Sep 29, 2024

Update 58 for cyubeVR is live! New objects to build, water, and much more!

cyubeVR - Stonebrick Studios

Hey everyone, Update 58 for cyubeVR is live!

There is a lot in this Update!

This update adds many cool new things to craft and build, like a great functional shelf for the wall, new chairs, couching places and statues! It also adds a great looking native water block, a much-requested feature for easily teleporting home, completely new music for shimmerstone caves with new realistic reverb for sounds, a completely new dynamic 3D crafting recipe visualization with a new UI, Polish localization, the ability to place mesh objects on top of other objects, a new HQ Video Capture mode, significant optimizations, and as always, many more general improvements and bugfixes!

Let's first take a look at the really long list of changes, and after that, let's get into more detail for the biggest changes! Btw, are you in the official cyubeVR Discord yet?

Added new furniture to craft and build: A Simple Couching Place, a Stone Pedestal, a Fancy Couching Place, an Ancient Stone Statue, and a Stone Guardian Statue
Added a functional shelf that works like a chest on the wall
Added two new chairs! Two fancy chairs, a dark version and a light version.
Added an always available "Teleport to respawn torch" feature, allowing you to easily teleport back to your home at your active respawn torch
Added a very fancy water block
Added completely new ambience music to shimmerstone caves
Significantly improved the general sound atmosphere in shimmerstone caves with realistic reverb (echo) on all sounds
You now hear you own voice subtly echo in the cave when you say something, which feels super immersive!
The rotating crafting recipe preview you see when clicking on a recipe in the "Crafting Recipes" tab is now rendered as a real-time rotating 3d preview instead of a video
Major improvements to the "Crafting Recipes" UI in the briefcase, with new "Description" and "Yield" texts
Added Polish localization! cyubeVR can now be played in Polish language!
Mesh objects can now be placed on top of mesh objects, as long as there is a flat enough area to place something on.
Added a significant change to how block items behave in your hands: If you hold a block item in your hand and drop it while holding your hand relatively still, the block item now magically floats for a short time before it starts falling towards the ground
All custom mod blocks now use the new dynamic 3D recipe preview instead of the manually supplied recipe image in the "Crafting Recipes" UI
Improved and optimized the recipe detection to better handle rotated/mirrored structures.
Significantly improved the visuals of the LIV output when using LIV mixed reality capture with the game
Added a really helpful mesh object re-place feature
Added 20 new default pictures to the picture frames
Added 52 new screenshots to the community screenshot showcase in the main menu
Added 3 new achievements: Place a water block, Place a couching place, Teleport to respawn torch
Added a new "HQ Video Capture" mode
Animals now spawn half a block lower, which should primarily fix floating rabbits or geckos
Fixed that the briefcase sometimes doesn't make a sound when opening it
Made the briefcase move quicker to new location when teleporting while the briefcase is opened
Fixed a crash when trying to launch the game while Steam is in "Offline Mode"
Improved localization of the "Light Shaft Brightness" setting
Fixed custom blocks without a normal texture having incorrect normal texture applied
Fixed deer sometimes spawning in ground
Improved German localization of the "You are dead" message
Reduced strength of the red "low on health" effect
Fixed the respawn torch having incorrect material applied
Added the information that you can look at the coordinates in the stats to not get lost to multiple objectives that require you to explore
Significant optimizations to the chunk update code speed, like it no longer waits for saving now before you can update a chunk again
If you ever see "green" for more than 60 seconds now, the green disappears to allow you to see where you are
Fixed that desert grass drops green dye when destroyed (it now drops dried grass)
Fixed that glass blocks sometimes stayed visible after being destroyed
Fixed the furnace UI text not being localized, it was in english in all languages before
Fixed the french translation of the "You are dead" message after dying
Fixed the french translation of the word "recipes", it's now "Plans" instead of "Recettes"
Fixed the translations of the item quick drop feature manual page
Fixed possible rare crash while crafting
Fixed multiple other possible rare crashes
Improved the "dead body inventory" spawn location. now it should always spawn at the location below you, where you actually died.
Improved the mesh object preview color a bit, the red when something cannot be placed is much more visible now
Fixed some mesh objects not having a hit sound when hit with tool
Fixed mesh objects healing too quickly after damaging them with a tool
Deer and Rabbits now have more variation in size
Small CPU optimization
Dragging mesh objects around (like chairs, shelfs etc) now has haptic feedback on the controllers
The minimum size for resizable mesh objects is now much smaller
Fixed that it was possible to walk through chests or tables
Fixed that it would sometimes take a bit too long before the preview of a mesh object would become visible after selecting it on the radial menu
Disabled the up/down selection feature of the index controller advanced control scheme
The game now makes sure to never despawn block items that are attached to each other for an unfinished recipe, or which are on fire in the furnace
Fixed the hitbox of all the desert grasses, destroying it is now much easier
Maybe fixed that block items sometimes lose gravity and float, and sometimes have an incorrect size
The game now guarantees that the 50 most recently interacted with free crystals never despawn, but other free crystals (crystals that aren't in chests or shelves) now are allowed to despawn
Fixed that very quickly moving an item out of the inventory makes it float and not fall down
Free block items on chunks that are being unloaded now lose their physics - the same as if you would leave and re-enter the world, making sure they don't disappear when you walk away
Renamed the "Chair" to "Simple Chair"
Changed the sound effect of "Stone Pickaxe hits Stone", it sounds more similar to the copper pickaxe on stone now
Fixed some mesh objects not playing a sound when being destroyed
Fixed that some mesh objects used incorrect hit damage values for different tools when hitting them with a tool, many objects took too much damage
Fixed that some mesh objects made of stone had wood hit sounds, and generally improved the hit sounds for some more variation
Fixed destroying the furnace spawning the items very far apart
Added CopyStringToClipboard function for BP modders
Fixed footsteps sounds sometimes not playing when walking too quickly
Fixed walking on blue shimmerstone not playing footstep sounds
Fixed multiple objects not taking damage correctly when hit by a tool
Fixed putting a torch over the shoulder with the left hand making the right hand vibrate
When enabling the picture frame picture selector, the left hand now plays haptic feedback to make the player aware of the picture selection tool appearing on the left hand
Fixed incorrect snow texture on shimmerstone and starstone, and possibly incorrect snow texture on some other blocks as well
Fixed AO shadows on blocks missing for some blocks if they were arranged in specific ways
Improved the "Getting Wood with a Stick from a Tree", previously you had to hit the tree with the front of the stick, now a hit of the whole stick counts as a valid hit
Fixed snow sometimes not working correctly on mesh objects
Improved the snow amount on some mesh objects
When hitting cloakstone with a copper pickaxe or stone pickaxe, there's now a hint text saying you need an iron pickaxe
Fixed it being possible to add a flint stone to a chest, crashing the game
CPU optimizations for some low level voxel code
Added a "Cave Reverb Voice Volume" setting
Fixed it not being possible to grab block item if the hand overlapped it while dropping it from another hand
Fixed that grabbing a block item while simultaneously grabbing a gravity-glove-grabbed block item causing both items to be grabbed and one to become stuck to the hand
Fixed that animals you kept as pets might sometimes despawn
Fixed that it sometimes felt too hard to grab the crystal out of the slot in the bucket or the build tool
Fixed hands not being hidden in LIV output
Optimized the chunk update speed for large complex chunks, reducing the latency between placing/removing a block and that change becoming visible
Fixed sledgehammer not dropping less items when used on shimmerstone
Fixed white flowers looking way too small with basic foliage quality
Improved placing of ground mesh objects
CPU optimization for deselecting crafting recipes
CPU optimization for tree loading
Fixed dirt blocks incorrectly turning into grass blocks when placing a dirt block below a damaged grass block
Fixed grass block not turning into dirt block when moving a previously placed grass block below a solid block
Fixed arrow sometimes playing "hit" sound multiple times depending on what it hit
When trying to place a respawn torch without having the required 4 blocks of free space above, there now comes up a hint text explaining that you need 4 blocks of free space above
Added info about the existence of the "Teleport to respawn torch" button to the "Find Coal" objective text
Added a new objective, "Fully re-place the chair you placed", explaining the existence of the "Re-placing" feature for mesh objects
Fixed vertical images being displayed in wrong aspect ratio on the picture frame picture selector
Optimized VRAM usage of default picture frame pictures
Improved the picture frame picture selector to show 2 rows of pictures instead of just 1, allowing to have a lot more images easily accessible in the picture selector
Fixed that pictures in picture frames would sometimes not receive torch light and look too dark
Fixed the pictures in picture frames looking too bright and/or too high contrast in torch light
Fixed possible bug with moving mesh objects from one chunk to another
Fixed resolution setting slider not being loaded correctly
Fixed that taking a screenshot would enable dynamic resolution again even if it's turned off in the settings
Adjusted firkin stack size to be the same like barell stack size
Fixed a possible crash

New objects to craft and build: Shelf, Couching Places, Chairs, Statues

cyubeVR is a game primarily about crafting and building, so adding cool new things to craft and build is always important! There are multiple cool new objects now, of course with new recipes you can find as new recipe papers in the world:

- A Shelf! It's a bit like a chest, but differently looking, smaller, and placed on the wall. It's not just a decorative object, but it's actually functioning like a chest on the wall, with 5 item slots that can contain items in the same way like a chest does. The shelf is relatively small to allow you to place multiple of them in a modular way to have a lot of freedom with your interior shelf-design. Previously, putting items into a chest and crafting directly out of a chest was the fastest way to do crafting in cyubeVR, but now the most convenient way to craft is actually from a shelf! You can even move full stacks of items directly from a shelf to a chest or the other way around. And of course, the shelf has nice 8K textures, like you're used to from everything in cyubeVR ;)

- Two different "Couching Places"! A "Simple Couching Place" and a "Fancy Couching Place". This was actually one of the most requested objects from players! Some people might simply call these "bed". But hey, every voxel game has a bed, and cyubeVR should be special - so cyubeVR doesn't have "beds", cyubeVR has "Couching Places"! They're large objects, so these two recipes are also the two new largest recipes in the game. If you want to make your home feel nice and cozy, this is for you!

