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2022 Jul: CEF, Settings Menu & Improvs!

· 7 minutes de lecture
Gabriel T. Nardy
nanos world developer (SyedMuhammad)

CEF, Settings Menu & several Improvements!

After a long time and after innumerous requests (and death threats), I finally announce the big surprise of the integration with the Framework CEF (Chromium embedded framework)!

Chromium Embedded Framework

For those who are not familiar, CEF is a framework for embedding chromium-based browsers in other applications. Roughly our WebUI.

Until then we have been using our dear Ultralight, which at first was very promising, but as it is a proprietary library and unfortunately the dev ended up devoting less time to the project, we started to get harmed by missing features or unsolved bugs.

And since we can't be dependent on that, I made the decision to try to integrate the much consolidated framework CEF. But it was not an easy implementation at all. CEF uses various sub-processes to work, which I figured out I would have to implement on my own. I got several chills while remembering my Operating Systems classes from College. 😜

In the end, I managed to create a totally proper integration, including a build automation to always get the latest CEF safety updates on D+1!

Processes

But since not everything is flowers, there are advantages and disadvantages in using CEF. Due to its multi-process characteristics, on the one hand we have everything running in parallel (+++performance), on the other we have the drawback that rendering will always be 1 or 2 frames late, which may cause an "input lag" effect, but in practice it is not a big problem and is almost imperceptible.

CEF uses sub-processes, which means that each WebUI will run totally independent of the game and other WebUIs, making usage of 100% of computational power with great efficiency!

And that means now all communication is asynchronous. Thus, all the events between Lua <-> WebUI are also asynchronous and this is a paradigm that has changed, which should not be a problem in most cases. But this is an "effect" from having parallelism.

Another thing that changed is that we will have several sub-process starting and closing (like Chrome 😝) while playing nanos world. It depends on the amount of spawned WebUIs and is automatically managed by CEF.

Sounds

Another thing we gained was the Sounds! I have added a new method to the WebUI class: WebUI:SpawnSound() that spawns a Sound object (100% customizable as usual). In other words, you can spawn as many 3D sound entities and even set up a 7:1 cinema with them! 😆

Performance

As said, we gained a lot of performance. Surely I will continue to improve the implementation and boost it even more over time, but we can already see great improvements! Watch this video of me spawning dozens of WebUIs at the same time and rendering them on 3D objects in the world without a single stutter:

How many videos can it handle at the same time? YES.

Debug Tools

It is now possible to inspect your WebUI directly by third party tools, such as Chrome Developer Tools for example! 🥳

Migration

Also, another good news: this migration will have 0% breaking changes! No script will need to be updated to keep working with CEF! 💃

Obviously some things have changed, especially in relation to CSS. In WebKit browsers (as it was before) some styles behaved differently from Chromium ones. Some layouts can appear ill-adjusted (e.g. different scroll bars) now.

Settings Menu

Finally our Settings Menu received the UI Update too! I recreated it from scratch adapting to the new interface style!

Video Settings:

KeyBinding Settings:

We got a new setting tab for House Keeping, where it will be possible to clean up cache files, logs and other files from your installation:

We also had the addition of a new setting: Force no Custom Loading Screen which disables server's custom Loading Screens.

Stats & Achievements

This month I devoted a time to adjust our stats and achievements. And the new Profile Stats tab have been implemented:

I created some new Stats such as swimming or driving, and also I created the concept of "Achievements Ranks", adding levels bronze, silver and gold to them. Let's see how this model stands out. 😉

A great improvement in the notifications of achievements has been made: now they are shown immediately when reached! (Before they were only synchronized once per minute, delaying the notifications).

New Achievements Ideas

I created a new page on Canny to receive suggestions of new Steam Achievements! Please take a look, vote and add new ones! I will always be integrating new ones into the game!

https://feedback.nanos.world/achievements

Vault Changelog

In Vault side, I implemented the Updates Tab for the items, where you can see all changes in their updates!

Caching and Loading

A great improvement I made was the refactoring of the caching system. We already had a cache system that cached the loaded assets in the client side, so then the file validation was instantaneous when re-connecting to a server.

