voxel API)
- Fixed game often crashing when closing it ungracefully
- Fixed bug with weather saving/loading
- Fixed chunks-not-updating bug that could be triggered by VoxelAPI mods
- Fixed dragging out items or tools from radial menu slots or shoulder slots sometimes turning custom blocks in regular inventory slots into invalid blocks
- Fixed it being possible to duplicate an item by dragging it out of a radial menu slot or shoulder slot
- Fixed dirt blocks placed with crystal assisted block placement sometimes turning into grass blocks where they should logically be dirt and not grass
- Fixed "Distance Tree Shadows" setting not always correctly being force-disabled when view distance is over 50
- Fixed glass blocks sometimes staying visible after being destroyed
- Fixed visible delay with spawning trees when generating terrain
- Fixed it being possible to "get stuck" with smooth locomotion and having to teleport to be able to move again
- Fixed multiple crashes
- Some CPU optimizations
Super powerful new modding features!
It's probably fair to say, this is the most game-changing update ever for cyubeVR so far. cyubeVR now supports so much modding that it's possible to turn the game into basically
anything, and a lot of modders have created awesome mods already!
As you probably know, before this Update, cyubeVR supported custom blocks, with custom recipes, that could easily be shared through the Steam Workshop. But that was quite limited "modding" - it did not allow for anything more complex than blocks to be made. And that's hugely changing now with Update 51!
Starting with this Update, cyubeVR now officially supports
all the modding. There is a new native modding API, the
VoxelAPI, for easily interacting with the voxel world through a simple easy-to-use API. Additionally, there is now full native support for
Unreal Engine Blueprint mods that can add basically
anything to the game. That's two completely new, separate ways of modding the game, depending on the type of mod you want to make, and your skills. And of course, there's also Steam Workshop support for these new types of mods, so you can easily install any mod with one single click!
Before we look in more detail at the new types of modding that are supported now, let's start with showing you a list of all the mods that have already been created by modders using the beta build of the game, and are ready to be used by everyone with Update 51 now. It's a really impressive list already!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2821687728&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2819601766&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2819438970&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2824385911&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2819463120&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2822248085&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2824239680&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2824194168&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2819439314&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2824385811&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2819439253&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2819439159&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2819429999&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2819439071&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2824385987&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2824386075&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2824386157&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2819425276&searchtext=
Wow! Update 51 hasn't even been out yet, and so many awesome mods have been created already by modders using the beta build of the game! It's really amazing to see how well the reception of the new modding features has been.
Many of these mods are super powerful, and completely game-changing for players who are interested in those features.
To mention just three examples of how game-changing these mods are:
- It was not possible before in cyubeVR to quickly remove or copy/paste a whole mountain for some giant build you want to do - but now, thanks to the super powerful world editing tools of cyubePainter, being able to do that is just one click on the Steam Workshop away
- For a long time, one of the most requested features in cyubeVR has been adding enemies - that's still planned as a native feature of course, but now in the meantime, thanks to the Enemy Mod, having enemies to fight is also just one click on the Steam Workshop away
- The world in cyubeVR is infinitely big, but if you wanted to have multiple builds 20 km apart from each other, it would take you like an hour of walking ingame to move between them, so few people built anything really far away - now with cyubeGate, you can simply put such a teleport gate between the two locations, and almost instantly move between them. What a difference!
And that's just three of the mods from the list above. Every one of those mods is definitely worth trying out.
The YouTuber
ChibiArcher has been reviewing many of those mods on his channel already in the past few weeks, so if you want to watch how some of those mods work without trying them out yourself,
this "cyubeVR Mod Reviews" YouTube playlist from ChibiArcher is really cool.Installing mods is super easy - the
cyubeVR Steam Workshop now has a list of tags on the right, where you can easily choose between
only seeing custom blocks, or
only seeing mods that aren't just custom blocks.
And of course, if you prefer to not use the Steam Workshop and instead want to manually download a mod from some random place in the internet, that works too, by simply downloading it from any source you want and it extracting it manually into the
[GameInstallDirectory]/cyubeVR/Mods/ModFolders/
folder.