- Two new fancy chairs! There is a new style of more fancy looking chair available to craft now, available in two wood colors, one version crafted with light processed wood and one version crafted with dark processed wood. This is giving you some new additional chair options, in addition to the existing simple chairs that already exist in the game.

- An ancient stone statue! It's a hooded humanoid figure, holding the hands open. Inside of those hands, you can freely place other decorative objects, like for example a firkin, or another statue. And of course it can be freely resized while placing, from a tiny statue to a giant statue, and can be moved around after being placed. It only needs regular stone to be crafted.

- A stone guardian statue, and a stone pedestal! The stone pedestal is great for placing statues or other objects on top and of course they're both freely resizable, so they can be everything between tiny and huge. And the guardian statue really looks awesome!

New Crafting Recipe UI with 3D Preview and Description

There are major changes to the very important "Crafting Recipes" UI in the magical briefcase: It looks very different now!

1. The rotating crafting recipe preview you see when clicking on a recipe in the "Crafting Recipes" tab is now rendered as a real-time rotating 3d preview instead of a video, allowing you to freely rotate it inside of that UI by holding the trigger button! That was a long requested feature, that makes seeing how exactly to craft something much easier. You can freely look at the recipe from above, below, or any other angle now, instead of being limited to a video rotating around a specific axis.

2. There is now a new "Description" box for each recipe, explaining briefly in a short description text what the item is about, or what it can be used for. This was something that was always missing so far, a simple way to know why you would want to craft a certain object before you have actually crafted it.

3. There is a new "Yield" box for each recipe, telling you how many items you get when crafting that recipe. For example, it shows you that crafting the wallstone recipe will result in 16 wallstone. Previously, this information was never shown anywhere before having crafted something, and the only way to know how many items you get from a recipe was crafting it. The "Yield" info also exists for all custom mod block recipes!

4. The general UI design (textures/colors) of the "Crafting Recipes" UI has changed, making it generally look better.

5. All custom mod blocks now also use the new dynamic 3D recipe preview instead of the previously manually supplied recipe image in the "Crafting Recipes" UI after clicking on the custom block! Having a 3D preview makes it much easier to understand how to craft a custom block recipe than only having the previous 2D image supplied by the author. It also saves modders from having to create a recipe image for their block. So it speeds up the process of creating custom blocks, which is great! Lastly, it also reduces the VRAM usage of each installed custom block by 342 kB, allowing you to install more custom blocks without running out of VRAM.

"Teleport to respawn torch" Feature

One of the most requested features from new players after the release of the game on PSVR2 was actually a way to easily teleport back home, because a lot of players had the feeling that it's a bit too difficult to find their home again after exploring, or get back home after accidentally falling into a hole somewhere.

And while it can be a fun challenge for some people to actually remember your way back home, or remember the coordinates, it definitely seems better to offer a simple, always available "Teleport Home" feature for those people who want to use it.

So there is now a very easily, always accessible "Teleport to Respawn Torch" button directly next to the "Back to Main Menu" button, allowing you to easily teleport back to your active respawn torch!

Mesh objects can now be placed on top of other mesh objects

There are many cool objects in the game that you can use for your build, like tables, chairs, or useful objects like a chest - but there was one big limit for them before: They were only able to get placed on proper (blocky) ground. You couldn't place a statue on a chair, or a chest on a table. That's now possible!

All mesh objects can now be placed on top of other objects, as long as there is a flat enough area to place something on. So you can now place a chest on top of a table, or a barrel on top of a shelf, or a smoothbrain statue on top of a chair, or anything else really. This creates a ton of new possibilities for building! You could even place a table on top of a table on top of a table on top of a table on top of a table on top of a table...

The minimum size for resizable mesh objects is also now much smaller (0.1x instead of 0.5x), so of any object that allows to be resized while placing, you can now create much smaller versions, like tiny statues that you might want to place on top of a table.

Mesh object re-place feature

A mesh object re-place feature! Not a replace feature, but a re-place feature! Yes, a bit confusing ;)

Previously, you could only drag around placed mesh objects, like chests or chairs, on the same plane they were placed on. If you wanted to move them more, or if they're decorative objects that you wanted to resize, you had to destroy them, re-craft them and then place them in the desired size and location.

With the new large mesh objects added in this update, like the couching places and statues, with quite large recipes, requiring to fully re-craft them just for moving them or slightly adjusting their size was far from ideal - so that's why now a re-place function exists, you can get back into the placing mode for any already placed mesh object!

You can now freely move any such object anywhere else, and also freely resize it again! You get into the re-placing mode by first starting a regular move of the mesh object by grabbing it with both hands, and then you can just press the trigger button on either hand to enable the full placing mode. The previously placed object will disappear then, and you are in the regular placing mode. If you cancel the placing, the object automatically re-appears in its original location where it was before you started the re-placing. Try it out!

Dragging mesh objects around now also has haptic feedback on the controllers. The quicker you drag something, the stronger the haptic feedback is.

The placing of ground mesh objects has also generally been improved: If you point into the air in front of you, you still see a preview of the object now, you no longer need to point directly at the ground.

Floating block items for crafting

There is a very significant change to how block items (the small items you craft with) behave in your hands: If you hold a block item in your hand and drop it while holding your hand relatively still, the block item now magically floats for a short time (~1 second) before it actually starts being affected by grabity and starts falling towards the ground.

For individual non-connected block items, this is just something really fun to play around with since it looks really cool to have them spin around in the air for a short while after letting go of them, but the main benefit is about what happens when you craft something, especially larger recipes:

Since the crafted recipe structure is now also not immediately falling to the ground when crafting, but floating for a short while, you can easily re-grab it in a different position without having to put it down anywhere first - so you can really quickly adjust the rotation or position you hold it in, which is a major help for large recipes that require re-grabbing the unfinished recipe structure a few times in different positions during the process of crafting it.

Another benefit is that you can now very easily move block item structures from grabbing them with one hand into the other hand, which was also not possible before. This is a really big improvement to how crafting in cyubeVR feels like, especially for large recipes like the furnace or the new recently added large furniture recipes :)

Much improved audio atmosphere in shimmerstone caves

You know the awesome large glowing shimmerstone caves in cyubeVR, right? Everyone is always in awe when seeing such a cave in cyubeVR - but the audio in it so far was nothing special. That significantly changes now, so that the caves are not just visually super impressive, but also very impressive audio-wise!

First, there is completely new ambience music in the shimmerstone caves, made specifically for the shimmerstone caves in the game. The game now detects if you are in a shimmerstone cave, and if yes, plays that nice unique fitting cave ambience specifically designed for those glowing caves, instead of just the regular background music.

But music is just one part of the audio atmoshpere - caves are large, and somehow I had never considered before that large caves of course need a lot of reverberation of sound, it's not realistic for footsteps to sound the same in large caves like under an open sky. So now there's some really great sounding reverb (echo) on all sounds in shimmerstone caves, like your footsteps, tools hitting blocks, and everything else where it makes sense! It completely changes the feeling of sound in shimmerstone caves, and even more so with the completely new music! It suddenly really sounds like you're in a very large cave.

And the icing on the cake comes now... You now hear your own voice subtly reverberate (echo) in the cave when you say something, which feels super immersive! Definitely try that out when you're in such a cave, there probably aren't many games that simulate an echo of your own voice in caves. It's a feature that's generally only possible in VR, since only VR guarantees that every player has a proper microphone right in front of their mouth that can be used for simulating a good echo of the voice in a cave!