I refactored this system, and now all cache files are in an external folder (inside Packages/ and Assets/ called .cache/), which even facilitates their cleaning.

In addition, when opening a server, every time the assets were loaded and cached in memory, which was really slow. And with this new system, they are still loaded but much faster, the system intelligently identifies changes and only re-caches the files that get dirty since the last load.

This will greatly improve the opening speed of the servers.

Docs Improvements

I took some time to update some pages here in the docs.

  • Quick Start is now even more quick and easy!
  • Server Installation was reworked and split and now is straight to the point.
  • Assets & Modding category got a rewrite so the guides are more linear and have less ambiguity.
  • Static Mesh was completely rewritten and now have lots of new information and tips!

I will continue to improve the docs aiming to reduce redundancy and to make it even more simple for modders and scripters to hop in! I see the docs was starting to get a little big confusing due some duplicities and some tutorials in weird places, that will be improved too!

Notable Changes

Some smaller but notable changes.

WebUI 3D Interaction

This is not totally related to CEF but I took the moment to integrate methods which allow injecting events into WebUI and create a Remote Control for it: 😜

It uses traces to retrieve the UV location from the hit on the TV mesh, then redirects it as WebUI events.

Packages Maps

I added a new setting to Packages: compatible_maps to make pair with the map settings: compatible_game_modes. Both settings are united to display compatible maps in the New Game popup when starting a new server.

Discord FAQ Channel

Our Discord got a new FAQ channel, which contains the most common question about the nanos world. More will be added as the time goes!

Unreal 5.0.3

I've updated the game Unreal Engine version to the last patch 5.0.3 containing lots of engine bug fixes. This update had no breaking change.

Conclusion

This was a month of great advances, several bug fixes and structural improvements in nanos world. We further evolved our IU and solved the WebUI problem that had been haunting us for a long time.

I emphasize the importance of creating and supporting ideas at https://feedback.nanos.world/. It is very important to have them officialized that to know your most request demands! Here's July Feedback summary:

Thank you a lot! You are the best!

2022 Jun: Birthday, Rebrand & UI Redesign!

· 10 minutes de lecture
Gabriel T. Nardy
nanos world developer (SyedMuhammad)

Birthday, Rebrand & UI Redesign!

nanos world Birthday 🥳

First of all, we would like to announce that this last week was the birthday of 3 years of nanos world under heavy development! Of course the idea of creating it is older than that.

It has been already a long time since we started working on it, and it has been a time of much learning for me and a lot of progress for nanos world!

I would like (again) to thank you all for the great support over all this time! I really love working on nanos world and love seeing you playing, using and creating on it! Making nanos world has become one of the great passions of my life 😍!

Rebrand

nanos world always has been about multiple worlds, more specifically YOUR worlds which you can express yourself and create the universe you always wanted to.

With the progress of the game development, it has become necessary to evolve in some aspects. When it comes to marketing, the main objective is to deliver nanos world to the right potential players and for this to be possible we had to rethink some things, and one of the things was to recreate our visual identity!

Our old identity lacked in some aspects regarding discoverability and professionalism, so we decided that it was time to make a new version of it! We know that it is possible that this is not yet the definitive version and it will be improved over time, however it's already a big step towards our short-medium term goals!

For the logos we aimed to have something more minimalistic yet professional.

Since nanos world represents a wide range of game-modes and diverse worlds, we decided to create a new version of our current logo, with:

  • 😮 A flat outlined style.
  • 🤯 New title and the subtitle design & fonts.
  • 😶‍🌫️ The ring became an infinity symbol bringing the sense of unlimited.

New Cover Art

To express the idea of diversity, we are creating a new cover art to be used as Capsule Arts on Steam and of course to contribute to the visual identity!

So we idealized the creation of a living planet with many things happening representing the variety of game-modes in nanos world, as a Sandbox game should be.

This will be a huge image (8-16K), which each time you zoom in you will find something new (the full size image will be available in-game and on the website™ 😉)!

note

The Cover Arts are not final and are still in development by the artist™, some adjusts will still be made for the final version!

Some WIP Capsule Art sketches:

tip

Credits to Pablo (PG Ninja) for creating the Art.

