Steam Networking Sockets (no more queued packets), New icons for Radiant UI
Hello everyone and welcome to our weekly update!
Originally we planned to work on the new laser and gripping system this week, but with the release of updated Steamworks.NET we instead integrated the long awaited Steam Networking Sockets to help users experiencing connectivity issues and queued packets.
Our teammate Coffee has also created a set of completely new custom icons for the new Radiant UI. You can already see them in the hand menus and on the user badges, with more to come!
Neos now also uses a custom audio input driver on Windows, replacing a 3rd party library that has been causing issues for quite a while and has received many more additions, tweaks and bugfixes!
[h2]Wednesday Crash Course: Building Worlds[/h2]
For this week’s beginner crash course live stream we have looked at how to build a basic world with tools you can find in Neos and how to import some extra assets. If you’d like to learn more about Neos, follow us on Twitch to catch our next stream!
We’re always answering questions live, so if there’s something you’d like to learn how to do, feel free to ask!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Steam Networking Sockets - no more queued packets[/h2]
One of the long term problems that some users were experiencing was a phenomenon called “queued packets”. With certain connections, the changes in the world would start queuing up and getting progressively more delayed, due to the underlying transport protocol not sending the updates fast enough.
Our long term goal is to fully switch our main transport protocol to Game Networking Sockets developed by Valve. Not only is this protocol more efficient and robust, but offers other benefits such as encryption, improving your privacy and security.
A version of this protocol (Steam Networking Sockets) is included as part of the Steamworks SDK and thanks to the newly updated Steamworks.NET wrapper, we were able to integrate this with Neos.
This version also utilizes Valve’s relay network, which provides privacy protection, hiding your IP from other users and ensuring good connectivity and latency. The only requirement is that you need to have a Steam client running and be signed in into your account.
Thanks to the help of our Danger Tester group on Discord we thoroughly tested this new protocol, but found a major limitation. The bandwidth estimation functionality of the library is currently broken, so all transfers are capped at 128 kB/s (increasing the cap leads to the connection degrading quickly with more users).
As a result, initially joining the session and transferring assets between users is currently very slow when using this protocol. On the plus side, users who previously experienced the queued packets are now reporting that things are running well and in sync!
Until the bandwidth estimation is reimplemented, our old protocol (called LNL) is still preferred by Neos. If you experience the packet queuing or want to take advantage of the other benefits (encryption, IP hiding...), you can go to Settings in Neos and check “Prefer Steam Networking Sockets”. You can change the setting on the fly without restarting Neos, but you need to rejoin the session to use the other protocol.
Neos supports multi-protocol hosting, so most sessions are hosted on both LNL and Steam Networking Sockets protocols, allowing users to join on either. Let us know your experience and if this improves your experience!
[h2]New Context Menu Icons[/h2]
Coffee has been hard at work, creating our new icons for the Radiant UI, giving our user interface a much more polished and professional look. The new icons are specifically designed for Neos, matching the interface much better and include colors, for easier navigation and better accessibility.
The user badges above names and in session list have been updated as well for a more consistent look. As we upgrade and replace more of the UI, you’ll see new icons popping up in more places as we go.
Should anybody have this much power?!
We have received great feedback from the community as well and made adjustments to improve the readability and accessibility. Making the UI easier to use for people with various vision or visual processing problems is important, so let us know what you think!
[h2]New Audio Driver, Default Locomotion Speed and more[/h2]
Another part of Neos that’s been giving our users trouble for a while has been the audio input library, used to get the audio data from your microphone. We got reports of people’s voices randomly becoming garbled, incoherent screeches on certain systems (typically Windows 7) and sudden 100 % CPU utilization across all cores.
A few builds back we have rolled out a new audio driver for Windows, written directly against the WASAPI, cutting out the middleware and giving us more control and efficiency. This should fix those issues, but let us know if you still experience problems.
Another important change is a new default locomotion speed for physical (walk/run) locomotion. Many users have reported the default being too fast, causing difficulty with precise navigation, so the speed is now roughly halved.
However because the speed is configurable per world (or specifically per locomotion module), we have added a heuristic which checks if your world still uses the default speeds and only upgrades then. So if you have changed the defaults, don’t worry, your modifications will be left unchanged!
There’s also a new toggle called “UseSpeedFromUserSettings”. As a world creator, this gives you a choice to let users configure their own locomotion speed or to override it with a specific values (for example when you’re building a game world). This is on by default, but if the heuristics detects that you have made changes, it will default to off in your existing worlds. Otherwise you have to go into your world and make changes.
And as usual, there were many other small additions, tweaks and bugfixes. For example vertical slider support for UIX, improved Order Offset for easily reordering child objects, additions to LogiX nodes and more. Check the #neos-updates channel on our Discord for details.
[h2]What’s next?[/h2]
With the Steam Networking Sockets out of the way, we’re resuming the work on the new laser and gripping system as part of the new Radiant UI. We’re also working on a brand new Neos camera, with a more modern design and easier to use interface, here’s a little sneak peek!