There also is a new "Cave Reverb Voice Volume" setting, to allow you to set the volume of your voice reverb in shimmerstone caves to your liking, in case you want to turn it down or up.

Water block

One of the most requested features in cyubeVR for a long time - water! Yes, finally, there is water in the game! Not super complex water with realistic water physics, and also not part of the terrain generation so far to keep it simple and not require a complete change of the terrain generation, but it's still very fancy looking water that's great for building a nice lake next to your house, or a pretty fountain, or a waterfall somewhere!

Previously, the plan was to wait with adding water until time allows for directly adding water with fully realistic physics, because that would really be something cool and unique in a voxel game, but recently there have been a lot of players giving the feedback that they are primarily interested in being able to build a nice lake next to their house to make it look nice, which should be possible with some simple water that's not too difficult to add - so that showed that the good plan for adding water really is to prioritize having some great looking, craftable decorative water without physics now, over having to wait much longer until there is time for adding water with good physics, because that would be way more work to add, and there are quite a few higher priority features to add.

So now there's a fancy looking decorative water block with a very pretty shader that's great for decorating your build! It's a very simple recipe, crafted with blue starstone and glass.

Placing a block of water actually recursively places water at any blocks of air (or grass) below, making it very easy to fill large spaces fully with water, and not just one layer of water. So it's really great for building something like a lake! From the top, the water looks like a nice still lake, while from the side, it looks like fast flowing water. This makes it both well suitable for something like a lake, and something like a fountain or waterfall.

Walking in it of course makes you hear nice splash-splash footstep sounds, and putting your head inside also makes everything quite blue and hard to see - there is no swimming so far though, you can walk through water blocks.

HQ Video Capture mode

cyubeVR is a game where many people like to create super awesome looking builds - and it's always awesome to see when people share screenshots or videos of those builds. For screenshots, the game already has the long-existing native 8K or even 16K screenshot feature, but taking really high quality videos was still more difficult. Now that changes!

There is now a new official "HQ Video Capture" mode that can be enabled and configured in the "Performance" tab of the in-game settings. This new mode allows for recording short videos of the game where all GPU priority should be on getting maximum quality in the video output, like if you want to create a cool showcase video of a build you created!

Enabling this mode limits the game to exactly 60 fps (a great framerate for recording videos), significantly reduces the resolution in VR, and renders the game in a native 16:9 aspect ratio in a windowed desktop mirror, with adjustable 1080p or 1440p resolution, making it independent of the VR resolution. It also has controls for customizable camera smoothing and customizable FOV values, all configurable in the in-game settings!

There also is a setting for hiding the hands on the HQ Video Capture, which can look great together with a large amount of camera smoothing for camera tracking-shots.

This is basically a new version of the old "High-Res Video Capture Mode" that was added to cyubeVR back in 2018, which is probably one of the least known features of the game because it was only ever accessible through the INI file, and not kept up to date well. The INI config for that old version has been removed now, since the new "HQ Video Capture" is fully configurable from within the in-game settings.

Try it out and create some cool videos! :)

Independent of this, the LIV integration has also been significantly improved, leading to a way more high quality LIV video output at no extra performance cost!

New screenshots in the community screenshot showcase, and new custom blocks!

There are many cool new screenshots of very cool builds that have been added to the community screenshot showcase in the main menu of the game, take a look at them in this other news post! It also includes an overview of cool new custom blocks that were recently uploaded to the Steam Workshop:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/619500/view/4705788605364954572

If you also have built something cool, share a screenshot of it in the #screenshots channel in the official cyubeVR Discord to have it added to the community screenshot showcase!

And if you're interested in Modding cyubeVR, take a look at this: https://github.com/cyubeVR-Modding

Thanks very much to all the Patreon supporters!

A big thanks to everyone for supporting the development of cyubeVR on Patreon! I'm working full-time on cyubeVR, so any Patreon Supporter is really worth a lot for the continued development of the game. Thanks so much to all the Patreon Supporters (list sorted by total lifetime donation, highest first):

ChibiArcher, Arados, @B4nH4mm3r on Discord, Ethernoctis, Quill, Lynx, Lucanes, Bhima, Plantmaster, Altair, Albertbz, SkgBlaze, Trevor Berninger, ErrorNull, Sceptrex, KroyVR, Tom Hörberg, David R., Saltshine, Al Raw, David O, Eti the Spirit, Shanya / Sabrina, DiamondHunter_, HeyMika, MightyDuck, gunair, VenturePopTV, Yasha, WillyVR, wherr, Austin Flores, TallOnTwo, Tiddlez, Talsma, Michael Ballard, M1kk3l, Zarvock, WarChi1d, John Patton, Alphie, Jackerino, Dark Slaughter, Nathaniel Despres, __mt, Curzek, Lucas van Leiden, mazzawoollza, Super Papita, Solid Hernando, RelativelyQuantum, Volpe, Netshaman, Dave Pearson, Bucket Codes, Lordoldmanrets, Daniel Crawford, texhnobees, Saul2000, TinyMrMan (MB), AnubisXtreme, Wyrm, T0n16490, joerkig, MurphChops, Connor A, Leo McKeon, Algiz, Irwin Fletcher, Andrew Stevenson, MeisterSasa, Frederik Jacobus Jansen van Rensburg, WillyVR, nqeron, Lumezzangeles, SingingFluffyUK, Idalinn, TNMPlayer, Cameron Dean

Patreon rewards are being mentioned in the list of Patreon supporters in the main menu, getting a special colored name in the official cyubeVR discord, and physical items like a sticker, mug, or T-Shirt with cyubeVR designs.

As usual, thanks very much to our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord who tested this update as part of 47 separate beta builds! If you want to test new features earlier when they come out in the beta branch, make sure to join the discord and take a look at the #beta-build-patch-notes and #beta-build-discussion channel!

That's all for today! 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 it's simply "good game". Writing a positive review is the easiest way you can support the game because indie devs like me are very dependent on the Steam Algorithm recommending the game to new people to be able to afford to keep working on it!

Thanks for caring about the game and as usual, 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, join it before its full ;) We're over 4600 people there already, come and join us! If you don't like something about the game, please tell me there and I'll try to improve it! I'm available to chat with anyone in Discord :)

There's also the official cyubeVR subreddit on Reddit, if you're active on Reddit, make sure to subscribe to it and maybe post some great screenshots there!

You can also follow cyubeVR on X/Twitter or follow cyubeVR on Bluesky.

And lastly, don't forget there's an official roadmap with voting features.

Looking forward to hearing what you think about the new update :)

Cheers!

Sep 29, 2024

New awesome builds in the community screenshot showcase, and new custom blocks!

cyubeVR - Stonebrick Studios

With Update 58, these new screenshots of very cool builds have been added to the community screenshot showcase in the main menu of the game! Normally these would be mentioned directly in the Update 58 Announcement post, but Update 58 has so much new stuff that the the Update 58 Announcement post actually hit the maximum length allowed by an announcement on Steam, so these had to be split into this separate post here.

So take a look at these awesome builds by cyubeVR players here:

Cow | Built by: ChibiArcher

House | Built by: Talsma

Pagoda | Built by: ChibiArcher

Small Mayan Temple | Built by: ChibiArcher

Train Station | Built by: @ChibiArcher

City | Built by: KroyVR

Boat | Built by: @ChibiArcher

Apple Office Block | Built by: lonewolf2912

Borg Cube | Built by: @MeisterSasa

Brick build | Built by: @lonewolf2912

Bridge in Mine | Built by: @koumorileo

Building | Built by: @𝑫𝒂𝒇𝒕

Cantilever Steel Bridge | Built by: @svennoj

Small Castle | Built by: @Askaron

Castle | Built by: @Tino

Chapel | Built by: Nihilist Ryan the Game Feline

cyubusCC | Built by: @MeisterSasa

Fortress Project | Built by: @HYPH4ZE

Furnace Reactors | Built by: @Oriondestiny

Game of Chess | Built by: @Oriondestiny

Glass Pyramid | Built by: @svennoj

Huge Glass Skyscraper | Built by: Dark_Stellar2100

Statue of Liberty | Built by: @H2O

Statue of Liberty Park | Built by: @H2O

Little Maya Temple | Built by: @MeisterSasa

Lonely Chair on Glass | Built by: @SunTiger

Mana Palace | Built by: @HYPH4ZE

Mana Palace at Night | Built by: @HYPH4ZE

Map | Built by: @guernz1985

Mine Entrance | Built by: @HYPH4ZE

Modern Art | Built by: Phantom

Panorama Sky | Built by: @MeisterSasa

Place with Observatory | Built by: @koumorileo

Pool of Paradise | Built by: @koumorileo

Skyscraper | Built by: @lonewolf2912

Triangle, Circle, X, Square | Built by: @Tino

Stadion | Built by: @Sheriff

Starship | Built by: @Oriondestiny

Small Stone Castle | Built by: @lonewolf2912

Tower | Built by: @svennoj

Tower | Built by: @Catsmith

Tower | Built by: @danhat101

Tower from above | Built by: @danhat101

Towers | Built by: @danhat101

Town | Built by: @koumorileo

Plane | Built by: @Oriondestiny

Skyscraper | Built by: @Sheriff

If you also have built something cool, share a screenshot of it in the #screenshots channel in the official cyubeVR Discord to have it added to the community screenshot showcase!