Motivation

A very important factor, even within Steam, is how your game promotes itself. And this happens due to two main factors: Capsule Arts & Steam Tags.

The Steam Tags determine whether or not your game will be displayed to the ones browsing Steam store. And the Capsule quality determines whether they will click on your game, Capsule Arts are the first thing seen by the shoppers, they appear in store browser list or when opening the game page.

Our current Capsule is this tedious screenshot with a simple text overlay 😅:

This is even extremely contraindicated because it shows amateurism and makes those who browse Steam unconsciously ignore it, in addition to the fact that the image does not convey the genre of the game, making those interested in sandbox games do not click on the page.

Then for this first version of our Cover Art we wanted to make it a little bit more professional and that at least minimally communicates the "Sandbox" genre.

Inspirations

Our idea was to create an image of a living planet with various things happening, representing the variety of a sandbox game, so we got some inspiration from game arts and images that represent this idea, like the game Universim and some found stock images:

Sketches

Our creative process went through some sketches made in Paint, until reaching the current on-going version: 😜

In addition to the rebrand, we worked hard on redesigning the main menus of nanos world!

First of all, we would like to thank everyone who gave ideas and suggestions for the new design, especially Falaxir who created several threads of ideas related to it, which served as extreme inspiration for us to develop this new version!

Motivation

The main menu is the gateway for all players and the first impression when playing, it needs to be intuitive and to encourage the right actions to be chosen.

We take into account the following pillars:

  • 🎮 Players First: It must take into consideration the common player as first, those who will choose a game-mode or just connect to a server to play and have fun.
  • 🐣 Noob Friendly: It should be extremely easy and intuitive to start a new game or adding custom addons to it. Even those who don't know anything about servers should be able to easily start a game to play with friends.
  • 🤏 Less is More: The User Experience must be the best possible. Buttons and Navigation must be intuitive without need of explicit tutorials or texts.
  • 🍃 Fluidity: New pages must open immediately, no stutters should happen, filters should apply changes instantly, no desync between pages and data should happen.
  • 🥰 Cozy Place: It must be welcoming, players must want to spend time inside the game, they must want to open the game to see what's going on.
  • 🤩 Motivates Modders & Scripters: It must encourage content creators to create and upload to the vault.
  • 📰 News should be exciting: Updates of vault items and even the game should be pleasant and exciting to read and to update.
  • 🔍 Facilitated Discovery: New game-modes and content should be found easily, as well as the best ones should be praised.
  • 🆕 Expand the Possibilities: The new menu should allow new horizons, it should be easy to integrate notification systems, lobby, favorites, etc.

Home Screen

In the old Home we had friends, achievements and news divided into separate tabs:

Before long we present the new Home page: a HUB where you can view a summary of your friends, your achievements, favorite servers, vault news and game updates!

note

Some buttons and features are not yet enabled and will be available soon™. This initial version was aimed to contain all old features and some more 😉.

Vault

Our Vault was basically just for downloading/managing additional content, where it was possible to browse the store/remote and your local content and see a brief information about them:

Now it has been redesigned for a completely new User Experience, providing filters and a new layout:

The new vault navigation, in addition to continuing to provide quick install/update/uninstall buttons, now also provides a quick Update All button, which updates all outdated items installed at once. Not to mention the improved performance and the interconnection with other pages and systems!

tip

This new version has several optimization improvements, such as disk images caching or virtualized list visualization 😁!

Vault Details

We've completely rethought the Vault concept and created a new details screen, which will open when a Vault (or New Game) item is opened:

The purpose of this screen is to bring all possible information about the Package or Asset Pack: description, screenshots, updates, version, size, reviews, dependencies, and now the possibility of rating and soon™ configuring them through the interface.

You can manage your review, the installation and updates on the right side!

And when selecting a game-mode, a Host New Game button will appear in the lower right corner, this will be explained better below on this blog.

New Game Screen

On the old New Game page, game-modes were separated into two different lists: installed and local, where it was possible to select one of the game-modes (or the "none" one) to start a server.

