cyubeVR News

Hey everyone,

The last weekly report was released more than a "week" ago, so it's time for another one!

There have been less updates than usually recently, but that was really only temporarily, we're back to regular update frequency now which is roughly one update per week :) That means, in just a few minutes Update 24 will be released!

Those that closely follow development of cyubeVR on the official cyubeVR discord are always up to date with what I work on when, so if you think I write a bit too few weekly reports here on Steam:

1. You are right about that, and
2. Be assured that you can talk to me at any time on the cyubeVR discord if you want to know more exactly what exactly I'm working on, when the next update comes and so on :)

The cyubeVR discord is nicely growing and we're at over 320 people there now. A healthy community is extremely important for me, and creating that discord server was one of the best decisions I ever made working on cyubeVR. Without that discord, the interaction with the community would be so much harder that a lot of features being released would be less thought through, more buggy or just missing in general because a lot of things I add are based on ideas from the community, often expressed in discussions on discord.
It's incredibly helpful for me that I can upload a new feature into the beta build of the game, tag @Beta-Testers on the cyubeVR discord and get feedback on that new feature within almost no time. So really, the community there means everything to me and I hope it will only get better, especially once multiplayer is added to cyubeVR.

The updates will be mostly about survival-aspects soon, for example I've spent quite a while recently with thinking about how exactly "player dies and respawns" should work, especially regarding the inventory aspect and how the items in there should be lost and recovered. My current idea for that is this: When you die, you lose all your items in your inventory. You respawn somewhere in a radius of ~1km around the point where you died. When you get back to the point of death, you see a small golden chest there. Since you might die somewhere with very limited space (like a corridor only 1 block wide) that won't be a regularly sized chest, but more of a miniature chest. That chest will contain all the items you had when you died.
For picking up the items, one thing that I find very important is that you should be able to choose which ones you want to pick up and which one you don't. The exact same mechanics for picking up your own items should be usable for multiplayer when killing and looting other players - and you likely don't want to pick up everything someone carries.
So, you'll be able to click on that golden chest and that will open a floating "3d representation" of items above. Very similar to items in a real chest. There you can just grab stacks of items then and throw them into your bucket, or alternatively clicking them will automatically add those to your inventory.

That idea is not final yet, but we're getting close. If you see any issue with that, let me know :)

So, that's all for this weekly report. The next one will come sooner than you expect! Thanks for caring about the game!

Don't forget to follow and subscribe to the official Stonebrick Studios account on Twitter and YouTube so that you don't miss anything interesting about the game! There's also a community-diven subreddit about cyubeVR on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyubeVR/

Cheers!

Hey everyone!



If you're a VR content creator, you have probably heard of LIV, a great free tool that makes it very easy to capture high quality mixed reality footage of yourself in VR!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/755540/LIV/



The LIV developers recently released a completely rewritten version of their Unreal Engine integration that makes LIV work really well in UE4 games like cyubeVR.



(This is Kroy, playing cyubeVR with LIV)

The LIV integration in cyubeVR was tested for multiple weeks now actually, and different things were adjusted in multiple versions until everything worked perfectly - you should not notice any issues anywhere!

For performance reasons, the LIV support is available through a seperate build that you can select when right clicking cyubeVR in your Steam library and then going to the "Beta" tab:



You can use LIV with all headsets the game is compatible with (Vive, Rift, WMR).

Also, by default cyubeVR starts in fullscreen and asks you to put it's window in focus, which is due to how the windows thread scheduler prioritizes the currently focused application for performance. Streamers sometimes don't like that behavior since it makes it harder to run something like OVRDrop, so two new INI settings were also added to the game to adjust that:

UseFullscreen=0
ShowFocusWarning=0

You can find the INI file for that at

%localappdata%/cyubeVR/Saved/WindowsNoEditor/Game.ini

You also need to set OverrideDefault=1 in that INI for the changes to take effect.

These INI settings allow you to run the game in a minimized window while still normally playing the game.

Looking forward to seeing the pictures, videos or streams you'll create with cyubeVR + LIV! :) Let us know in the official cyubeVR discord, or tag the official Stonebrick Studios Twitter Account!