More awesome new custom blocks

Now read the rest of the Update 58 Announcement Post here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/619500/view/4705788605364829599

Feb 7, 2024

Update 57 for cyubeVR is live! Localization, Seated Mode, and more!

cyubeVR - Stonebrick Studios

Hey everyone, Update 57 for cyubeVR is live!

This update adds localization support making cyubeVR now officially playable in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian and Klingon language! Also, cyubeVR now officially supports seated gameplay through a "Seated Mode", and there are significant CPU performance, GPU performance and RAM usage optimizations, improvements to the graphics, and as always, many more improvements and bugfixes!

Let's first take a look at the long list of changes, and after that, let's get into more detail for the biggest changes! Btw, are you in the official cyubeVR Discord yet?

Added localization support to all text in the game!
Added German language support
Added Spanish language support
Added French language support
Added Italian language support
Added Portuguese language support
Added Ukrainian language support
Added Klingon language support
Added a "Seated Mode" that adjusts the height of the player by an adjustable offset and adds a crouch toggle button
Many significant CPU performance and RAM usage optimizations
Added new fancy shadows around the corners of blocks
On "Basic" and "Medium" Ground Foliage Quality, trees have new distant LODs now that look much better
Added a custom keyboard to the main menu for entering the world name and seed (instead of the SteamVR Keyboard)
Renamed the "Ground Foliage Quality" setting to "Foliage Quality" since it affects both grass and trees now
Added a "High" option to the "Terrain LOD Quality" setting. It's closer to "Ultra" than to "Normal" regarding the quality
Improved graphics of "Light Shaft Quality" on "Low" and "Mid" settings
Increased the default smooth turn speed, and also increased the maximum speed you can set smooth turning to
Reduced brightness of sun shadows
Reduced the nighttime cricket volume by 50%
Fixed the floating recipe paper sound not quite being as "positional/3D" as it should be
Reduced the default music volume (from 50% to 35% on the slider in the settings)
Slightly increased the footstep sounds volume
All block textures in the game are now loaded at runtime, in theory allowing for texture packs to easily be created
Improved the perceived texture resolution of the furnace, bucket, stone pickaxe, and light tree
Significantly optimized the performance of crafting large recipes like the furnace
Made transition between outside sounds on/off much smoother when entering/leaving an enclosed space
Optimized the performance of the button mapping view
Optimized the briefcase UI performance
Optimized CPU performance when having many objects placed in the level that can be dragged around with both hands
Major performance optimizations to quickly mining a lot of blocks, primarily when using area damage tools (sledgehammers and iron shovel)
Significant RAM usage reduction related to custom blocks, resulting in multiple GBs less RAM usage now if you have a lot of custom blocks installed
Optimized the size of the WorldMetadata.important files in the save data, they're less than half the size now for large worlds
Optimizations to chunk saving and unloading
Optimized RAM usage while quickly walking around in the world
Optimized the chunk LOD calculation, resulting in less vertices per LOD chunk
Added a mesh optimization pass that reorders the vertices/triangles of chunks for more efficient rendering on the GPU
Removed "Manual" tab in main menu since there is no reason any more to read the Manual in the main menu
Slightly improved the animation on the logo when starting the game
Improved the wording and positioning of the "You can't modify the world here yet" warning message
Increased the size of the copper and iron shovel, and adjusted the grab rotation
Added three new stats in the "Stats" tab of the settings: "Loaded Chunks", "Memory Used" and "Peak Memory Used"
The manual tab in the briefcase defaults to the "First Steps" page now instead of the "Welcome" page
Improved the loading screen % number, it jumps around less now while going up
Uncategorized custom blocks are now automatically put in one or multiple "Misc" categories
Custom block categories now display a number on them that show how many blocks are inside of that category
Increased accuracy of the VRAM memory calculation for custom blocks in the crafting recipes UI (it was missing 341 kB per block before)
Every custom block category in the crafting recipe list is now limited to at most 50 entries
Added "Briefcase Open" and "Briefcase Close" event dispatchers in the BriefcaseBP (Unreal Engine Modding related)
Fixed deleting or moving a tool out of a radial menu slot while it's active in the hand not removing it out of the hand
Fixed deleting a tool in the inventory while another of the same type is in a radial menu slot making the tool in the radial menu slot become greyed out
Fixed possible performance issue when collecting recipe paper
Fixed "Low" bloom setting looking flickery on shimmerstones
Fixed one grass side texture that looked slightly too dark
Fixed a typo in the "Craft and place a chair" objective text
Fixed "Pause" button for the recipe preview being visible even for custom block recipes
Fixed some chunks staying loaded when they should unload
Fixed deer moving in weird ways when it walks against a rabbit
Fixed the flint stones in front of the furnace being affected by bucket suction
Fixed the "Dual Wield Something" achievements and objectives not unlocking correctly
Fixed the tool in the left hand not visually teleporting immediately with the player when teleporting
Fixed there sometimes being one or two visible floating trees very far above the world
Fixed a possible crash

Localization! German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian and Klingon language!

cyubeVR can now finally not just be played in English language! This has been a popular request over the years from many people who are not super fluent in English language. But before the introduction of objectives, it was generally easy enough to understand everything in the game even without understanding much English - after all, you will likely understand what a dirt block is purely from its visuals even if you have no idea what "Dirt" means.

But with Update 54 introducing the objectives as an important feature into the game, that meant the introduction of a lot of text that really should be understood for properly playing through the game. So with that, localization has become way more important than before, and that's why Update 57 now makes it possible to play cyubeVR not just in English, but also in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian and Klingon language! If your Windows installation is set to one of the supported languages, the game will automatically start in that language now. And if you want to manually set the language you play the game in, there is a new language selection in the bottom left corner of the main menu where you can pick any of the supported languages.

It was quite a lot of work to set up the whole game for localization support - it's not just a matter of translating some text, but actually a lot of work is simply making sure that all text is setup in a way that it can actually be translated. For example, the controller button mapping view in the lower half of the briefcase was an image before, an image containing text - images with text are a big pain for localization since they would require duplicating the image many times in every language, which would unnessesserily increase the size of the game (textures are what makes up most of the game size). So the button mapping view, and many other similarly implemented things in the game, had to be completely re-implemented with this Update as "real" text to be ready for efficient localization.

Since cyubeVR is "Made in Germany", a German localization was of course easy to add and German should be "just as perfect as English" already. For the other languages, it will probably take a bit of tweaking still to get all text in them fully perfect, and if you are a native speaker of French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian or Klingon, then please feel free to post in the Steam Forums or in the cyubeVR Discord about any issue you see with the translations (anything where you think it sounds not quite right in the specific context or could be translated better), and then it can quickly be fixed in the next update to make sure all translations are really perfect in every language :) And two important languages that are still missing are Chinese and Japanese - those are planned to be added with future updates.

I'll be most curious about the feedback from native Klingon speakers of course ;) All the languages the game supports are mentioned on the Steam Store Page now, except for Klingon, which is not mentioned there because the Steam UI does not actually support showing a game supporting Klingon language. I contacted Valve and asked if they could please add Klingon as a selectable language for games to show support for on the Steam Page, but unfortunately they said there are no plans for that. But still, the game supports Klingon! Qapla'!

Seated Mode

Until now, cyubeVR always mentioned on the Steam Page that it only supports "Roomscale" or "Standing" Gameplay, but not "Seated". In theory cyubeVR always worked quite well seated, but the one thing that was really always missing for being able to ideally play the game seated was a way to offset your ingame height by an adjustable amount to make it feel like you're standing in the game, even while you're sitting in the real world, so that it doesn't constantly feel like you're way too short in the game.

So Update 57 now adds exactly that!

You can now enable the "Seated Mode" in the "Gameplay" tab of the settings, and if that's enabled, there is a "Seated Mode Offset" slider you can freely adjust to set your virtual height in the game. Also, since reaching the ingame floor will no longer be possible while you have an offset applied, enabling the "Seated Mode" also enables a crouch toggle (right thumbstick south) that let's you toggle between "full height" (including the offset) and "real height" where you can reach the floor.

cyubeVR is certainly still the most immersive when playing it standing with full roomscale movement, but for people who have to or prefer to play seated, it's nice that the option exists now :)

Many CPU/GPU/RAM optimizations

This update adds a lot of optimizations, both for CPU and GPU performance, and for RAM usage! Doing intense sledgehammering of tens of thousands of stones will feel way smoother now for example, and the game uses multiple GBs less RAM if you have a lot of custom blocks installed. And you might remember that if you've crafted a large recipe like the furnace before, there might have been a bit of a negative effect on the framerate from attaching so many blocks together - that's also fixed now and no matter how large the recipe you're crafting, there should be 0 noticeable effect on the framerate!