In the new design, the flow of New Game -> Selecting game-mode -> Play remains. But now we've got a new interface and filters, also it is now possible to order by popular, recently updated or top rating game-modes, and it is possible to filter them by name or by the filter toggles.

Also, now this flow allows you to start a new game even without having the package installed, removing the need to browse and install from Vault before!

When selecting a game-mode, the same detail page will appear (just like Vault). And by pressing Host New Game, a Server Setup popup will appear:

We created the concept of "single-player" game, which actually under-the-hood is the same server but configured to allow only one person and not announced at Server List.

We also improved the selection of additional Packages/Assets Packs, making the choice more functional and intuitive, you are now able to select multiple at a time before closing the selection popup.

The main idea of this new flow is to allow a new game to be created quickly, with less information required right away.

note

Soon™ we have plans to integrate a new concept of "game-mode" config, which each game-mode can setup it's own configuration before starting!

Find Servers

Find Servers's old interface was quite simple:

The new version got some improvements aesthetically and now we got custom filters and improvement of the buttons display (they only appear when hovered):

And now it is possible to favorite ⭐ a server!

Écran de chargement

The loading screen was not left out! We reformulated it so you can have a real notion of the loading progress. Now besides the background color lightening as loading is near the end, there are 4 bars in the lower left corner showing every step needed for the loading to finish!

note

It is planned to have a further improvement on the loading screen, as now when starting a New Game we still don't have "much" information on the server startup progress.

Profile & Friends

We also got dedicated screens for your profile and to see your friends. In this screen you will be able to see information from someone or to follow him into a server.

By clicking on your own profile, you will™ have access to additional tabs like Achievements, Stats and soon Account Config as well!

Conclusion

And this was just the beginning! You know that our evolution always has been very organic, adopting and adapting suggestions and new ideas to make nanos world the best modern sandbox experience ever! And that's what matters most for us!

If you have ideas or suggestions for improvement for both Logos and UI, feel free to make them in our Discord, we will be all ears for you!

Also, if you have content uploaded to the nanos world Store, please update it's description, screenshots and also your Team (now it supports image 😉) so it get prettier in-game!

We will push this blog updates to the game and all official pages as soon as possible in the next days, stay tuned!

Thank you for the support and dedication for this month! 🥰

2022 May: 666 Bugs Fixed & P2P!

· 7 minutes de lecture
Gabriel T. Nardy
nanos world developer (SyedMuhammad)

Bugs obliteration, P2P Servers, Better Sync & more!

Bugs shall not pass!

In this month, we proudly achieved the incredible mark of 666 issues closed (fixed and/or resolved) in our Issue Tracker!

You may say it doesn't count because some of them were just duplicated, invalid or even were closed to move to the Feedback Hub, that's okay. But we are not even mentioning our internal issue tracker which we already had another 500+ issues closed: 😁

Only in May we got 60 reported bugs fixed:

This is a special indicator that demonstrates that all your suggestions and ideas are read and given due attention and ALL bugs are fixed! Thank you all for contributing to that, in special @Voltaism and @Ayanokoji which really do the tap monkey job and find the most unnoticeable bugs! 😂

tip

You can find the endless list of all the bug fixes in our Discord Changelog Channel:

New Feedback Page

Recently, we've launched a new feedback page to collect ideas & suggestions. Before we were doing it on the GitHub's Issue Tracker, but now we have a dedicated platform only for ideas and now the GitHub is not only for bugs.

This new platform is powered by Canny, where you can add a new suggestion and vote for others. Feel free to sign in and upvote the best ideas! It is extremely useful for us to know if a feature is something really required so we can give the right priority to that!

It also provides a roadmap tab which groups all accepted/planned and in-progress ideas! The old Trello board is not going to be used anymore.

Check it out! 👉 https://feedback.nanos.world/

P2P Servers

Something that is fundamentally important is the ability to start a game from menu to play with friends, without worrying about dedicated servers or forwarding router ports stuff.

