Hey everyone!
Update 18 is live, adding a new desert biome, very nice optimizations for world generation speed, an extremely significant bugfix/optimization for CPUs with 8 or less threads, making it possible to hold tools without having to hold the trigger button and much more!
As usual, here is a very quick overview of the new things added in this Update, with more details below:
- Added desert biome! It's big, it's sandy, and it's sunny! It has its own special music, sounds, weather and lighting
- Significantly optimized world generation. It's way faster now, and lighter on the RAM, very noticeable
- Fixed very significant world loading bug that affected CPUs with 8 or less threads. This caused a lot of world loading issues on such CPUs, so this fix alone makes the game feel 5 times better on such CPUs.
- Grabbed tools stay attached to your hand now, without having to keep holding the trigger
- Fixed multiple bugs and possible crashes with tree saving/loading
- Improve spawning of environment sounds, it could happen before that sounds were spawned multiple times
- Double smooth loco speed by using both controllers at once
- Optimized ore spawning a lot (5 times faster), meaning ore distribution looks a bit different now than before
- 8K screenshots now always take 2 screenshots, one bright one and one less bright one
- Fixed crash that could happen when destroying many blocks at once
- Added "chunk reload" function that might help when there's any issues with chunk loading
- Reduce teleport distance during smooth loco movement
Desert biome!
Finally, theres a desert biome in the game! The desert has it's own music, it's own windy sound effects, and special lighting adjusted for the desert. It's definitely not just "a bunch of different blocks".
Also, as opposed to the regular biome, where you usually see beatiful aurora effects in the sky, the desert gives you a very clear sky where you can just focus on the stars:
The game actually had no real system for "biomes" before, since there were only two biomes, "hilly" and "flat", but with the same base generation. The addition of the desert means I had to add a real system for biomes, and transitioning the different biomes nicely into each other regarding the height of the terrain.
That's where most time was spent on, and of course this is work that only has to be done once. Now that the whole system for biomes is in place, adding new biomes is very easy in the future!
So, the desert has a lot of sand, which you can use for building of course! You can collect it same like dirt, best with a copper shovel.
World generation optimizations
I've spent a lot of time further optimizing the world generation algorithms. Even though the whole "biome transition" code that was added has made the world generation significantly more complex, with these optimizations the world gen is way faster than before.
As part of these optimizations, ore spawning was also completely redone and is now roughly 5 times faster and significantly more future-proof since new ore types can be added with no additional slowdown of world gen. Due to this change, ore distribution is slightly different than before, but you should probably not notice the difference at all. What you notice is just that new parts of the world generate way faster!
Fixed very significant world loading bug
There was a very significant world loading bug that affected CPUs with 8 or less threads, which is the majority of players. If you played the game for a while, that bug caused a lot of world loading issues, like the world loading completely stopping, wrong LODs being visible, chunks not being visible at all, teleport not working or other similar issues. This fix alone makes the world loading feel so much smoother that you will probably notice it immediately if you have a CPU with 8 or less threads.
Tools "stick" to your hand now
With Update 14, the great system for grabbing tools in the world at any time with any hand was added, that allowed you to use tools with both hands at the same time, resulting in twice the mining speed!
For grabbing a tool, it was nesessarry though to press and hold the trigger button, if you released it, you would drop the tool out of your hand, just like you drop block items if you release the trigger button. Now, that changed!
Starting with this Update, you only have to press the trigger button to grab a tool, and even after you release the trigger, the tool will stay attached to your hand. Only after you press and release the trigger a second time you will drop the tool. This makes it significantly easier on your fingers, it was quite a popular request!
Double the smooth loco speed by using both hands simultaniously
It's now possible to use both hands at the same time for smooth locomotion. Before, you could use smooth loco by holding the menu button on any hand and orienting the controller while you do that to adjust the direction you move in. It only worked with 1 controller at a time though.
Now, you can press the menu buttons on both controllers at the same time and get 2x the speed out of that! The smooth loco movement speed with one hand was 9 km/h before, it was reduced to 7.2 km/h now, but since it's now possible to use both hands that means you actually get a total speed of 14.4 km/h, which is significantly more than before!
Chunk reload function
This feature is not even really worth mentioning any more, since all the world loading issues got fixed with that major fix I mentioned above. This chunk reload function was added before I found and fixed that major loading bug that affected CPUs with 8 or less threads. But since I added it, I can also mention it!
If you hold both the hand buttons on both touchpads and the right grip button for 2 seconds, all chunks around you will first unload (disappear) and then load again. So, if you would ever encounter any missing chunks or similar things, you could use this to fix it instead of having to go back to the main menu and load the world again.
But since hopefully no world loading issues exist any more, this became quite an obsolete feature before it was even released in the stable branch of the game :)
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All the things mentioned above have been in the beta branch of the game for a while already and were tested by our great beta testers there! Thanks to those, you hopefully get fully stable updates in the stable branch of the game. If you also want to test new features earlier when they come out in the beta branch, make sure to join the official cyubeVR discord and take a look at the #beta-build-patch-notes and #beta-build-discussion channel!
This update taking significantly longer than usual, 1 update a week is what I considered "normal" for this game. There actually were 14 seperate beta versions that were released during the last few weeks!
If you want to know more about that, definitely take a look at the Weekly Report #5 that I just released a few minutes ago! I explain quite detailed why this update took longer than usually, and even list all the individual beta build patch notes!
That's all for today! Thanks for caring about the game and as usually, make sure to report all issues you see and give me as much feedback as possible in the official forums or the official discord server. If you don't like something about the game, tell me there and I'll try to improve it! I'm available to chat with anyone in discord.
If you like the game, don't forget to tell other people about it and write a review on Steam if you haven't done that already, even if its just a few words. Writing a review and spreading the word is the easiest way you can support the game!
Looking forward to hearing what you think about the new update :)
Cheers!