These optimizations are basically everything that was required for making the game run perfectly on PS5 / PSVR2 without a single framedrop, and this newest version of cyubeVR (Update 57) is scheduled to be released on PSVR2 later this month! And the nice thing about optimizations is really that everyone benefits from optimizations, even if you have the most high-end PC with a 4090 and a 7950X3D.

Thanks very much to all the Patreon supporters!

A big thanks to everyone for supporting the development of cyubeVR on Patreon! I'm working full-time on cyubeVR, and it's often quite hard to make a living purely off the Steam sales of the game, so any Patreon Supporter is really worth a lot for the continued development of the game. Thanks so much to all the Patreon Supporters (list sorted by total lifetime donation, highest first):

ChibiArcher, Arados, Ethernoctis, @B4nH4mm3r on Discord, Quill, Lucanes, Lynx, SkgBlaze, Trevor Berninger, Bhima, Plantmaster, Altair, ErrorNull, Sceptrex, Albertbz, KroyVR, Tom Hörberg, David R., Al Raw, David O, Saltshine, Eti the Spirit, Shanya / Sabrina, MightyDuck, VenturePopTV, DiamondHunter_, HeyMika, WillyVR, gunair, Austin Flores, TallOnTwo, Tiddlez, Michael Ballard, Yasha, M1kk3l, wherr, Talsma, WarChi1d, Alphie, Jackerino, Dark Slaughter, Curzek, Lucas van Leiden, mazzawoollza, RelativelyQuantum, Volpe, Netshaman, __mt, Dave Pearson, Bucket Codes, Lordoldmanrets, Daniel Crawford, texhnobees, Saul2000, TinyMrMan (MB), Solid Hernando, AnubisXtreme, Adrian Sawn, joerkig, MurphChops, Connor A, Algiz, nqeron, SingingFluffyUK, TNMPlayer

Patreon rewards are being mentioned in the list of Patreon supporters in the main menu, getting a special colored name in the official cyubeVR discord, and physical items like a sticker, mug, or T-Shirt with cyubeVR designs.

More awesome new custom blocks

Recently, one new custom block was added to the cyubeVR Steam Workshop!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3068085926&searchtext=

You can install it with a single button click. Make sure to regularly browse through the Steam Workshop and subscribe to anything you find useful for building in cyubeVR, or easily create your own custom blocks!

And it's also super easy to create your own custom blocks! Did you know there is a super easy to use GUI tool now for creating cyubeVR custom blocks? Everything you need to know about how to create custom blocks you can find here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/619500/discussions/3/1640917625019543783/

And if you want to create more sophisticated mods for the game, that's possible too! Check out this page that explains all the different types of modding possible with cyubeVR: https://github.com/cyubeVR-Modding

As usual, thanks very much to our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord who tested this update as part of 44 separate beta builds! If you want to test new features earlier when they come out in the beta branch, make sure to join the discord and take a look at the #beta-build-patch-notes and #beta-build-discussion channel!

That's all for today! 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 it's simply "good game". Writing a positive review is the easiest way you can support the game because indie devs like me are very dependent on the Steam Algorithm recommending the game to new people to be able to afford to keep working on it!

Thanks for caring about the game and as usual, 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, join it before its full ;) We're over 3800 people there already, come and join us! If you don't like something about the game, please tell me there and I'll try to improve it! I'm available to chat with anyone in Discord :)

There's also the official cyubeVR subreddit on Reddit, if you're active on Reddit, make sure to subscribe to it and maybe post some great screenshots there!

You can also follow cyubeVR on X/Twitter or follow cyubeVR on Bluesky (a new Twitter alternative).

And lastly, don't forget there's an official roadmap with voting features.

Looking forward to hearing what you think about the new update :)

Cheers!

Sep 6, 2023

Update 56 for cyubeVR is live! Much improved trees, huge optimizations and more!

cyubeVR - Stonebrick Studios

Hey everyone, Update 56 for cyubeVR is live!

This update adds significant VRAM optimizations (over 2 GB less VRAM usage!), RAM optimizations, significant GPU performance optimizations, a much better looking dark tree, new fancy shadows for trees, improved sky colors and a generally much improved sky, plus many more improvements, optimizations and bugfixes!

Let's first take a look at the long list of changes, and after that, let's get into more detail for the biggest changes! Btw, are you in the official cyubeVR Discord yet?

Significantly optimized the VRAM usage of the game, it now needs over 2 GB less VRAM!
Replaced the dark tree model with a better looking one
Added "voxel shadows" below trees, making the area below trees darker, without any performance impact
Significantly changed the color of the sky, it's now way more blue during daytime
Changed the color of light shafts from the sun, they are now less blue and a bit less strong
Significantly optimized RAM usage of the near-infinite view distance system. On large view distances, the game needs many GBs less RAM now
When launching the game, there now is a "Stonebrick Studios" logo first before you enter the main menu
Added new SSAO setting in the "Visuals" tab of the settings
Improved visuals of the tree trunks near the ground, they fade to a dark green at the bottom now, so the transition from grass to tree looks much smoother
When using LIV mixed reality, the hands are now invisible in the LIV view
Significant GPU performance optimizations, especially during night
Optimized the speed of loading the existing view distance when loading a world, it's significantly faster now
Significantly optimized GPU performance of foliage
Improved visuals of the sky, clouds look more interesting and more detailed now.
Improved foliage LOD transitions, they are less noticeable now
VoxelAPI mods like cyubePainter can now correctly remove grass and flowers
The strength of the snow on grass/flowers now matches the strength of the snow on ground around them much better, making it look much more correct
CPU performance optimization for tree spawning
Modified the furnace recipe video, it now zooms into the center to make it easier to see that there is a gap there
Until the player has opened the briefcase at least once, there is now a floating hint text above the left hand that explains how to open the briefcase
Slightly improved the grip position of the hand on the stick
When selecting a torch in the hand, the preview on the hand is now translucent instead of opaque, to make it more clear that it's just a preview for placing it
Fixed rainbow flowers not being visible
Adjusted texture streaming settings, it should no longer happen now that the bucket texture often looks blurry for half a second after enabling the bucket
Added a voice saying "Objective Completed" when succeeding an objective
After the "green arrow" animation finished playing in the objective UI on the currently succeeded objective, it now automatically moves forward one page to display the new objective
When starting a new world, the first objective visible is now the first "real" objective (Radial Menu) and not the always-succeeded objective to open the briefcase
The "Objectives" button in the briefcase UI is now called "Interactive Tutorial" until the first 20 objectives are done, to make it more clear to a new player that it makes sense to pay attention to it at the beginning of the game
Added new screenshots to community screenshot showcase in the main menu
Adjusted the text for the "Recolor torch" objective to explain how a torch can be recolored
Crafting a copper axe and copper shovel will also unlock the objective for stone axe and stone shovel now
Crafting an iron shovel will also unlock the objective for the stone shovel now
Fixed that the chunk mesh optimization code was disabled
Optimized the general save file format, slightly reducing sizes
At the bottom of the crafting recipe list, the game now tells you how much VRAM in total all the custom blocks use
Fixed block items sometimes incorrectly teleporting up while mining something like coal
Fixed that it was possible that when dying, and then respawning far away, the "dead body inventory" was not being saved
Decreased maximum burn time for all non-fuel block items (e.g. copper) from 25 minutes to 2.5 minutes
When it snows, the ambient sounds during day (birds, wind) are now only 5% the regular volume
Updated C++ compiler to latest version
Small improvement of aurora visuals
Slightly reduced the brightness of the grass side texture
After dying, the red "Respawning..." screen now stays active until the chunk around the respawn location is fully loaded
Fixed that dropping a ghost item from a radial menu slot onto a tool in a regular inventory slot created a ghost tool in the radial menu slot
Fixed that trees would often disappear incorrectly after cutting down more than ~4 trees
Fixed that it's possible to walk into/through the furnace and trees, both with smooth locomotion and teleport
Fixed that trees would sometimes stay on the lowest LOD for way too long when using very high view distances
Fixed crash when teleporting far away while standing close to a cactus
Fixed there being an incorrectly rendered grass below every floating recipe paper
Fixed recipe paper instantly disappearing when releasing it immediately after grabbing it
Fixed a possible crash when unloading a tree before it has become visible
Fixed that it was possible to stick an axe backwards into a tree
Fixed typo in objective (if -> is)
Fixed the main menu background sometimes looking too low res
Fixed that the "Torch Flickering" setting did not have any effect on block items
Some other small CPU and GPU optimizations
Fixed a possible crash

Significantly optimized the VRAM usage of the game, it now needs over 2 GB less VRAM!

