cyubeVR
Weekly Report #1
in the last few weeks there were so many updates that we didn't really get to write any "weekly reports", but we always planned to write these so from now on you can expect them once a week.
Update 8 with the compass was released a week ago. After that we've worked on a major world loading optimization that will speed up loading existing parts of the world by more than 10000%.
This is a very significant change in the code, and beta 9.0 was released in the beta branch on sunday, available for beta testers in the official discord server. A few bugs were found, some of them fixed in the beta 9.1 that was released yesterday. Once all remaining issues with the new loading are fixed, it will be released as Update 9 (should be in the next 1-3 days).
After that, you can expect to see some new content!
That's all for now. If you have any feedback about anything, please make us aware of it in the steam forums or on discord :)
Update 8 is live! Compass and way more
Update 8 is live, adding a compass, a way to delete items from your inventory, a minimum spec warning in the main menu, an out of focus warning and many other small improvements and bugfixes which are listed below.
Compass
You can now craft and use a compass! It was too easy in the game before to lose your home while exploring other parts of the world, so with the compass you can be way less worried about that now.
The compass needs gold to be crafted, so it's the first item in the game that requires you to find gold, the rarest material in the game.
After you found the recipe and crafted the compass, you can drag it into your tool quick bar and select it just like any other tool.
You need to use it like a real compass - so make sure to hold it mostly parallel to the ground, or it will not work correctly. It should feel very realistic!
Delete items or tools from inventory
In earlier versions of the game there was no way to delete items that you no longer need from your inventory. Now, theres a "deletion bar" below the slots in the inventory.
If you drag an item or a tool into that bar, hold it for 2 seconds and then release it, the item is deleted from your inventory. While you hold the item there, you see a progress bar filling up. It should make it impossible to accidentally delete anything.
Minimum spec warning in the main menu
The game now checks what hardware you have and displays a warning message in the main menu if it detects the hardware is significantly below minimum spec.
Some people unfortunately write negative reviews because of bad performance while trying to run the game on hardware way below the minimum spec. This is obviously not ideal.
If you enjoy the game, please don't forget to write a review on steam :)
Out of focus warning
cyubeVR needs to have the game window in focus to work correctly. If the game window is not in focus, there will be no audio and the inventory won't work correctly.
The game now checks if it currently has focus and displays a warning if that's not the case.
Other things
- Saving and loading of a few settings did not work correctly before, so the settings were reset to default every time you entered the game. That's fixed now, settings should all stay at exactly what you set them to.
- The head-based smooth locomotion had some weird issues sometimes, those should be fixed now. This makes it feel significantly better.
- The bloom on low was adjusted, this should make it look even "better" for those that prefer a non-bloomy game.
- Performance was improved slightly for various things
- Multiple crashes and other small bugs that were reported in the official forums and the official discord were fixed. If you still see any crashes or other bugs, please make sure to read this thread and report them correctly so that they can be fixed in the next update.
As always, please make sure to give us feedback in the steam forums or on discord :)
Update 7 is live! Colored torches and more
Update 7 is live, including colored torches that you can craft with newly added blue and green flowers, more realistic ore spawning and fixes for crashes.
Colored torches
Two new types of flowers were added to the game, a green flower and a blue flower. These two types of flowers are quite rare, so they are not as easy to find as the existing red and white flowers.
Once you found such a flower, you can collect dye from it with having the hand selected on one controller, overlapping the flower and pressing the trigger button.
Crafting a colored torch works with the same recipe as a regular torch, you just have to add dye on top of it. A colored torch recipe gives you 1 torch in your inventory, not 4 torches like with the regular torch. Currently you can craft a green torch and a blue torch. More colors will be added in future updates. Make sure to tell us in the forums or in the discord what colors you wan't to see!
Also, the radius a torch illuminates was increased, this affects both regular and colored torches.
Adjusted ore spawning
In earlier versions of the game, ores were generated as one big solid area of ore somewhere in the ground. In this new version, ores no longer consist of one big solid area, but instead they are spread out over a slightly bigger area with many regular stone blocks in between the ore blocks.
When you find a piece of coal or copper in the ground and you don't immediately see a second coal/copper block next to it, you can no longer assume that nothing is left - there might just be a stone block in between. This makes mining more exciting and realistic!
Also, iron ore was added to the game. You can't use it for anything yet, it's just preperation for a future update.
Fixes for crashes
In this update a bunch of crashes that were reported in the official forums and the official discord were fixed. If you still see any crashes or other bugs, please make sure to read this thread and report them correctly so that they can be fixed in the next update.
You need to walk into new parts of the world to see the new things
If you are playing with an "old" world, to find the blue flower, the green flower, the new ore spawning or iron ore you need to walk into parts of the world where you have never been before. Existing parts of the world generated with the "older" world generation do not include the new things yet.