And now this is possible thanks to the new P2P servers option! This allows you to open a server in P2P mode, which relays all traffic through the Steam Relay Servers and establish a connection between the server and client with the security of none of those knowing each other IPs and so on! 🤯

For this to happen, we had to re-implement our file transfer system (when connecting to a server) which used an HTTP connection for this purpose, and now it can use the built-in connection system to to transfer them! (HTTP transfer is still faster than using the internal sockets, although on P2P connection this is the only possible approach).

note

Transferring files through HTTP is still faster than P2P. We're working to improve this performance as well!

When a server is opened as P2P all transferring are redirected to use the built-in transfer system. In the other hand, opening a server as Dedicated Server will use as it is today: small files through the built-in transfer system and big files through HTTP.

Finally, we are introducing two new "types" of servers: Dedicated Server and P2P, this is just a configuration you can set in the Config.toml or as a parameter --dedicated_server 0/1 to enable it or not. Starting a server through the menu will start it as P2P by default unless explicitly set in the advanced tab.

When starting a P2P server, the Steam Relay Server will generate a new temporary random "fake" IP address which will be used by others to connect to your server. Without the need to forward router ports!

As the connection is established through the Steam Relay Servers, even connecting to localhost all traffic will pass through the closest Steam Server of your computer, meaning even on localhost your ping will not be zero. If you want to test or play alone, we recommend start it as dedicated server.

New Sync Interpolation

Since UE 5.0, some interpolation started to get weird/flickering when syncing location/rotation with the clients. To fix and improve that, we managed to integrate all our network to the Unreal's build in Physics Replication system!

This system works by being fed by network snapshot packets and handling all interpolation, extrapolation, desyncs and high pings automatically! 😎 It greatly increased the quality of the physics sync!

Currently, all physics entities (Props, Weapons, Melee, Grenade and Vehicles) are simulated using this new system. Other entities (or non simulating physics) are still using the standard method of interpolation which is totally fine and suitable for that.

We are still looking to include Characters in the new system. As they use a separate movement system, it requires a different approach and special attention. 😉

New In-game Console

We've extended our in-game console to provide a new raw visualization. As Unreal Widgets don't provide a better approach to have both colored texts and the ability to select them, we've decided to add a new tab which converts the console into raw text, which you can freely copy them to the clipboard:

Also we added a button to open the log file directly! 😉

Noteworthy Changes

Network Debug Stats

In addition to the Network Debug drawings in the world, we've included a new screen debug tool which shows network stats information in the screen, it will be displayed if you enable Draw Network Debug in the settings -> debug.

Outline

Now you can also enable an Outline effect in actors by :SetOutlineEnabled() on it! It works like :SetHighlightEnabled, and you can customize it's color and thickness as well!

We've already replaced the Sandbox Physics Gun effect with this too!

Animation Settings

We started implementing a new interface for setting animations parameters on entities, it now supports a new parameter play_rate which you can define directly in the :SetAnimation...() of entities.

note

Currently this new interface is only available to Weapons. Soon it will come to all entities!

Sounds Settings

The same as Animation Settings, but for sounds as well! Now you can define per-entity-per-asset common sound settings on it, it supports volume and pitch parameters:

note

Currently this new interface is only available to Weapons. Soon it will come to all entities!

Internal Control Rigs

With our efforts to modularize and remove some internal dependencies (mainly related to animations and animation blueprint), we started creating some Control Rigs to replace our old approaches of procedural animations (before they were hardcoded in the Animation Blueprint, and now they are split into several Control Rigs), which also provides better performance and modularization!

We already created and are using Control Rigs for Driving and Aiming, which provides procedural animations for aiming with weapons and for driving wheels.

Améliorations du sandbox

The sandbox game-mode got some improvements as well, such as new icons for the tools:

As well improved PhysicsGun & Resizer linear scaling to have a better handling, a reworked system to attaching entities with the tools (before we were having wrong attach locations due the ping, now the client-side relative location is taken into account), and of course we've got several bugs fixes!

Also we got a PR from Voltaism which added the option to respawn and freeze the time through the Context Menu.

New Docs Tutorials

Custom Weapon Reload Animations

We've created a new tutorial page for adding Custom Weapon Reload Animations. This was possible due our efforts to modularizing more and more the game. Reload animations are special because they trigger gameplay actions during it's execution, which needs to be configured inside the Animation Montage!