But how does the modding actually work?
Now that we talked about all the cool mods that have been made already, let's get a bit more technical and talk about
what kind of modding features exactly have actually been added to the game now with Update 51?If you want to make your own mods, it's important to understand that there are now three totally separate types of "mods" you can make for cyubeVR, each requiring different skills, and best suited for different types of mods:
Custom BlocksCustom blocks are the simplest type of modding you can do in cyubeVR, and they existed before Update 51 already - creating blocks with custom textures and custom recipes, that can be used the same like any other block in the game. Update 51 added some additional features for custom blocks to give modders more control, but overall, this works the same as before.
Making a custom block is very easy, it requires no programming at all. If you know how to use any image editing software, you can create a custom block! If you are primarily an artist and not a programmer, this is exactly for you!
The guide for how to create custom blocks can be found here.VoxelAPI ModdingStarting with Update 51, cyubeVR now has a native modding API, called the
VoxelAPI. It is an easy-to-use API for interacting with the voxel world in cyubeVR. Placing blocks, removing blocks, teleporting the player to some location, damaging/healing the player, any similar things. With the
VoxelAPI, you can easily create any mod that is "block based". Want to generate custom ores in the ground?
VoxelAPI! Want to procedurally generate a whole castle when the player places one block?
VoxelAPI! Want to create a minigame with blocks that spawn around the player?
VoxelAPI!
To create a
VoxelAPI mod, knowing how to create custom blocks is very useful, most
VoxelAPI mods will also contain one or multiple custom blocks. To create
VoxelAPI mods, you should know at least some programming - which programming language you know isn't too important and importantly, you do not need to know how any game engine works. As long as you know the basic concepts of programming, you will be able to create a
VoxelAPI mod, it's all designed to be very easy to understand.
Here you can find the repository for the VoxelAPI, with a lot of details about how everything works in the Readme.The majority of the mods mentioned above in the list are
VoxelAPI mods:
cyubePainter,
Cloud Walker,
cyubeGate, or the
Creative Menu are examples for
VoxelAPI mods.
One of the super cool things about the
VoxelAPI is that the API is specifically setup so that any existing
VoxelAPI mod will stay compatible with the game
forever, even if the mod is abandoned by the author and never gets updated for newer game versions. Also, due to how the API is setup, a
VoxelAPI mod can't decrease the performance of the game, even if it accidentally calculates 10 trillion digits of PI every second in its code. The
VoxelAPI is a fully stable and backwards-compatible API - API calls will never be removed or change, to ensure every mod always keeps working without any changes from the mod-authors required. It is a native API, so it's the job of the game itself to ensure that every
VoxelAPI mod always keeps working.
Unreal Engine 4 Blueprint ModdingStarting with Update 51, cyubeVR now also natively supports Unreal Engine 4 Blueprint (UE4 BP) Modding. This is the most powerful type of modding supported in cyubeVR. With
UE4 BP Modding, you can create basically
anything that you can make in UE4 and make it work inside of cyubeVR! Want to spawn your own enemies into the game?
UE4 BP Mod! Want to make the deer play a nuclear explosion instead of the normal fireworks when they explode?
UE4 BP Mod! Want to add driveable tanks into cyubeVR?
UE4 BP Mod!
UE4 BP Modding is extremely powerful, but requires you to need to know at least the basics of how to use Unreal Engine 4, the game engine that cyubeVR is made with.
UE4 BP Modding can also be combined with
VoxelAPI modding - for example, you can make a
VoxelAPI Mod spawn a particle effect or a sound effect from a
UE4 BP Mod.
Here you can find a YouTube playlist that explains how to get started with UE4 BP Modding in cyubeVR. Those videos have been created by Buckminsterfullerene, who has actually been the driving force behind adding this type of modding to cyubeVR. I did not even know such native UE4 modding support would be possible before Buckminsterfullerene pointed it out and explained what functionality exactly needs to be added to the game for modders to be able to nicely use this. UE4 BP modding is super powerful, but that also makes it quite complex, and the native support of the game to load mods alone does not do much if the things required for
making such mods in a convenient way are not also setup, like a template project for easily interacting with existing game code and generated headers for figuring out how to call any functions from the game. All these required things for making
UE4 BP Mods have been setup by Buckminsterfullerene for cyubeVR
UE4 BP modding in
this cyubeVR Modding Repo on GitHub, so thanks very much to him for that!