Update 6 is live! Head-based smooth locomotion and more
Update 6 is live, adding an option for head-based smooth locomotion and a few more things.
Head-based smooth locomotion
Without head-based smooth locomotion, the center of your playspace is used for the smooth locomotion. This means if you are a few meters away from that center, your head might be on a different height relative to the ground than the center of your playspace. This can cause the head of the player to incorrectly "float" near the ground sometimes.
This update adds an option for making the smooth locomotion head-based, meaning your head will always be X cm above the ground in the game, with X being equal the height of your head in the real world.
It means if you physically walk around, you can walk up/down blocks in the game. Physical left/right movement causing artificial up/down movement in the virtual world can cause motion sickness, that's why this option is not the default. Many people wanted to see this though, so now you can enable it in the settings.
With that option enabled you can also navigate on smaller areas with smooth locomotion, so you can walk closer to walls or smoothly walk around on a platform with a width of just 1 block.
Other things
- When placing a torch, the torch in your hand is now on fire. In the last update we added dynamic light from the torch in your hand, and this update now just updates the visuals of the torch to better fit the lighting. The dynamic light was also made a bit brighter.
- The world saving was made even more reliable.
- The inventory briefcase in your left hand was made a bit darker to have less "glow"
- A few more small fixes to prevent crashes
- The hand overlapping a placed torch will make the torch show the yellow overlap color now (it was missing before)
Update 5 is live! A few bugfixes
Update 5 is live, fixing a few bugs.
Trees that were cut down no longer respawn at the same location later, and when you cut down a tree it can no longer happen that the tree "teleports" away to a different location.
Smooth locomotion could stop working when you walked too far in any direction, that should no longer happen now.
There are also fixes for common crashes in this update, the game should be significantly more stable now. If you still encounter any crashes, please make sure to report them here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/619500/discussions/1/
Update 4 is live! More reliable world loading, more free stone, dynamic torch light and more
More reliable world loading and saving
Update 4 makes the world loading and saving more reliable with keeping up to 20 backups of important files, which should make it essentially impossible now that worlds become corrupted.
2 stone items from 1 stone block
Many people asked for a quicker way to get more stone for being able to more quickly build bigger things, and since building is the main aspect of this game that's something we wanted to make sure to improve in this update.
If you destroy a stone block with a copper pickaxe, you will get 2 stone items now instead of 1. More free stone for everyone! Destroying a stone block that was manually placed will still only give you 1 stone item.
Dynamic torch light
If you hold a torch in your right hand, that torch will now emit dynamic light into the world!
It's only a small radius that's illuminated, so you still have to place torches when exploring caves or other dark areas, but it is enough light to be able to see what's a good place to place a new torch.
Other things
This update also tries to fix one crash we got a few reports about. The copper pickaxe sound was improved, and a few more small bugs were fixed, including a bug that made it impossible to craft a copper shovel with processed light wood.
Update 3 is live! Bloom settings and more
Quite a few people asked for an option to reduce the amount of bloom in the game, so theres something special in the game for you if you are one of those persons: a "Low" setting for bloom intensity!
It also took too much time to craft enough torches to explore deep caves, so the amount of torches added to your inventory was increased from 1 to 4 when you craft a torch. More free torches for everyone :)
Many people also requested a longer day time, so that's also part of this update.
Beta branch
There is a "beta" branch of the game now where updates are added earlier to be tested by a smaller group of people for making sure they don't contain any new game-breaking bugs. If you want to help test out new features that might blow up your PC, join the official discord server to get access to the beta branch of the game: https://discord.gg/rwJ6B7d
Update 2 is live! Issue fixed that affected Windows 7 users
Some users on Windows 7 have reported issues that the game game does not start correctly, or immediately crashes after startup. This issue should be fixed in the newest update.
If the game did not start for you before, please report if you still have issues after this update.
Update 1 is live! World loading issue is fixed.
Update 1 for the game is live now for roughly 1.5 hours, and feedback seems to confirm that the update indeed fixes the freeze and/or black screen many people saw when they loaded a world.
The old world files unfortunately have to be considered corrupted, so you need to start a new world if you didn't do that yet after installing the update. Loading worlds created with the old version will not work.
Just to be clear: This is an exception, future updates will not break your old worlds. Only the initial version had a bug that did cause corrupted worlds.
Thanks for your patience on this, I know this should not have happened. I'm very sorry! Please tell me if you still see any issues with world loading or anything else.
We recommend you wait with playing cyubeVR until we have fixed one annoying bug.
sorry for this. A lot of people seem to have trouble loading worlds at the moment. There is a bug, it's reproducible and I'm working on fixing it at the moment. It might take a few more hours, and I'm fine with calling the game pretty unplayable until that's fixed.
So if you want to play cyubeVR, wait a bit until there's another announcement saying the bug is fixed. Very sorry about that, this bug should definitely have been noticed in testing before the game was released.