Greetings!

1.0

A moment I wondered if would ever come. I have many times this past year imagined Zeno's paradox, and wondered if the journey to 1.0 would end up as such, a never ending series of halved reductions eternally approaching but never reaching the moment that I could flip the switch and say "THERE, NOW it is no longer Early Access". A preposterous feeling to have about something after 10 years. H3VR has been 'Absurdly Late Access' for a very long time.

To be incredibly candid with you all, this project has been a sort of comfort blanket for me for many years. Through familial loss, through COVID, injury and health challenges, anxieties about the world, and simply getting older. The idea of changing anything about the status quo of the game was for a very long time utterly terrifying to me. My compatriots would lovingly poke me about it every 6 months or so "you know you should really think about wrapping this up", "when do you think you'll go out of Early Access". These are conversations I would find the most expeditious exit to every time. How do you give up the thing that's been the constant? Your bedrock. The foundation of your tenuous sense of control over your life?

I'm grateful that a combination of new opportunities, creative collaborators ready to rally to our banner for bigger challenges, and the support of friends and family have managed to drag/push/kick/cajole/lead/support me to this moment, of sitting here at 11pm staring at the 'Prepare for release' button on the Steam backend, and excited to push it.

Update 120

Update 120 was conceptualized as the answer to the question "how do you bring to a close a project that started with no plan, and never really developed a plan other than 'experiment with the next interesting thing, one at a time'. This spirit of play and openness has attracted a truly huge community of other creators over the years, and so it seemed right to focus this Update on ensuring that the creator community had the best options moving forward with a solidified codebase, tools and toys.

Anyone who has followed my devlogs for the past year likely knows the details of everything going live today on the main branch, but for everyone else, please allow me a quick review:

Take & Hold

Take & Hold, our signature game mode, has gotten a huge facelift this past year. We've added several new ways to play. Blitz, a mode all about attacking points with dense patrols. Rampart, a mode focused purely on hold defense that rapidly teleports you from tier to tier. Both modes compress and focus the Take & Hold experience allowing folks who prefer one modality of the mode to baste in it. Sandbox mode is present as well for anyone who wishes to just enjoy and mess around on any map.

A late addition this year has been the Lucky Looter character, and associated underlying systems. This significantly more 'loot goblin' mode dispenses with the Token + Purchase systems of Take & Hold and runs entirely on loot drops from enemies. The underlying systems are more flexible than the character itself even uses, allowing for all sorts of User-created characters that I'm sure I couldn't even imagine.

H3VR Studio

Speaking of authorship, we launched H3VR Studio into beta several months ago, our authoring app for making a bunch of the underlying data modules H3 runs on. Take & Hold characters and challenges, Equipment Pools, Sosig Outfits, and Saving/Sharing custom guns and scenarios. The Workshop is now fully activated for sharing this sort of content, and I look forward to seeing what you all make with it! We'll have to whip up a community contest or two in the future...

Gameplanner

The Gameplanner system finally got dragged into realization this year, thanks to the diligent work and keen design of Nathan, pillar of the H3 Mod community and one of our cherished collaborators. GP allows for wiring objects together to make devices, scenario moments, gadgets, and whatever your imagination might come up with. H3's toolbox and tool panel system got a huge facelift along with this, making it one of the most robust set of sandbox tools in the medium.

New Content

And lastly we've squeezed a last bit of content in that is H3 through and through. You might be asking, of all the scenes to 'end' with, why the BBQ Range? I'll be honest, there's a deeply sentimental angle to it for me. The Sosigs, our wibbly wonderful little meaty friends, and the creation of mine that I love the most. The idea of moving on from this iteration of them is made easier, knowing that I've given them a little home of their own, eternally hanging out for a backyard party of plinking, fireworks, and horseshoes. In their place, one couldn't wish for more :-)

The Future

As mentioned in the devlog above, this release isn't the END end. There are still bugs to fix. We are bringing creation tools to a wider audience that I am SURE will reveal things in need of fixing. We have a Steam Frame coming soon? that needs some support hooks and controller models for. And we have a Credits scene that MUST be done. And of course, and entire second sosig-ee adventure to bring into the world. This is the end of a chapter/act of a larger story, and I'm crazy excited about what's to come despite the melancholy of this particular moment.

Thank You

Well the clock moves ever onward towards midnight and I have a bunch of other things to stage and double-confirm are correct for this transition tonight. Before I go I just wanted to extend my deepest thanks to all of you, who've been with us on this journey. I think back to those earliest days of this project, when our 'game' was just a couple scenes held together with gum and gumption, building something a week at a time that none of us had any clue in the world could ever grow to a project like what now exists. So many of you gave us a chance to grow, the game, in the medium, as people. I will forever be grateful to you all. It has been the greatest privilege to bring y'all a decade of our weird art.

I wish you all a Wonderful, Safe and Happy Holiday weekend.
Peace,

Anton

Changelog Note: The full changelog for Update 120, being the sum of almost a year of builds, exceeds the maximum text length for a Steam post, by a great deal. Rather than collating and reproducing it here, please consult the prior announcements from this one, back to October 10, 2025 for the complete lists of changes. Apologies for the inconvenience :-)

Final Build Additions - Update 120

Additions:

• Added New Scene: BBQ Range [Sandbox Sosig Party]
• Added New Firearm Grocket Launcher [67mm Garage Rocket]
• Added New Ammo Type: 67mm Garage Rocket (HE, Tesla, Starburst)
• Added New Gameplanner Tool: Signals Sosig Squad Spawner
• Added New Attachment: H3VR2 Wishlist now flag (at the request of DDRandom)

Changes:

• Backpack and ButtBackpack reclassified in FVRObject in Category
• Updated Sound Mixing for Bangsnap
• Changed Object Table filtration for Take & Hold characters to make it no longer filter included characters, and to filter exterminal character more accuratlely
• A bunch of tiny last minute things I wasn’t keeping track of because there was so much to get done in this last week.

Fixed:

• ObjectTables: Fixed an issue where tables using VaultFiles might cause errors during validation

API Notes:

• TNH_CharacterDef: Added SecondaryWeaponCopiesPrimary
• When set to true the character's secondary weapon is forced to be a copy of whatever was spawned as the primary
• TNH_CharacterDef: Added RoundClassBlacklist
• Round classes in this list will not spawn in TNH or be purchasable at the ammo reloader.
• ObjectTableDef: Added NumSpawns and SpawnsAreTheSame
• Works only on the TNH object constructor, when NumSpawns is set greater than 1 it will spawn that many objects from the table. If SpawnsAreTheSame is true, those objects will all be the same.
• ObjectTableDef vault file spawning now works in TNH as both initial equipment and from the object constructor. Both of these allow for spawning the whole file as-is on its own, or spawning just the first object out of the file and receiving a random magazine like a normal spawn would.
• TNH_CharacterDef: Added AllowConstructorUnlock fields to disallow players from being able to unlock and cycle through pools
• TNH: Initial equipment that spawns with bare rounds will now always give you the base round of that type, instead of spawning with AP or something else.

For Those Running With Mods

- Make sure to get the latest version of them, from wherever you get your mods. Please note that some may take a day/week etc. to migrate over to the new 1.0

- If you wish to go back, the Update119 Beta Branch was the build that was 'mainline' as of yesterday. Do note that if you've run H3VR in its 1.0 update, your vault (saved guns/scenarios) have been one-way converted to the new format.

- Please be patient with the WONDERFUL folks who make mods during this transition. It might be a little bumpy, and we're all doing our best.