This is a big optimization!

This is especially impactful because most players use a GPU with 8 GB VRAM and play the game on a Quest 2. Actually, Windows itself often uses ~2 GB VRAM and the Quest 2 requires much more VRAM than using a native SteamVR headset, due to requiring two compositors running at the same time (Oculus + SteamVR) which combined also easily use ~2 GB VRAM for themselves.
So that often just leaves ~4 GB that is left to be used by a game then, which means a 2 GB reduction in how much VRAM the game needs is a major improvement for many players!

The VRAM improvements are also almost independent of the ingame settings, even on the lowest possible settings the game will now use almost 2 GB less VRAM than before, without looking any worse.

Additionally, this update also significantly optimizes the RAM usage of the near-infinite view distance system. On large view distances (100 chunks or more), the game needs many GBs less RAM now!

Those VRAM and RAM improvements together look like this in the case of running the game at high settings (All settings mostly at Max, View Distance 100, Terrain Quality "Ultra"), in a large world, comparing the RAM and VRAM usage between Update 55 and Update 56:

VRAM: 8.6 GB -> 6.2 GB
RAM: 14.2 GB -> 12.6 GB

Significant improvements to the sky

This update significantly improves the visuals of the sky in multiple different ways.

First, it significantly changes the color of the sky, making it way more blue during daytime. You might think "just a color change?", but it's actually a really major difference to the "average color" you see in the game, since the sky often fills half your view! This change makes the whole game generally feel a bit more happy and uplifting.

Here you can see a Before / After comparison of the sky color:

Before:

After:

The detail of the clouds has also been much improved with this update: Before, the sky often looked a bit boring and blurry, but now, the clouds look way more detailed (not visible on the screenshots above, they both already have the better details active).

New Dark Tree!

The dark tree in the game has been replaced with a completely new, much more detailed model - the previous dark tree didn't quite fulfill the "everything should be super 8K" requirements any more that cyubeVR puts on all it's visuals ;) I think the old dark tree, which has been added to the game in 2016, really would have won the award for the most ugly object in the whole game, so it absolutely was time to replace it with a tree that looks like a proper 2023 high-resolution tree!

Here is a Before / After comparison of the old and new tree:

Update 55 Dark Tree:

Update 56 Dark Tree:

And here's one more Before / After comparison, from a bit further away from the tree:

Update 55 Dark Tree:

Update 56 Dark Tree:

And even though this new tree is way more detailed than the old one, it's actually faster to render than the old one as well! So it's a win-win in every possible way :)

There also is a technical reason for this change: The old tree heavily relied on tessellation to look acceptable, and Unreal Engine 5 actually removes the support for tessellation. So relying on tessellation for visuals is no longer an option once cyubeVR will be updated to Unreal Engine 5, so it's good to start now already with making sure everything looks great with no tessellation.

New shadows below trees

This update adds "voxel shadows" below trees, making the area below trees darker. These shadows are "free" on the GPU since they are calculated on the CPU as part of the chunk update, so they significantly improve the visuals of the game without requiring any more GPU performance! And the CPU-side is so well optimized that the time it takes to calculate them is completely insignficant.

Here you can see a before/after comparison of how the game looked like before, and how it looks like now with the new shadows!

Before:

After:

Independently from the new shadows, the grounding of the trees has also been improved by fading them to the grass color near the ground, which is also visible on the screenshots above already, but here's a comparison where the new shadows are active in both cases and only the improved grounding is compared to better illustrate that (Thanks Mika for making this GIF):

Significant GPU performance optimizations

There generally are many GPU performance optimizations in this update, so you should see cyubeVR run as smoothly and nicely as never before, while also looking better than ever :)

Currently, there is a big focus on optimizations because optimizations are also very beneficial for cyubeVR to run ideally on PSVR2, which will be a great platform for the game: It's the first time that a non-PC platform exists that supports VR and can actually run a very beautiful game like cyubeVR. And cyubeVR should be one of the best looking VR games on PSVR2 as well, just like it is on PC, so it's important that it's as optimized as possible so that the graphics can be set as high as possible!

Of course, PC's with RTX 4090s are still far superior in the performance and visuals they can reach, but not everyone wants to buy such overpriced GPUs, so for many players, the PSVR2 will likely be an ideal platform to play cyubeVR on. A PSVR2 release is planned to happen in 2023! After the PSVR2 release is done, the focus of development will shift from optimizations to more gameplay-oriented features again then.

But here's an interesting statistic that shows that adding more optimizations will always remain important on PC as well: Even now, in the years 2023, over 5.5 years after cyubeVR originally was released on Steam, while the min specs for running the game never significantly increased in all those years, the most often picked reason why people refund cyubeVR on Steam, even if it's overall just a small percentage, is still... that their PC can't run the game with good enough performance. So, let's see how much this big optimization update helps to improve that statistic :)

New screenshots in the community screenshot showcase!

These new screenshots of very cool builds have been added to the community screenshot showcase in the main menu of the game:

Observation Tower | Built by: ChibiArcher

Church | Built by: ChibiArcher

Pixel Art | Built by: ChibiArcher

Village | Built by: Backofen

Castle Area | Built by: Talsma & Community World

New video!

Today is not just the release of Update 56, but also the release of a new video on the official Stonebrick Studios YouTube channel! A video showcasing the amazing reactions from streamers playing cyubeVR. Here's a separate announcement post about the video:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/619500/view/3650784879032982145

Thanks very much to all the Patreon supporters!

A big thanks to everyone for supporting the development of cyubeVR on Patreon! I'm working full-time on cyubeVR, and it's often quite hard to make a living purely off the Steam sales of the game, so any Patreon Supporter is really worth a lot for the continued development of the game. Thanks so much to all the Patreon Supporters (list sorted by total lifetime donation, highest first):

ChibiArcher, Arados, Ethernoctis, @B4nH4mm3r on Discord, Quill, SkgBlaze, Lucanes, ErrorNull, Lynx, Sceptrex, Trevor Berninger, Tom Hörberg, KroyVR, Bhima, Plantmaster, Altair, Al Raw, David R., David O, Albertbz, Eti the Spirit, Shanya / Sabrina, MightyDuck, Saltshine, WillyVR, VenturePopTV, Austin Flores, DiamondHunter_, HeyMika, TallOnTwo, Tiddlez, gunair, Michael Ballard, M1kk3l, WarChi1d, Alphie, Jackerino, Dark Slaughter, Yasha, Talsma, Curzek, Lucas van Leiden, mazzawoollza, wherr, RelativelyQuantum, Netshaman, Dave Pearson, Bucket Codes, Lordoldmanrets, Volpe, Daniel Crawford, texhnobees, TinyMrMan (MB), __mt, AnubisXtreme, Adrian Sawn, Saul2000, joerkig, MurphChops, Connor A, Algiz, nqeron, Solid Hernando, SingingFluffyUK

Patreon rewards are being mentioned in the list of Patreon supporters in the main menu, getting a special colored name in the official cyubeVR discord, and physical items like a sticker, mug, or T-Shirt with cyubeVR designs.

More awesome new custom blocks

As usual, thanks very much to our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord who tested this update as part of 25 separate beta builds! If you want to test new features earlier when they come out in the beta branch, make sure to join the discord and take a look at the #beta-build-patch-notes and #beta-build-discussion channel!

That's all for today! 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 it's simply "good game". Writing a positive review is the easiest way you can support the game because indie devs like me are very dependent on the Steam Algorithm recommending the game to new people to be able to afford to keep working on it!

Thanks for caring about the game and as usual, 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, join it before its full ;) We're over 3800 people there already, come and join us! If you don't like something about the game, please tell me there and I'll try to improve it! I'm available to chat with anyone in Discord :)

There's also the official cyubeVR subreddit on Reddit, if you're active on Reddit, make sure to subscribe to it and maybe post some great screenshots there!

You can also follow cyubeVR on X/Twitter or follow cyubeVR on Bluesky (a new Twitter alternative).

And lastly, don't forget there's an official roadmap with voting features.

Looking forward to hearing what you think about the new update :)

Cheers!

Apr 7, 2023

Update 55 for cyubeVR is live! New graphics for grass and flowers, and more!

cyubeVR - Stonebrick Studios

Hey everyone, Update 55 for cyubeVR is live!

This update adds completely new, realistic graphics for the grass and flowers with a whole new system for efficiently rendering them, significant reductions in save file size reducing the required disk space to 1/4 of what it was before, plus many many more improvements, optimizations and bugfixes!

Let's first take a look at the long list of changes, and after that, let's get into more detail for the biggest changes! Btw, are you in the official cyubeVR discord yet?

