Hi Nervs!
We’ve been hard at work upgrading all of our systems to prepare for the next phase of development: Mod Support. This is the biggest upgrade we’ve made to NervBox since we launched, and nearly all of the underlying systems and tools have gotten a full upgrade.
The TL;DR for all of the upgrades is: higher quality, better performance, and improved tools.
First and foremost we upgraded to the newest version of Unity: Unity 6.
Unity 6 brings us some long-awaited performance and tooling improvements that we wanted to get, not only for us, but for all modders who will build with NervBox in the near future.
On the rendering side, we’ve switched to the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) to take advantage of the latest and greatest rendering features Unity has to offer.
In NervBox 0.6 we’re already using the new lighting system called Adaptive Probe Volumes for lighting dynamic objects, VFX graph for some new visual effects, and a smattering of rendering performance improvements.
In the future, we’ll be looking at taking advantage of the new Forward+ renderer, GPU resident drawer, and native dynamic resolution and foveated rendering tools to squeeze even more performance and quality out of the Quest hardware.
On the audio side, we replaced our audio raytracing solution with Meta XR audio raytracing. Audio raytracing is an expensive but magical effect that brings physicality straight into your ears, and we feel it’s a critical feature to have in a fully physics-based simulation. While Steam Audio did a decent job, it was too slow on Quest to where we only raytraced player voices, yet still struggled with optimization. The new Meta XR audio raytracing is much higher performance allowing all sound effects to be properly physicalized for a higher quality sound-scape, while also bringing tooling improvements to boot.
Finally, we’ve created an all-new firearms framework. This new framework was built with a modular approach, allowing guns to be built by assembling different components (such as ammo loading, slide behavior, and chambering) to create a final weapon. Our goal with this system is to allow for any gun to be created, without additional code needed.
We’ve added four new guns which were not possible to make using the old system, and upgraded all of the existing guns with new animations, enhanced recoil calculations, general consistency improvements, and a new aiming system. The new aiming system greatly improves aim comfort and accuracy, while allowing easier improvements in the future.
One final note: we were planning on releasing an all new UI with 0.6, but ran into some pretty gnarly build stability challenges in the final stretch of testing, causing it to be pushed into the next update. We can’t wait to show you the last few features that didn’t make it into this release, but they’ll be here soon™!
Make sure you take a look at our roadmap to see what we’re working on next: https://trello.com/b/EZ9qQMyu/nervbox-roadmap. For any feedback, feature requests, or bug reports, please join the discord: https://discord.gg/EkRXj9YxXD
Happy Holidays!
💜 NervBox Team 💜
Patchnotes
Engine
- Upgraded to Unity 6.
- The render pipeline has been upgraded to the Universal Render Pipeline.
- URP gives us access to new performance features and optimizations, many of which we have not yet enabled.
- URP with the new Render Graph system will allow us to create new and performant VFX and post-processing effects on Quest.
- Upgraded to the new Adaptive Prove Volume dynamic lighting system.
- Better lighting quality, improved performance, and much better tools (for us and modders).
- Replaced the audio raytracing solution with Meta XR Audio.
- The old audio raytracing system was very slow on Quest, even though it was only raytracing player voices. Switching allowed us to enable raytracing on all audio sources, while also improving overall performance.
- Enhanced raytracing effects with proper diffraction (sound bends around objects).
- Better tools and workflows for us and modders.
- Various backend preparations have been made for modding. This includes tools, workflow optimizations, and more.
Interaction
- Added a new virtual controller system. The virtual controller vastly improves the aiming feel and stability, allowing us to refine further aiming in the future with things like shouldering and hand filtering. We currently have three virtual controllers:
- A rifle controller that handles two-handed aiming of longer weapons.
- A pistol controller that handles the secondary hand of a pistol, which rewards players for holding the weapon properly.
- A slide controller that helps control how weapon slides feel.
- Added smoothing to releasing objects. This will also be applied to grabbing in the future.
- Almost every hand pose for guns has been reworked to have less clipping and generally look better.
- Added some additional finger movement for controllers that do not have hand tracking such as Quest controllers. The middle, ring, and pinkie fingers will curl based on the index finger when nothing is held.
- Added general grip event sync.
- Fixed the sandbox gun not making a sound when freezing or unfreezing an object.
Player
- The torque calculation for the player’s arms has been improved. Player arms should be less wobbly and match controller targets more accurately.
- Rewrote XR input handling.
- Added a custom elbow solver for two-handed rifles, pushing player elbows down instead of flipping when trying to shoulder a rifle.
- Added new impact effects for when the player is shot at or stabbed. This is also applied to NPCs.
Guns
- The gun system has been completely rewritten. These new guns are more realistic, more consistent, and overall should provide a better experience. The system is also significantly more modular, allowing for more variety in types of weapons.
- There are four new guns:
- Olympia Break-Action Shotgun, our first articulated weapon. Use the action button to open.
- CX8 Pistol-Carbine, a semi-automatic carbine designed for two-handing.
- Revolver, complete with a functional spinning cylinder and individual round loading.
- M4 Auto Shotgun, a semi-automatic shotgun with a high fire-rate and quick action.
- Added new animation systems for most guns.
- Added a laser aiming module to the Glock.
- Reworked gun recoil and impact forces.
- The jet thruster now has a new model and new VFX. See the contrails of your friends as they fly by!
- Sync of guns has been completely redone to be more consistent across players. Things like chambering and slide locking are now properly synchronized.
- Fixed bullet shells hitting objects and creating extremely loud sounds.
- Fixed bullet shells not always playing collision sounds.
- Rewrote chambering logic to be more consistent, Guns now perfectly chamber a bullet in time with their RPM.
- Improvements to multiplayer weapon interactions, such as other players grabbing slides, inserting magazines, and keeping the bullet chambered between players.
- The pump-action shotgun slide no longer has a spring, allowing for easier racking of shells. The overall feel of the pump-action shotgun has also been improved.
- Fixed bullet trails sometimes splitting apart when spawning.
- Small adjustments to bullet trail visuals.
Levels
- All levels have had their lighting redone, audio reworked, and general performance optimizations.
- Fixed gaps in geometry on New Park City and Labs.
- Fixed the joint demos in Labs.
Audio
- Upgraded FMOD and replaced Steam Audio with Meta XR Audio.
- Jetgun now has the Doppler effect applied.
- Reworked internal audio systems for better performance.
- General audio adjustments regarding levels and ranges. General audio mix is still being worked on, so let us know how you like it!
Gamemodes
- Fixed an issue where players could deal damage to each other in the tutorial.
Networking
- Fixed InvalidState error when trying to join another lobby after being disconnected by a host.