That's all for today! Thanks for caring about the game!
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. Writing a review and spreading the word is the easiest way you can support the game!

Looking forward to hearing what you think :)

Cheers!

Hey everyone!

Update 23 is live, adding an awesome new feature: resizable and movable picture frames that allow you to use custom JPG, PNG and BMP images on them, and even adjust the frame thickness! There are multiple included paintings that should please even the most stingy home decorators.
There are a variety of included paintings that should please even the stingiest of home decorators.

As usual, here is a very quick overview of the things changed in this update, with more details below:

- Added picture frames and fixed all bugs with picture frames that didn't exist when picture frames didn't exist
- All mesh objects that use the wall placement mode (currently that's wall mount and picture frames) are now always visible 20cm away from your controller when the place mode is active



This is a great feature that makes so much sense! Interiors are looking a million times nicer with this. These picture frames are so dynamic and customizable, you can design interiors way more to your personal liking now.

[video]https://stonebrickstudios.com/cyubevr/SteamAnnouncements/PF1.webm?v=1[/video]

The picture frames use the system for 100% free placement, so you can freely move them around on the wall after they are placed, and you can also freely resize them without any limits (besides your arms or creativity)! You can have small 1 inch frames, big 40 inch frames, or anything in between! They also don't "snap" to the voxel grid in any way, you can place multiple smaller picture frames on one block side, or a big picture frame across many blocks - it's all completely dynamic and adjustable!

There are 10 great looking default paintings that you can select between, and any images you put into your Windows

Pictures/cyubeVR

directory will automatically be in the game to select for the picture frames! It makes the most sense to paste JPG or PNG images into that folder, but BMP also works fine.

There is also no 2D UI at all. The picture frames are fully set up "in 3D", the way you expect it to be in a game built from the ground up for VR :) When you click on a picture frame you get a preview of all available images in a post-card format on your left hand, so you can then drag and drop those onto a picture frame to apply them.

You can even add new pictures to the folder while the game is running, to select a different picture you simply have to click a picture frame again and then the list of images which you see on your left hand is updated automatically :)

You can use any images you want - the frame will also automatically adjust to the aspect ratio of the image you select, so the image will never appear stretched in any way!

To resize a picture frame, you can grab the bottom left and upper right corner of the picture frame at the same time and then move the controllers toward or away from each other, it's very intuitive. That also allows you to move the picture frame at the same time while resizing it.

If you grab the bottom part of a frame with 2 controllers, you'll only move the frame without resizing it, which is quite useful since you can't accidentally change the size then.

Additionally to the custom images in the form of the "post-cards", you also have 2 sliders on your left hand that allow you to adjust the frame thickness of the frame and also the free space between frame and picture canvas. These options make them super adjustable and allow for very different looking frames. As you're used to with objects in cyubeVR, the picture frames of course also have really high detail models and textures.

The frames can be crafted with wood, gold, and copper - so 3 different frames exist at the moment, with 3 different recipes that you have to find :)



This picture frame update has been tested in the beta branch of the game for quite a while already - the initial version was released more than 2 weeks ago! Since then, our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord have tested the update a lot, reported all issues they found and I made sure that everything was fixed before this gets released in the stable branch, which is now! If you also 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! 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 ;) 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.
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. Writing a review and spreading the word is the easiest way you can support the game!

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

Cheers!

Hey everyone!

Update 22 is live, mostly just fixing a few bugs that were reported after Update 21. Since that engine update was a major change, it also caused some new bugs that were not all found before Update 21 was released. This update should fix them :)

These are the changes in this update:

- Fixed torches disassembling when picking them up from wall
- Fixed backside of torch holder being incorrectly rendered
- Fixed blue dot floating in front of right controller sometimes
- Fixed chests not working correctly after they have been moved
- Fixed ragdoll physics on deer and rabbits, they should work correctly again
- Added setting for "Astronaut Deer", you can now choose if you want the crazy deer physics that are enabled by default, or if you prefer realistic physics. With "Astronaut Deer" enabled, they now fly even higher than before ;)
- Fixed items being used from inventory when trying to place blocks or torches close to the edge of the current world generation where they can't be placed yet
- Fixed collision of blocks being removed when trying to destroy a block close to the edge of the world where you can't destroy it yet
- Added warning when you're close to the edge of the world explaining that you can't modify the world there yet, that the world is infinite in size and that it takes a while to generate more
- Improved .dmp file generation after a crash

That's all for today! 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 ;)
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. Writing a review and spreading the word is the easiest way you can support the game!