Completely new realistic graphics for the grass and flowers and completely new system for rendering them
Significantly optimized the save file format of the game, it's now only 1/4 the size as before
Added an optional, much stronger compression algorithm for the WorldData_InstaLoad files, reducing them to 1/4 of their regular size
When you launch the game, there's now a voice saying "Welcome to cyubeVR!". Finally everyone will know how to pronounce cyubeVR ;)
Improved the LOD distances and LOD visuals for trees. LOD transitions of the trees are now significantly less noticeable.
The floating recipe papers in the world now rotate, making them easier to see from different angles
Grabbing recipe papers now looks better. The hands now have a specific pose for grabbing them.
Added a day counter to the "Stats" tab of the settings, showing you how many in-game days have passed in this world since you started playing in it
Updated the Unreal Engine version from 4.27 to 4.27+
Updated the LIV plugin to the latest version
Added a "Gravity Gloves" objective. It's an early objective, before crafting the stone axe
When opening the briefcase for the first time, the default selected tab is now the "Objectives" tab
Free torches are now also affected by the suction of the vacuum bucket
Fixed that crystals, dye, or any other block items could sometimes fall through the world when dropping them with too much speed
Optimized CPU performance of picture frame custom image loading
Optimized CPU performance of chest spawning and despawning
Updated the "Greetings" text in the main menu to no longer recommend to "read through the tutorial", and instead recommend checking out the objectives
The DLSS setting now has the options "Disabled", "Performance" and "Quality"
The "Ultra" option on the "Shadow Quality" setting has been renamed from "Ultra" to "RTX 3090"
Renamed the old "Tutorial" everywhere to "Manual", since the objectives are now supposed to be the interactive tutorial into the game
Fixed Shimmerstone and Starstone not showing any "need better tool" message when trying to mine it with a Stone Pickaxe
Added a hint text when putting a crystal on the head as a mining light, explaining the feature
Fixed the "Cloak a torch" objective only unlocking when cloaking a regular torch and not a colored torch
Fixed that trying to cloak a cloaktorch turned it into bottom stone
Deer now dissolve a few seconds after their touchdown
Added a mention in the respawn torch objective text that respawn torches can also be crafted later
Added a hint text when adding more than 25 items into the upper chamber of the furnace, explaining that any amount over 20 is wasted
Made it so that crafting a copper pickaxe also unlocks the objective for crafting a stone pickaxe now
Crafting two copper pickaxes now also unlocks the objective for crafting two stone pickaxes
Slightly reduced the default music volume
Destroying a cactus now makes the cactus drop green dye
When you overwrite the stick slot or the bow slot for the first time in the inventory, there now appears a hint text explaining that the bow and stick are always available
Improved the moon circle cutout to be less noticeable
Fixed Razer Cortex warning "Continue" button not working
Added code for automatically calculating if it's currently easter. Previously, the easter date was hardcoded
Adjusted the date at which easter eggs spawn: Instead of only between Easter Sunday and Easter Tuesday, it's now between Maundy Thursday and Easter Tuesday
Added new "Dynamic Resolution" setting, allowing to completely disable the dynamic resolution. Only visible if the "Expert Settings" are enabled
Changed the text of the first objective to make it more clear that especially at the beginning the objectives are supposed to serve as an interactive tutorial
A handheld torch now also illuminates grass and flowers correctly
Updated the text on the "Welcome" manual page and replaced the three "First Steps in the Game" manual pages with a single page that just mentions doing the objectives
Being on an unloaded chunk now no longer counts as being "inside of a block" with the fade to green and teleport back to the last free location happening
Fixed the April 1st feature of the game even happening when the deer were dead already, and made it a bit quieter
Added a hint text that comes up when hitting the flint stones against each other with too little speed, explaining to use more speed
Made it possible to grab the flint stones from the furnace with gravity gloves. No more bending down, yay!
Added a "Hint Texts" setting that makes it possible to disable hint texts. VoxelAPI hint texts and the "No free space in inventory" hint are excluded. Only visible if the "Expert Settings" are enabled
Desert grass is now also affected by hand-held torch light
Slightly improved the texture quality of the desert grass
Fixed multiple crashes that could happen when using mods like cyubeGate to teleport very far
Fixed a possible crash
Multiple small CPU performance optimizations

Completely new realistic graphics for the grass and flowers, and new system for rendering them!

There is a new setting in the game now: "Ground Foliage Quality". It offers the options "Basic", "High" and "RTX 4090". If you choose the "Basic" option, the grass and flowers use the old graphics, and do not require any more performance than before - but if you use at least the "High" option, you get the much better looking new grass and flowers, featuring fully realistic looking high-poly photogrammetry meshes with every individual blade of grass being actual real geometry, and an overall higher density of grass in the world!

The better graphics do need slightly more performance, but it's actually only a relatively minor difference, anyone with at least a RTX 2060 or so should enable the much nicer foliage!

Here are some more screenshots of the new grass and flowers:

The new grass and flowers is not just a visual change, it also involves a lot of new code, to make grass and flowers in this quality possible the game needed a whole different foliage rendering system. Before this, grass and flowers were considered "Blocks", while now they are considered "Trees". So they use a totally different rendering system now, which has many advantages (and the disadvantage that it's a lot more complex, so it was a lot of work to implement).

One of the advantages of the new system is that grass and flowers should now work out of the box with Nanite once cyubeVR will be updated Unreal Engine 5 in a future update (yes, that's definitely planned!). With the old system, Nanite support would not have been possible, as Nanite does not support any procedural geometry, so "Blocks" cannot be Nanite. But "Trees" can be!

Significant reductions to save file size

This Update significantly optimizes the regular save file format (The "WorldData" folder). It's now only 1/4 the size as before! This has no downsides, it's simply always more efficient now due to optimizations in the way the data is stored. It's still using the same compression algorithm as always, so it's not in any way slower.

Additionally, there's now an optional, much stronger compression algorithm for the "WorldData_InstaLoad" files, which is where the game stores the data for the near-infinite view distance system, reducing them to 1/4 of their regular size at the cost of world generation taking twice as long. This is useful if you are low on disk space, want to have a very large cyubeVR world, and have a good CPU where world generation speed isn't an issue. Or when you have a world like the "Round Robin Community World" that cyubeVR players in the cyubeVR Discord are playing in (basically asynchronous turn-based multiplayer) where no new world generation is being done anyways and where size matters because it's something people regularly need to download. This new optional stronger compression algorithm is a a per-world option that is disabled by default and can be enabled in a Config.ini file in the world folder.

Easter Eggs!

It's this time of the year again! Every year at this time, there's a special seasonal event going on in your cyubeVR world: The easter bunnies visited your cyubeVR world and hid easter eggs everywhere outside in your world that you can search for now! Some of the easter bunnies even hid easter eggs in some of your chests. And some of the easter bunnies them kept their easter eggs for themselves and will only give them to you once you grab and lift them up in the game!

The easter eggs have been further improved this year, they can can now be collected very nicely with gravity gloves, collecting them is easier, and they contain a bigger variety of items, including the new Starstone, Shimmertiles and Cloaknuggets that were added with the recent Update 53! So make sure to go on a hunt for easter eggs in your cyubeVR world. This special event is active between Maundy Thurday and Easter Tuesday!

Oh, and you might also find some rare colored easter bunnies riding on the back of deer ;)

Thanks very much to all the Patreon supporters!

A big thanks to everyone for supporting the development of cyubeVR on Patreon! I'm working full-time on cyubeVR, and it's often quite hard to make a living purely off the Steam sales of the game, so any Patreon Supporter is really worth a lot for the continued development of the game. Thanks so much to all the Patreon Supporters (list sorted by total lifetime donation, highest first):

ChibiArcher, Arados, Ethernoctis, @B4nH4mm3r on Discord, Quill, SkgBlaze, ErrorNull, Sceptrex, Trevor Berninger, Lucanes, Tom Hörberg, Lynx, Al Raw, KroyVR, David O, Bhima, Plantmaster, Altair, Eti the Spirit, Shanya / Sabrina, MightyDuck, David R., WillyVR, Austin Flores, TallOnTwo, Tiddlez, Saltshine, DiamondHunter_, HeyMika, Albertbz, Michael Ballard, VenturePopTV, M1kk3l, gunair, WarChi1d, Alphie, Jackerino, Dark Slaughter, Curzek, Lucas van Leiden, mazzawoollza, RelativelyQuantum, Netshaman, Talsma, Dave Pearson, Bucket Codes, Lordoldmanrets, Yasha, Daniel Crawford, texhnobees, TinyMrMan (MB), AnubisXtreme, Adrian Sawn, joerkig, MurphChops, Connor A, wherr, Algiz, Volpe, nqeron, Saul2000, __mt, SingingFluffyUK, Solid Hernando

Patreon rewards are being mentioned in the list of Patreon supporters in the main menu, getting a special colored name in the official cyubeVR discord, and physical items like a sticker, mug, or T-Shirt with cyubeVR designs.