Of the currently existing mods, these three are Unreal Engine 4 Blueprint Mods:
Enemy Mod,
Big Animals,
Timelapse Cameras In contrast to
VoxelAPI mods,
UE4 BP Mods will usually have to be updated by their authors whenever the engine version the game uses is updated - so when cyubeVR will be updated to Unreal Engine 5 in the future,
UE4 BP Mods will need to be updated by their authors to specifically support UE5, otherwise they will stop working.
VoxelAPI mods on the other hand don't care about the engine the game uses - they just automatically keep working forever.
If you have any questions about any of the modding stuff, feel free to ask in the #modding or #voxel-api channel in the
official cyubeVR Discord. It's normal that it might take a while to understand everything about the modding features, and I'm very happy to help anyone who wants to make mods for cyubeVR as much as I can!
A smoothbrain statue in honor of habie147
I am sure many of you still remember
this YouTube video from habie147 about cyubeVR.
Habie made an awesome video about cyubeVR there, and by now that video has over 1 million views on YouTube. Just to put that into perspective: Before Habie's video, the cyubeVR video with the most views on YouTube was the (old) official trailer of the game, uploaded 4.5 years ago. That trailer managed to get 34,000 views in 4.5 years. Habie's video got over 1 million views in less than 8 months!
Even without looking at any numbers, Habie's video was the first time
ever since cyubeVR was released 4.5 years ago, that
any bigger YouTuber actually made a video about cyubeVR that explains in a nicely edited video what cyubeVR is about, with enough depth to understand what exactly makes cyubeVR special. While Habie didn't show many of the late-game features (the furnace mechanics, or the crystal mechanics, or the near-infinite view distance), what matters is, he explained most of the important aspects of what cyubeVR is about in better words, and in a more interesting way, than I could ever do myself.
Such a video simply did not exist before. That's likely because usually, YouTubers prefer to check out new fresh releases of games, which unfortunately excludes games that were released earlier, even if they are still in very active development and constantly getting new features, like cyubeVR.
So the important point is: Habie's video is awesome. I am very grateful to Habie for making that video. His video will forever be the first cyubeVR video to have hit 1 million views on YouTube, and I have heard from multiple active cyubeVR players who have played hundreds of hours of the game by now, that they originally found the game through Habie's video. So there is no doubt that his video brought many new players to the game, who are now active in the awesome cyubeVR community, thanks to Habie making that video.
So I thought it would be very nice and totally rightful to honor that in some way with a nice feature directly in the game - and that's exactly what Update 51 is doing now!
Update 51 adds an amazing craftable smoothbrain statue, in honor of habie147 and his whole community:
The statue is super detailed, as you are used to from everything in cyubeVR: It is sculpted from stone, with awesome 8K textures, and incredible detail of 200,000 triangles for the statue alone (there are of course LODs so that if you are further away, not all those 200k triangles need to be rendered). To build the statue, you will need to find the recipe for it, and then craft it, out of 54 stone items. It's a fun, cheap recipe to build. Everyone has 54 stone!
On the top of the statue, next to the very very smooth brain, there is a slightly hidden, but well readable text engraving that reads "In honor of habie147, creator of the first cyubeVR video to surpass 1 million views". At the bottom of the statue, on each of the 4 sides, there is an additional engraving of the words "Stop it | Get | Some | Help".
And that's not all yet - on the smoothbrain on top of the statue, you can see a (slightly hidden) crystal symbol. If you put a magic crystal into the brain, it starts to glow and play a very pretty animation, looking like what Habie calls an "atomic mirror brain":
It looks awesome! We really put a lot of effort into making this statue as perfect as possible :) As long as the crystal in inside of the smoothbrain, it will keep looking like that "atomic mirror brain". If you want to, you can also remove the crystal again, and then the smoothbrain turns into regular looking stone again.