Conclusion

With the achievement of implementing P2P servers, we managed to make immensely easier the ability to play and test with friends! Now everyone can start a server and play with friends immediately, without the need of port forwarding and so on! 🥳

Also, with the introduction of the new Roadmap & Suggestions, we are moving even more towards in the feedback-driven approach, so please put all your ideas in there, and vote for the ones you like! We really consider that to take the next steps!

Ah, it's worth mention we got a hit tweet 😁! If you don't follow us yet, please do that now!

Foo

Thank you for more this month, you're loved! 💝

2022 Apr: Now on Unreal Engine 5!

· 9 minutes de lecture
Gabriel T. Nardy
nanos world developer (SyedMuhammad)

Unreal Engine 5 is now the official engine of nanos world!

Unreal Engine 5

Nous sommes excités d'annoncer qu'Unreal Engine 5 est désormais le nouveau moteur de jeu de nanos world !!!

It was an intense month of updates, improvements and bug fixes for reaching a reasonable stable version of nanos world. We are very thankful to the testers who helped to test the stability, the migration of assets and finding bugs on it!

It's worth mention that even that UE5 "stable" was released officially by epic, there are still some bugs and improvements that need to be done, in the end of this blog we will list all known bugs we already found on UE5 and are waiting for an official fix.

With this release we are aiming to have the same experience and stability as before on nanos world. We are going to introduce more and more Unreal Engine 5 features in the upcoming updates from now on, granting they will have the proper stability and integration.

Nouvelles fonctionnalités UE5 exceptionnelles

Here's some noteworthy new Unreal Engine 5 features which will be very useful for nanos world Asset creators!

Nouvelle interface

Unreal Engine 5 brings a suite of improvements to the look, feel, and efficiency of the user interface, creating a modern, improved workflow for all users.

It's a way better and pleasant workflow for modders and asset creators!

Outils géométriques

Creating meshes and maps got even easier with the built-in modeling and mesh editing tools inside UE5!

Quixel Bridge

The Quixel Bridge plugin for Unreal Engine gives you full-featured access to the Megascans library within the Unreal Editor. You can browse Collections, search for specific assets, and easily add assets to your Unreal Engine projects.

It comes built-in with UE5! Just drag'n drop and you have the asset!

tip

We are actively looking for a way to improve the Quixel Bridge pipeline into nanos world.

Chaos Destruction

The Chaos Destruction system is a collection of tools that can be used to achieve cinematic-quality levels of destruction in real time.

We've managed to already integrate an initial version of it with nanos world, you can spawn any Geometry Collection as a StaticMesh, check it out!

tip

We are actively working on improving even more the integration with Chaos Destruction entities!

Lumen

Lumen is Unreal Engine 5's new fully dynamic global illumination and reflections system.

It provides a software-calculated Ray Tracing methods! This is a new very efficient technique for achieving Global Illumination, but it still has a cost. In our tests Lumen in Epic quality hit 50% of the FPS, and 25% on Medium. You can enable/disable it in the Game Settings.

Lumen also provides a Hardware Ray Tracing method for compatible GPUs, this is also now a setting in the Game Settings ;)

DirectX 12

Now nanos world comes with DX12 as the default RHI. Some new features such as Nanite, Lumen, and Virtual Shadow Maps run more efficiently in DX12 than in DX11.

You can switch from DX11 <-> DX12 in the Game Settings. *DX12 is required to use Hardware Ray Tracing.

Much More

You can see a list of all the new features in the Official UE5 Roadmap and also in the Official UE5 Release Notes.

It's worth mentioning other amazing features like MetaHumans, Nanite and Runtime Retargeting. Those (and many others) are still going to be tested to be actively supported on nanos world!

Reworked Water Physics

Also this month we managed to tweak a little bit our Water Physics settings. We use Unreal's Water System integrated into nanos world, and it uses a Pontoon system to make buoyancy on the objects. Props, Pickables and Vehicles have the pontoons spawned automatically in game, and since then the algorithm to calculate the size and it's force was quite primitive.