Thank you for reading this weeks’ update. We always appreciate your support and creativity you bring to this platform, we couldn’t be building this project without you!
Originally we planned to work on the new laser and gripping system this week, but with the release of updated Steamworks.NET we instead integrated the long awaited Steam Networking Sockets to help users experiencing connectivity issues and queued packets.
Our teammate Coffee has also created a set of completely new custom icons for the new Radiant UI. You can already see them in the hand menus and on the user badges, with more to come!
Neos now also uses a custom audio input driver on Windows, replacing a 3rd party library that has been causing issues for quite a while and has received many more additions, tweaks and bugfixes!
[h2]Wednesday Crash Course: Building Worlds[/h2]
For this week’s beginner crash course live stream we have looked at how to build a basic world with tools you can find in Neos and how to import some extra assets. If you’d like to learn more about Neos, follow us on Twitch to catch our next stream!
We’re always answering questions live, so if there’s something you’d like to learn how to do, feel free to ask!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Steam Networking Sockets - no more queued packets[/h2]
One of the long term problems that some users were experiencing was a phenomenon called “queued packets”. With certain connections, the changes in the world would start queuing up and getting progressively more delayed, due to the underlying transport protocol not sending the updates fast enough.
Our long term goal is to fully switch our main transport protocol to Game Networking Sockets developed by Valve. Not only is this protocol more efficient and robust, but offers other benefits such as encryption, improving your privacy and security.
A version of this protocol (Steam Networking Sockets) is included as part of the Steamworks SDK and thanks to the newly updated Steamworks.NET wrapper, we were able to integrate this with Neos.
This version also utilizes Valve’s relay network, which provides privacy protection, hiding your IP from other users and ensuring good connectivity and latency. The only requirement is that you need to have a Steam client running and be signed in into your account.
Thanks to the help of our Danger Tester group on Discord we thoroughly tested this new protocol, but found a major limitation. The bandwidth estimation functionality of the library is currently broken, so all transfers are capped at 128 kB/s (increasing the cap leads to the connection degrading quickly with more users).
As a result, initially joining the session and transferring assets between users is currently very slow when using this protocol. On the plus side, users who previously experienced the queued packets are now reporting that things are running well and in sync!
Until the bandwidth estimation is reimplemented, our old protocol (called LNL) is still preferred by Neos. If you experience the packet queuing or want to take advantage of the other benefits (encryption, IP hiding...), you can go to Settings in Neos and check “Prefer Steam Networking Sockets”. You can change the setting on the fly without restarting Neos, but you need to rejoin the session to use the other protocol.
Neos supports multi-protocol hosting, so most sessions are hosted on both LNL and Steam Networking Sockets protocols, allowing users to join on either. Let us know your experience and if this improves your experience!
[h2]New Context Menu Icons[/h2]
Coffee has been hard at work, creating our new icons for the Radiant UI, giving our user interface a much more polished and professional look. The new icons are specifically designed for Neos, matching the interface much better and include colors, for easier navigation and better accessibility.
The user badges above names and in session list have been updated as well for a more consistent look. As we upgrade and replace more of the UI, you’ll see new icons popping up in more places as we go.
Should anybody have this much power?!We have received great feedback from the community as well and made adjustments to improve the readability and accessibility. Making the UI easier to use for people with various vision or visual processing problems is important, so let us know what you think!
[h2]New Audio Driver, Default Locomotion Speed and more[/h2]
Another part of Neos that’s been giving our users trouble for a while has been the audio input library, used to get the audio data from your microphone. We got reports of people’s voices randomly becoming garbled, incoherent screeches on certain systems (typically Windows 7) and sudden 100 % CPU utilization across all cores.
A few builds back we have rolled out a new audio driver for Windows, written directly against the WASAPI, cutting out the middleware and giving us more control and efficiency. This should fix those issues, but let us know if you still experience problems.
Another important change is a new default locomotion speed for physical (walk/run) locomotion. Many users have reported the default being too fast, causing difficulty with precise navigation, so the speed is now roughly halved.
However because the speed is configurable per world (or specifically per locomotion module), we have added a heuristic which checks if your world still uses the default speeds and only upgrades then. So if you have changed the defaults, don’t worry, your modifications will be left unchanged!
There’s also a new toggle called “UseSpeedFromUserSettings”. As a world creator, this gives you a choice to let users configure their own locomotion speed or to override it with a specific values (for example when you’re building a game world). This is on by default, but if the heuristics detects that you have made changes, it will default to off in your existing worlds. Otherwise you have to go into your world and make changes.
And as usual, there were many other small additions, tweaks and bugfixes. For example vertical slider support for UIX, improved Order Offset for easily reordering child objects, additions to LogiX nodes and more. Check the #neos-updates channel on our Discord for details.
[h2]What’s next?[/h2]
With the Steam Networking Sockets out of the way, we’re resuming the work on the new laser and gripping system as part of the new Radiant UI. We’re also working on a brand new Neos camera, with a more modern design and easier to use interface, here’s a little sneak peek!
Thank you for reading this weeks’ update. We always appreciate your support and creativity you bring to this platform, we couldn’t be building this project without you!