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

2024-09-29

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 native bHaptics support, 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, three new trophies, and as always, many more improvements and bugfixes!

If you’re confused why this is called “Update 58” even though there have not been 57 updates on PlayStation for cyubeVR yet: This update for cyubeVR also comes out simultaneously on PC, where cyubeVR has received 57 big updates so far. And it’s easier to keep the naming of the updates consistent between all platforms where the game is available.

So now 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 (Invite Link: discord.gg/cyubeVR) yet?

List of Changes:

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 a “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
Added native bHaptics support
Significantly improved the general sound atmosphere in shimmerstone caves with realistic reverb (echo) on all sounds
You now hear your 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.
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 trophies: Place a water block, Place a couching place, Teleport to respawn torch
There is a new “Expert Settings” setting, if you enable it you get access to a setting for disabling hint texts
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, shelves 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
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 old “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
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
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 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
Adjusted firkin stack size to be the same like barrel 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!

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.
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.
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!
The general UI design (textures/colors) of the “Crafting Recipes” UI has changed, making it generally look better.
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 RecipePreview.dds 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 easy, 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 before it actually starts being affected by gravity 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 atmosphere—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.

Native bHaptics Support

cyubeVR now also natively supports bHaptics on PSVR2! If you have a bHaptics vest or arm or feet haptics, they should automatically work in cyubeVR now, and help a lot with making the game even more immersive!

There are haptics for placing blocks, teleporting, shooting the bow, falling, being on low health, dying, and of course, most importantly, for mining. Now you can really feel the pickaxe in your arms and shoulders! There’s also haptics for adding items to your inventory, grabbing something from a shoulder slot, chopping wood, using the bucket, chopping wood logs, shoveling, taking something from a shoulder slot, and dropping something behind the shoulder.

And there even is bHaptics feet haptics, so not just the vest, but the whole package of vest, arms and feet :)

Here is a short older video from bHaptics where they showcase some of the haptics in cyubeVR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQHkpJe4GvM

New screenshots in the community screenshot showcase!

With Update 58, these new screenshots of very cool builds from cyubeVR players have been added to the community screenshot showcase in the main menu of the game!

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 mod blocks

Recently, many new awesome community-created custom mod blocks were also added to the list of custom blocks you can directly download and install in the game!

You can easily install any of them with a single button click. Make sure to regularly browse through the list of custom blocks in the “Crafting Recipes” UI in the Briefcase and install any blocks you might find useful for building in cyubeVR.

The optimizations in this update also make it so that any newly installed custom blocks will take up a bit less space than custom blocks you installed before, meaning you can install more blocks before hitting the 500 MB limit for custom blocks. Important: if you want to benefit from this optimization for your previously installed custom mod blocks, you will need to manually uninstall those, restart the game, and reinstall them.

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.

Thanks very much to our great beta testers in the official cyubeVR discord who tested this update as part of 47 separate beta builds on PC! Testing beta builds is only available on PC and not on PlayStation, but it also ensures that all new features are fully stable by the time they are released in a stable update like this on both PC and PlayStation! If you want to stay up to date with new features 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 give the game a nice 5 star rating in the PlayStation Store if you haven’t done that already. Giving the game a nice review is the easiest way you can support the game because indie devs like me are very dependent on algorithms 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 discord server (Invite Link: discord.gg/cyubeVR), join it before it’s 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 (twitter.com/cyubeVR) or follow cyubeVR on Bluesky (bsky.app/profile/cyubevr.bsky.social).

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!