After several hours testing and doing several extremely hard math calculations we've managed to implement a new procedural algorithm which dynamically spawns pontoons through the object depending on it's size and mass. This makes rectangular objects to react properly for example (before we had only one sphere pontoon which made objects to keep rotating weirdly in water).

This new algorithm fixes the problem of having some Props being ejected and kicking infinitely over the water, and also normalizes their floating capabilities. Right now they all floats equally, we still intend to improve it by allowing custom pontoons to be set through scripting and also through the engine, and also to use Physical Materials to change the buoyancy force depending on it.

New Default Maps

We are shipping two new default maps to nanos world: OceanMap and BlankMap. The first contains a small island and a vast ocean (good for testing Water stuff), and the second is literally Empty and all black, good for dynamic scripting created maps!

We've also tweaked the size of BlankMap and it's surface texture to have a modern and UE5 look.

nanos world Migration

As we stated in the last blog we are moving to a new Store Page, the new nanos world version on UE5 will already be on this new game entry, and the old entry will be completely deactivated.

Game

All the current testers will receive a new Steam Key to activate nanos world in your Steam accounts. Here's how to get the new nanos world game key:

  1. WISHLIST the new game entry first 😁
  1. optional: Launch the old game at least once to store your achievements to automatically import them when launching the new game (this is a built-in tool to automatically export and import your stats).
  2. optional: Make a backup of your Server/ folder (if you are developing Packages/Assets).
  3. optional: Uninstall the old game, although it is not obligatory, it's recommended because some problems may happen if you don't, as both games use the same folder name.
  4. You will receive the new Steam Key at the Auth Website. If you didn't, please reach us.
attention

All old game keys will be revoked. You will receive an warning on Steam saying that the "Beta Test has ended".

Assets

The pipeline of exporting assets from Unreal Engine didn't change, all old tutorials are still valid but some are still using the old UE4 interface, we are constantly updating the docs to update the images and add more information to this workflow.

We've already updated the Importing Custom Assets and also the Assets Development Kit pages. There is a new workflow which has been updated to export assets, so now you don't need to package the project, just need to cook the assets - but the old way is still valid tho, the new is just easier.

The Assets Development Kit GitHub Project was updated as well, the only things that changed were the following files:

  • Config/DefaultEngine.ini
  • NanosWorldADK.uproject

You can pull into your current ADK downloaded project or just replace your project with the new files. If you get problems, try deleting the following folders in your project, so you have a clean project (without the old compiled stuff):

  • Binaries/
  • Saved/
  • Intermediate/
note

All Assets will need to be recooked in Unreal Engine 5 to work with the new nanos world version. This is needed as from time to time the shader code or the serialized binaries are changed when the Engine changes, so we need to get in the same version otherwise the game may crash expecting to load a newer version but the file is old.

We already managed to update the official asset packs.

New Testers

We are very sorry for making the recently players which registered to become a tester to wait that long, since we are moving to the new game entry, we didn't want to give you the old keys anymore, but now we are backing to our testing invitations!

tip

We are still aiming to invite only Modders and Scripters, if you are just a player, keep the eye on the future open Playtest sessions!

Known Bugs

Some bugs are known and are listed below, most of them we don't have much to do and are much likely an internal UE5 bug, I am reporting them all to Epic, let's pray they accept the report and fix it.

  • Cables rendering not working sometimes (Epic accepted my report).
  • Balloons/Cables square constraint (Epic accepted my report and already fixed it for 5.1).
  • Hit events/sounds not always triggering (report not accepted yet).
  • SceneCapture not bounces anymore (report not accepted yet).
  • Chaos Physics sometimes freeze an object if he stands still for some small time, I did some workaround to fix it in certain cases on nanos world (when grabbing or dropping props).

Conclusion

This release of nanos world on UE5 represents our efforts to always bring the bleeding edge technology to the game. It is our main pillar to develop a platform with quality, efficiency and modularity. And by doing it right, these updates and new features become easy to integrate or make 😁.

We want to be the reference in sandbox games for the Unreal Engine (5), and we are moving in that direction!

We really appreciate everyone who has supported us so far! Every like, react, emoji or comment makes us much happier! Merci!