More awesome new mods

Recently, two new mods were added to the workshop! Let's mention them here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2949188791&searchtext=
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2926121820&searchtext=

If it looks interesting to you, just install it with one click from the Steam Workshop. cyubeVR is highly moddable. If you're interested in creating your own mods for cyubeVR, take a look at this high level modding overview:
https://github.com/cyubeVR-Modding/.github/blob/main/profile/README.md#cyubevr-modding-overview

More awesome new custom blocks

As usual, thanks very much to our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord who tested this update as part of 24 separate beta builds! If you want to test new features earlier when they come out in the beta branch, make sure to join the discord and take a look at the #beta-build-patch-notes and #beta-build-discussion channel!

That's all for today! 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 it's simply "good game". Writing a positive review is the easiest way you can support the game because indie devs like me are very dependent on the Steam Algorithm recommending the game to new people to be able to afford to keep working on it!

Thanks for caring about the game and as usual, 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, join it before its full ;) We're over 3800 people there already, come and join us! If you don't like something about the game, please tell me there and I'll try to improve it! I'm available to chat with anyone in Discord :)

There's also the official cyubeVR subreddit on Reddit, if you're active on Reddit, make sure to subscribe to it and maybe post some great screenshots there!

You can also follow cyubeVR on Twitter.

And lastly, don't forget there's an official roadmap with voting features.

Looking forward to hearing what you think about the new update :)

Happy Easter! Cheers!

Dec 20, 2022

Update 54 for cyubeVR is live! Objectives, and more!

cyubeVR - Stonebrick Studios

Hey everyone, Update 54 for cyubeVR is live!

This update adds 75 objectives to the game, improves the graphics of the night sky and grass, and adds many more improvements, optimizations and bugfixes!

And Merry Christmas! Santa was generous this year, until December 31 you can find christmas presents with valuable items in your cyubeVR world! More about that below.

Let's take a look at the long list of changes first, and after that, let's get into more detail for the biggest changes! Btw, are you in the official cyubeVR discord yet?

Added 75 Objectives to the game!
Added a new achievement for unlocking all objectives
Improved visuals of the stars in the sky, and added a new option on the "Sky Quality" setting
Improved the grass and dirt side texture
Further optimized the view distance fog code, making it ~25% faster
Christmas presents can now also contain Starstones, Shimmertiles and Cloaknuggets
Christmas presents and easter eggs now also support gravity gloves
Improved the visuals of the green "valid crafting recipe" particles.
Made the grass/dirt side texture, and starstone, look better during snow
Added 4 new stats in the "Stats" tab of the Briefcase
Rearranged the order of the stats in the "Stats" tab of the Briefcase
The items in christmas presents now depend on which objectives the player has already unlocked
Added "Razer Cortex" warning to the main menu
Added new INI setting in the Game.ini: WalkingSpeedOverdrive=0
Made bucket flying more smooth
Reduced speed of clouds and aurora in the sky
Added new screenshots to the community screenshot showcase in the main menu
The focus warning is now disabled by default
Moved the "Can't modify world here yet" warning a bit further down, so that it does not overlap
Added C drive space warning to the main menu
Fixed tiling of custom blocks with normal maps
Fixed UI pointer intersection being incorrect on mod widgets
Fixed a crash when DLSS is active
Fixed torch recipe showing the recipe for a cloaked torch, not a normal torch
Fixed torch recoloring not working correctly
Fixed christmas presents and easter eggs behaving a bit weirdly regarding when they can be collected
Fixed cloaked rainbow torch not looking correct

Objectives!

There is a new tab in the briefcase now: "Objectives". One small tab in the briefcase, one giant leap for the game!

So, in this new tab, the game now shows you objectives that you can choose to follow. cyubeVR is a sandbox game that gives you complete freedom to do whatever you want, but there is a certain progression in the game that makes sense to complete, like getting better tools, getting crystals and using them, etc. Sometimes you might feel like you don't quite know what is the next thing to do that would make sense regarding the progression of the game, so that's where these new objectives now come in! They'll give every player from now on a useful sense of direction whenever required.

These objectives are basically also an interactive tutorial, as the first few objectives cover all the basics you need to know about how the important mechanics of the game work.

There are a total of 75 objectives in the game now, starting with the very simple objective of "Open the Briefcase" and ending with much more difficult objectives ;) It will be interesting to see how many players will succeed all the objectives!

There also is a new achievement now that you get when succeeding all the objectives in the game.

Improved visuals of the night sky

Stars in the sky look much prettier now compared to before! Especially on high-resolution VR headsets, it's a massive difference :) Here's an before/after comparison:

Before:

After:

If you set the "Sky Quality" setting to "Low", you still see the old stars. On "Good" and "Best" you see the new stars. So you can compare it yourself in the game and see how much nicer the new stars look!

Christmas Presents!

It's this time of the year again! Every year at this time, there's a special seasonal event going on in your cyubeVR world: Santa flew over your world and gave you a ton of christmas presents that you can find now! Some of Santas helpers even hid christmas presents in some of your chests :)

The christmas presents have been further improved this year, they can can now be collected with gravity gloves, collecting them is easier, and they contain a bigger variety of items, including the new Starstone, Shimmertiles and Cloaknuggets that were added with the recent Update 53! So make sure to go on a hunt for christmas presents in your cyubeVR world between December 18 and December 31!

Oh, and deer also have red noses in cyubeVR during this time ;)

New screenshots in the community screenshot showcase!

These new screenshots of very cool builds have been added to the community screenshot showcase in the main menu of the game:

Castle Fort | Built by: Bhima

WIP USS Enterprise (1:1 Scale) | Built by: roehrensockel

Divine Tower | Built by: Plantmaster

Lighthouse | Built by: Talsma

Village for the castle | Built by: @Plantmaster

Thanks very much to all the Patreon supporters!

A big thanks to everyone for supporting the development of cyubeVR on Patreon! I'm working full-time on cyubeVR, and it's often quite hard to make a living purely off the Steam sales of the game, so any Patreon Supporter is really worth a lot for the continued development of the game. Thanks so much to all the Patreon Supporters (list sorted by total lifetime donation, highest first):

ChibiArcher, Arados, @B4nH4mm3r on Discord, Quill, SkgBlaze, ErrorNull, Ethernoctis, Trevor Berninger, Tom Hörberg, Sceptrex, Al Raw, Lucanes, David O, KroyVR, Lynx, Shanya / Sabrina, MightyDuck, Eti the Spirit, WillyVR, David R., Austin Flores, TallOnTwo, Bhima, Plantmaster, Altair, Tiddlez, Michael Ballard, DiamondHunter_, HeyMika, Saltshine, WarChi1d, gunair, Alphie, Jackerino, VenturePopTV, Dark Slaughter, M1kk3l, Curzek, Lucas van Leiden, mazzawoollza, RelativelyQuantum, Netshaman, Dave Pearson, Albertbz, Bucket Codes, Lordoldmanrets, Daniel Crawford, texhnobees, Talsma, TinyMrMan (MB), AnubisXtreme, Adrian Sawn, joerkig, MurphChops, Connor A, Algiz, Yasha, SingingFluffyUK, Volpe, wherr, nqeron, Saul2000, __mt

Patreon rewards are being mentioned in the list of Patreon supporters in the main menu, getting a special colored name in the official cyubeVR discord, and physical items like a sticker, mug, or T-Shirt with cyubeVR designs.

More awesome new mods

Recently, one new mod was added to the workshop! Let's mention it here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2895017907&searchtext=

If it looks interesting to you, just install it with one click from the Steam Workshop. cyubeVR is highly moddable. If you're interested in creating your own mods for cyubeVR, take a look at this high level modding overview:
https://github.com/cyubeVR-Modding/.github/blob/main/profile/README.md#cyubevr-modding-overview

As usual, thanks very much to our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord who tested this update as part of 11 separate beta builds! If you want to test new features earlier when they come out in the beta branch, make sure to join the discord and take a look at the #beta-build-patch-notes and #beta-build-discussion channel!

That's all for today, and probably also this year! 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 it's simply "good game". Writing a positive review is the easiest way you can support the game because indie devs like me are very dependent on the Steam Algorithm recommending the game to new people to be able to afford to keep working on it! That's one of the the best christmas presents you can give me :)

Thanks for caring about the game and as usual, 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, join it before its full ;) We're over 3800 people there already, come and join us! If you don't like something about the game, please tell me there and I'll try to improve it! I'm available to chat with anyone in discord :)

There's also the official cyubeVR subreddit on Reddit, if you're active on Reddit, make sure to subscribe to it and maybe post some great screenshots there!

You can also follow cyubeVR on Twitter.

And lastly, don't forget there's an official roadmap with voting features.

Looking forward to hearing what you think about the new update :)

Merry Christmas and happy new year!

Cheers!