Hi Everyone!
We're excited to finally get this update out! In the months following our early access release, we were primarily focused on quickly fixing any bugs you guys brought to our attention and making incremental changes to improve the LAN Party experience. However, over the last month or so, our development focus has been on overhauling core LAN Party features, as well as implementing a few new ones we've been eyeing for a while.
One of the major pain points of the application so far has been the time it takes to load a room. Our goal here was to optimize the loading process as much as possible to both improve load times and reduce the compute/memory resources required to load large rooms. To that end, we implemented a significantly more efficient model loader that drastically improves the time it takes to load a 3D model and reduces the amount of memory 3D models use while loaded. This is the most noticeable when importing assets in the Asset Importer. We also implemented a new asset caching system that further improves loading times by no longer having to download an asset after its been loaded at least once. In addition, we've made some optimizations on the database side to shave a few seconds while loading into a room as well. There is still more time that can be saved on the database side, and despite our lack of expertise on that front we've still found multiple optimizations that we are currently working on. (Note: The new importer is specifically for FBX and OBJ room assets. Avatars still use the previous importer since there is much more complexity.)
We also decided to give the Blueprint mode a bit of an overhaul. Previously, if you wanted to adjust your floor plan, you had to press the "Clear" button and start over from scratch. Now, you can move and delete existing wall points, as well as "split" existing walls to create a new wall point that can be moved around. This should hopefully save a lot of headache when designing a complex room!
Additionally, you can now preview avatars and assets on the marketplace before you use them! When you click on an avatar or asset in the marketplace or your library, there is now a "Preview" button on the bottom of its thumbnail. Clicking this will open a 3D preview of the asset where you can move the camera around to see it at all angles. For avatars, you can preview what the avatar looks like performing animations. Humanoid avatar will execute the humanoid animations you currently have set, and generic avatars will execute the animations they have set in the appropriate slots.
You can view room assets with the previewer as well. For seating, you can hit the "Preview with Avatars" button to see what it looks like with your current avatar sitting on it.
Thanks to your suggestions, we also added nameplates above other avatars in the room! This can be turned on/off in Settings -> Gameplay. You can also set your profile color in Settings -> My Account by clicking on the square next to your profile picture.
This controls what color your nameplate is for other people, as well as the color your nameplate shows up as in chat.
Speaking of chat, we added rich text (BBCode) support in chat, which lets you control the font size, color, and boldness of your messages. Documentation of the different modifiers can be found here: https://www.bbcode.org/reference.php
We hope you enjoy this update! We have another one planned in the next couple of weeks focused around saving/loading room templates and sharing them on the marketplace. As always, feel free to join our Discord and DM me (Ryan) if you have any suggestions or run into any issues!
IMPORTANT: If any of your assets have their textures messed up by the new asset importer, please DM me on Discord and I'll help you out.
Features:
Added 3D previewer to marketplace/library.
Added the ability to move/delete existing wall points as well as split walls to create new wall points.
Added nameplates over other players in the room.
Added profile color in settings that controls the color of your nameplate and your name in chat.
Added rich text (BBCode) support to chat.
Improvements:
Implemented new asset importer that drastically reduces load times and memory usage.
Added local asset caching system to improve network efficiency and overall performance.
Added/improved several icons throughout the application.
Fixes:
Added additional logic for preventing room blueprints from being in a broken/incomplete state.
Non-owners of rooms will be returned to the main menu when entering a room in a broken state.
Fixed issue where the hotkey help panel would not be in the correct state.
Fixed issue where hitting ESC with certain panels open could duplicate them.