Aug: VOIP, Drag'n Drop & Halloween!

VOIP Overhaul, WebUI Drag'n Drop, CharacterSimple Improvements, Fresh Website, Halloween Event & more!

Welcome to our roundup of the latest updates from the last month!

Halloween is Coming!

Halloween Event Teaser Banner (background definitively not AI generated)

We're excited to announce that our classic Halloween event is returning!

All the testers can create spooky game-modes for everyone to play. If you script, build, or design content, you can already start planning and forming teams.

The Playtest will be open to all Steam users. It will be a perfect opportunity to showcase new content, have fun with the community, and help us stress-test the game and server stability.

We will provide more information in the coming days. Restez à l'écoute !

Reworked Website

In the previous news blog we mentioned we were working on an updated account system and store. Last week we rolled out an update to our main Website Page integrating it to our new Account System.

Now our both landing page and the account system are integrated in the same website! Also we've reworked the Landing Page, making it work properly in mobile and also having Light/Dark modes.

New Website Account Page

We're still building new features and will roll them out gradually over the coming weeks.

VOIP Overhaul

The VOIP System got a full rework with multi-channel support and separation between Local and Global settings. Players can now join multiple global channels as speaker, listener, or both (up to 31 channels) and also speak/listen simultaneously in the local (spatialized) channel as well!

We also exposed a bunch of new Player methods to control filters and volumes, both globally and per-channel:

• Player:SetVOIPGlobalVolume()
• Player:SetVOIPLocalVolume()
• Player:SetVOIPLocalSetting()
• Player:SetVOIPGlobalChannelSetting()
• Player:SetVOIPGlobalAllChannelsSetting()
• Player:SetVOIPMuted()

(and respective getters).

We've also added the feature to control the High or Low Pass filter (for global channels), which can be set with the new methods, great for creating radio-like effects:

• Player:SetVOIPGlobalHighPassFilter()
• Player:SetVOIPGlobalLowPassFilter()

We created a new docs page with a better explained guide for VOIP:

VOIP Guidecore-concepts/scripting/voip

Auto Detect Best Settings

We've implemented the Unreal's Benchmark system that auto detects the best quality settings for your PC. This will run automatically when you first start the game.

And also we exposed a new button in the Video Settings, to manually force the detect:

New Auto-Detect button in Video Settings

Server Favorite System

We've finally solved a long-standing issue with the Server Favorite system.

The previous implementation was relying on Steam's native functionality, but it proved to be quite unreliable. We have now developed a custom internal favorite system from scratch, better suited for our needs.

Server Favorite List

Pre-Compiled Shaders

We integrated the PSO Shaders compilation progress in the game, so when you first launch nanos world, the DX12 global shaders need to be compiled for your machine and it already runs automatically in background.

But to prevent in-game stutters, when joining a server, there will be a last loading step with the Shaders Compilation progress:

New Compiling Shaders step in Loading Screen

Offline Mode

Now when the login fail or your are with connection problems, there will be a "offline" label in the main menu:

New Offline label in main menu

CharacterSimple++

We added new client-side events to CharacterSimple for common locomotion events:

• Jump (CharacterSimple)
• StartCrouch (CharacterSimple)
• EndCrouch (CharacterSimple)
• Land (CharacterSimple)
• MovementModeChange (CharacterSimple)

Also, now you can now bind Animation Blueprint Event Dispatchers directly from it:

• CharacterSimple:BindAnimationBlueprintEventDispatcher()
• CharacterSimple:UnbindAnimationBlueprintEventDispatcher()

Console and Profiling

New Console Log types

We added a new scripting method to log in Debug mode: Console.Debug(), which means it will only be displayed if the server or client was configured with the log level as Debug or Verbose. It will be displayed as S_DEBUG category in the console.

There's also a new PROFIL log category for profiling or performance entries.

And to help debugging, scripting logs will now display which Package outputted them.

WebUI: Proper Drag'n Drop

We've finally implemented Drag'n Drop events for WebUI/CEF. This has been an issue for really long years, and the community was requesting it for a long time. But now it has been finally implemented! You can hook for all drag JS events now!

Attachable Improvements

We added new parameters to both AddStaticMeshAttached and AddSkeletalMeshAttached!

AddStaticMeshAttached: we added a new latest attachable_id, which lets you attach this mesh to another attached Static Mesh component instead of the root component.

AddSkeletalMeshAttached: we also added the attachable_id feature, but also the use_base_leader_pose_component, to configure if this Skeletal Mesh will inherit the base animation pose.

UI & UX Improvements

Keybinding Clear Key

New Clear Binding button in Key Bindings Settings Menu

We added a new clear button to Keybindings Settings, so you can clear a binding now!

Overall Quality

Still in the settings, we added a new global option to define the Overall Quality Settings, at once! This will set all the other quality settings to the same selected setting:

New Overall Video Settings selector

General Performance

We've made several UI improvements and polish to increase it's overall performance, there will be less stutters now. Also we improved the Escape Menu responsiveness fixing the hitches when pressing escape while in game.

Fullscreen Settings

We improved the fullscreen/windowed settings behavior, now when selecting Fullscreen or Windowed, it will only display proper compatible resolutions to your monitor. And when selecting Windowed Fullscreen, the resolution selection will be hidden.

New Full Screen options in Video Settings

Besides that, we also fixed an issue where using scaled desktop resolutions, the fullscreen setting was not being set properly, and the game was getting stuck as windowed at half of the screen size.

New Cursors

We've got a new Cursor Pack for the game, the old one was missing some images and we've got one that fits nicely!

Ultra Dynamic Sky v9.0B

Ultra Dynamic Sky was updated to v9.0B. If you’re using UDS directly in your projects, make sure to update the plugin in your ADK to keep everything in sync.

About Unreal Engine 5.6

Unreal Engine 5.6 was released in the past months and, as usual, we waited for the first hotfix (5.6.1) before upgrading.

But when we tried to move to 5.6.1 we started seeing cook-related problems. We also spotted a lot of reports from other users online with similar issues.

Because these problems, we'll wait a bit longer before upgrading the game. We will keep waiting for next versions or a hotfix that are stable enough before upgrading!

Conclusion

August was another month of continuous improvements on our existing systems.

The improved VOIP system is a very cool addition, offering multi-channel support and high/low pass filtering that will allow for amazing new gameplay mechanics, such as realistic radio-speaking effects.

Another long-standing issue, the native CEF Drag'n Drop, has been finally implemented properly! This was a highly requested feature that haunted us since the Ultralight days, and now it's finally working for good.

We also took a significant step with our new backend infrastructure by launching the new main Website version, integrating it with our account systems. We are working hard to have a stable version of the Vault/Store ready for the upcoming Halloween Event.

I am incredibly excited to bring back the Halloween Event this year! It's an awesome opportunity for our talented community to showcase their creativity and for us to have a great time together. In the next days I will make another announcement specifically related to the event!

Your feedback and support are what keep this project alive and moving forward. Thank you so much for all the support! See you in-game!