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

Cheers!

Hey everyone!

Update 21 is live, finally updating the engine version from a 1.5-year-old Unreal Engine to a more recent one, resulting in significantly better performance, better visuals and also fixing the few remaining (very rare) crashes. Additionally, there are a few nice new features in the game!

This update took way longer than usual (multiple weeks) since it was a lot of work! cyubeVR is running on a custom, modified Unreal Engine 4 to allow for some nice custom features like voxel lighting and custom performance optimizations, so all the changes had to be made compatible with the new version.

As usual, here is a very quick overview of the things changed in this Update, with more details below:

- Very significant performance improvements
- New dynamic resolution algorithm with temporal upscaling, resulting in a way sharper image
- Falling! There's now a separate (optional) mode that allows you to fall down ledges
- Its now possible to adjust the block place distance, allowing you to place a block below the block you're standing on
- Added setting for light shaft quality, with significantly better-looking default
- Fixed bug that caused bucket being active sometimes while invisible
- Rewrote the saving/loading of animals, it works way better now
- Teleport beam will automatically be disabled now on 8K screenshots
- Fixed any crashing during the crafting of big items, like chairs



Unreal Engine 4 is constantly getting improved by many programmers, so new features are added, and the performance of existing features are sometimes greatly improved. Such changes don't affect games using it "automatically", as a developer you have to update your game to use the new version. I had previously already ported back some recent improvements from UE4 into the game, but that was only a small part of the improvements that were done of course.

So this update introduces 1.5 years worth of improvements made to UE4, significantly improving performance. One specific feature where performance was improved a lot is the "Distance Shadows". While those were very expensive before, they are now twice as fast which makes them usable on a GTX 1070 and above. So if you kept those disabled before and you have a good GPU, enable them! They vastly improve the visual quality of trees in the distance.



The biggest new feature that you'll notice is the completely new dynamic resolution and temporal upscaling.

The game now expects that you run the SteamVR supersampling at default settings - before, I advised anyone to make sure the SteamVR supersampling is manually set to 100%. Now, you should just keep that at default. It's significantly more user-friendly like this.

The new dynamic resolution is doing upsampling in a temporal way, so it looks at multiple recent frames and tries to preserve sharp edges as good as possible. All post-processing is only done on the upscaled image, so post-processing always keeps the same quality, independent from the resolution the scene was rendered with.

It's also significantly better at dealing with performance issues caused by the CPU. Previously, it was possible that the game would reduce it's resolution, making everything blurry, just due to the CPU being too busy. Now, its really mostly just dependent on the graphics card, so if you have a good GPU, you should always see a nice, sharp image.



Before, there were two different settings regarding head based smooth loco: Off and On. Now, there's a third setting: "With Falling".

If you enable that, you will be able to fall down anywhere in the game if you're leaning too far over a ledge or if you're walking over a ledge using smooth locomotion.

There is no damage yet, so you can fall as much as you want without getting any negative impact. That will be added later! For now, enjoy falling down some bridges you built :)



You can now adjust the "block place distance" by sliding your thumb on the left touchpad while you have the block place mode selected on the right controller. The max place distance is high enough to allow you to "build down", meaning to place a block below the block you're currently standing on - previously, it was impossible in the game to build something like a staircase starting at a mountain and going down. Now, that's possible!



The engine update has been tested in a special engineupdate branch for quite a while already - the initial version of this was released 1.5 weeks ago. Since then, our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord have tested the update a lot through 25 individual beta versions, reported all issues they found and I made sure that everything was fixed before this gets released in the stable branch, which is now! If you also 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! 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. 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.
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. Writing a review and spreading the word is the easiest way you can support the game!

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

Cheers!