Like all other decorative objects in the game, the statue can of course be freely resized while placing, so you can place smoothbrain statues of any size in your world - from tiny to huge! And you can also still move a statue around after it is placed, by simply grabbing it with two hands.
I really hope Habie will like this great smoothbrain statue. This was not coordinated with him in any way, it is a surprise for everyone! Not even beta testers of cyubeVR have seen the statue so far - it's one of the only times that a feature was added to cyubeVR without having been in a beta build before. So build it and let me know what you think about it!
New custom block features
As mentioned above, the custom block feature also got significant improvements! Most importantly, custom blocks can now be displayed as part of categories in the crafting recipes UI.
There are so many custom blocks on the Steam Workshop by now (over 300!) that the crafting recipe overview UI has become quite inconvenient to scroll through for anyone who has all of them installed. Categories fix this! The creator of a custom block can now specify a category name. Any blocks sharing that category name will automatically be displayed grouped in the UI. The category can be folded in and out by clicking at it. Way less scrolling needed, and way easier to find the blocks you look for in the UI!
The category has to be specified by the creator of the custom block, so if you have made any blocks that would benefit from being grouped in a category, simply update your blocks by adding the additional field
"CategoryName": "Put Name Here"
in the Properties.json of your blocks.
But that's not the only new property you can add to your custom blocks!
- You can now make indestructible custom blocks
- You can now make custom blocks that do not have a crafting recipe and don't show up in the list of crafting recipes
- You can now make custom blocks that cannot be placed with crystal assisted block placement
- You can now make custom blocks that can't be moved after they have been placed
- You can now make custom blocks that drop a different type when destroyed, for example allowing for your own wood -> processed wood mechanic with your custom block.
These new properties are all explained in the guide about how to make custom blocks for cyubeVR. So if any of those sounds like something you want to use for your custom blocks,
check out the guide here to learn more details! These new properties are most useful when making custom blocks specifically for use in a
VoxelAPI mod.
Thanks very much to all the Patreon supporters!
A big thanks to everyone
for supporting the development of cyubeVR on Patreon! I'm working full-time on cyubeVR, and it's 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, ErrorNull, @B4nH4mm3r on Discord, Tom Hörberg, Arados, SkgBlaze, Al Raw, Shanya / Sabrina, Sceptrex, Quill, WillyVR, David O, KroyVR, Lucanes, Austin Flores, Tiddlez, MightyDuck, David R., Lynx, WarChi1d, Alphie, Eti the Spirit, Jackerino, Dark Slaughter, DiamondHunter_, HeyMika, Trevor Berninger, Ethernoctis, Lucas van Leiden, gunair, mazzawoollza, Netshaman, Curzek, Saltshine, Bhima, Plantmaster, Altair, Bucket Codes, Lordoldmanrets, Dave Pearson, VenturePopTV, Daniel Crawford, texhnobees, TinyMrMan (MB), Adrian Sawn, joerkig, Connor A, Algiz, MurphChops, Talsma, Yasha, 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.
More awesome new custom blocks
Recently, more new custom blocks were added to the workshop! Let's mention some of them here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2779664180&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2790409786&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2790410231&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2790453788&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2790453913&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2790453976&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2790560284&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2794047562&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2794047612&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2794047816&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2776754847&searchtext=
A whole collection of colored fabric blocks:
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2797036108
A whole collection of blocks for creating a baseball diamond:
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2785591572
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!
If you're interested now in creating your own custom blocks for cyubeVR, here you can find a tutorial about how to create custom blocks for cyubeVR - as long as you are familiar with using any image editing software, it's a really fun and easy process! https://steamcommunity.com/app/619500/discussions/3/1640917625019543783/
As usual, thanks very much to our great beta testers in the
official cyubeVR discord who tested this update as part of 70 separate beta builds! 70 beta builds, that's a lot of 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 you just write "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 3500 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 the Stonebrick Studios account 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 :)
Cheers!
