Hi everyone,
Sorry for the wait! We apologize that this update took forever to come out. We've been working on a major rewrite/refactor of our codebase and a migration of our asset database, which ended up being a pretty massive effort. We decided that this was something that needed to be done for the health of our codebase/database and improve our ability to add new features and fix bugs without piling on technical debt. We figured that we might as well rip off the band-aid and do it now while we're still in early access and before we hire more devs. All of our fixes and feature additions were built off of this code refactor, so they couldn't go into production until the refactor was finished. After a ton of testing and bug squashing, we're finally ready to push it live!
Now that this refactor is finished, I can promise that our update schedule will be MUCH more frequent moving forward. It was quite a challenge to execute the refactor and the new templates system in tandem and get them to play nicely with each other, but since that's finally behind us we have been absolutely flying these past couple of weeks. We're really excited to show you guys what we've been working on!
Before that though, I wanted to announced that we surpassed 50k players this past weekend! It brings me so much joy to see how many people are enjoying LAN Party, and we hope to keep making the experience better and better based on your feedback and suggestions.
With that out of the way, let's talk about the major features included in this update:
Room Templates
You will now be able to save a template of any of your rooms. This template will be an exact copy of the room at the moment you save the template. You can load room templates at any time to change your room layout to something completely new or to load a previously saved version of your room.
The marketplace has expanded to include room templates as well. You are now able to publish any of your saved templates to the marketplace, as well as add other player's templates to your library to use with your room.
While a lot of players enjoy the process of creating and decorating rooms from scratch, many players aren't interested in doing all of that and would rather have a fully furnished room to hang out in immediately. Based on player feedback we've received, we've updated the "Create Room" menu to allow you to pick a template to create your room with. We have also added a few default room designs to use as a starting point as well. You can start your room from scratch by selecting the "Square One" template.
Dynamic Asset Creation
One of our guiding philosophies with LAN Party is that we want to give players the tools to easily put literally anything they want into LAN Party to use in their rooms. The problem is that most people (including myself) don't have a ton of 3D modeling/texturing experience, which poses a challenge when trying to create your perfect room.
Our solution is to partner with Meshy to give players the ability to create any 3D asset they want without needing other 3D modeling software. Meshy is a platform that allows users to create fully-textured 3D models with a simple text prompt, and we've integrated it directly into LAN Party. Simply go to Create -> Asset -> Generate from Prompt, describe the 3D asset you want, and it will automatically generate the asset and import it into LAN Party. From there, you can configure it like you would any other asset, upload it, and use it in your room. We will also be expanding this functionality for avatars as well in the near future.
We're really looking forward to getting your feedback on this feature and we hope this helps you personalize your rooms even further!
Steam Deck Streaming Support
We've struggled for a while to get our streaming system working on the Steam Deck and other machines running Linux. Our system uses Windows-specific tools and processes for encoding and decoding stream data, and this would cause LAN Party to crash on Linux devices when receiving stream data, depending on the compatibility layer being used.
Well, we're proud to announce that this issue has been fixed for all Steam Deck users! Now you will be able to watch your friend's streams on Steam Deck just like you would on PC. We're still investigating how to put LAN Party in the background and allow you to stream other games and applications on Steam Deck.
For all other Linux users: it would help us out a ton if you could test streaming and receiving streams from your machine. We want our system to work with as many different Linux versions and compatibility layers as possible, so your help is greatly appreciated.
Full Patch Notes:
Features:
Added a room templates system. This system allows you to save the current state of your room and reload it at any time, even into different rooms.
You can now start from a room template when creating a new room.
Room templates have been added to the marketplace.
Integrated Meshy for creating textured 3D assets in real-time using a text prompt.
Receiving streams is now supported on Steam Deck.
Improvements:
Improved room and asset loading times.
Significantly reduced application size.
Added Discord button in My Rooms menu to give easy access to our Discord.
When room walls are cleared in Blueprint mode, there is now a grey outline of where the previous walls were to help with retracing.
Added more descriptive badges in the marketplace and library.
Assets now only become visible once they are fully loaded in.
Several UI fixes and improvements.
Fixes:
Removed depth from walls to prevent ugly z-fighting in concave wall corners.
Removed updating delay when changing room lighting intensity and color.
Fixed an issue where wall color updates could overwrite wall textures.
Fixed an issue where the first wall selected after entering decor mode could have its texture overwritten.
Fixed an issue where having a non-ASCII character in your device name could cause authentication errors with our servers.
Fixed an issue where someone who is not the room host could enter a bugged state when importing assets into a room.
Fixed a UI issue where the physics bone options and VRM settings could block each other in the avatar importer.
Fixed issue where room assets could be visible in Blueprint mode.
Fixed issue where the mute stream icon would persist after the user stopped streaming.
Fixed issue where setting humanoid animations while using a generic avatar could leave the avatar in a broken state.
Fixed issue where deleting individual walls could leave the room in a broken state depending on the order.
Rooms will now only be updated on the server if the walls form a complete loop, preventing incomplete rooms.
Fixed issue where previously deleted walls could be split.
As always, if you run into any bugs or have any suggestions for us, please join our Discord and shoot me (Ryan) a DM. I'm always happy to help!
Thank you so much for continuing to support us! We have a lot planned for LAN Party in the near future, so stay tuned!
The LAN Party Team