Greetings everyone!

As you've probably noted in the last beta announcement, I have been working hard for the past couple of months, to make it possible for anyone to side-load almost any content into the game. After beta testing it for the past week, it is time to release this to the public!

• 1.3.0 Beta Announcement
  
• Workshop
  
• Guide
  

What's new

• New: Side-load custom maps, games and music into the game (local file-system).
  
• New: Steam Workshop support (maps, games and music).
  
• New: Steam Workshop Uploader Tool. Now users can create their mods and publish to Steam Workshop using the built-in uploader tool.
  
• New: Extensive documentation and guide on how to create, test and publish custom maps, games and music loops.
  
• New: Sample projects for custom content creation.
  
• Update: Complete re-write of the Teleport locomotion system.
  
• Update: Teleport rotation using left/right thumbsticks on the controllers.
  
• Update: Touching and grabbing interactable objects uses haptic feedback on the controllers.
  
• Update: Grabbed objects move smoother.
  
• Update: Main menu uses pointers to interact with (instead of direct interactions).
  
• Update: Improved game startup time.
  
• Update: Improved online multiplayer system (under the hood, no visible changes)
  
• Fixed: Core: Custom board, checker pieces and game content fail when uploading to Steam Workshop.
  
• Fixed: Core: When changing environments, sometimes objects start re-spawning.
  
• Fixed: Core: Multiple audio listeners are present when loading environments.
  
• Fixed: Core: Sometimes music playback gets corrupted when starting the game and remains corrupted until the game is fully restarted.
  
• Fixed: Multiplayer: In online multiplayer, player names are not visible. This will be fixed once Steamworks issues are resolved.
  
• Fixed: Multiplayer: Online: After the host got disconnected and connected again, neither players could continue playing the ongoing game (could not pick up checker pieces).
  
• Fixed: Multiplayer: Online: The text meant for player 2, is visible to player 1 after player 1 was reconnected, instead of the correct text meant for player 1.
  
• Fixed: Multiplayer: Online: In non-VR mode, player 1 and 2 look at the board from the angle of player 1. Player 2 should be able to look from the other side.
  
• Fixed: SFX: Collisions do not always produce audio at the collision point.
  
• Fixed: VFX: Banding issues are present on objects casued by light/shadow calculations.
  
• Fixed: VFX: Game table model shows low quality in VR, but high quiality in non-vr.
  
• Fixed: VFX: Textures of all items in the default room used to be high-quality, now they are not.
  
• Fixed: VFX: Materials in the default room are too reflective.
  
• Fixed: VFX: Texture normal maps are not being treated as normals (e.g. holes are flat without depth).
  

Known issues

• Core: Chess AI takes between 3 to 10 seconds when making decisions. This is too long in compare to other chess games available on the market. Chess is only available in multiplayer, until the AI is fully improved.
  
• Core: The score system is disabled. This will be published once it is decoupled from Steamworks.
  
• Core: The hand models and interactions are disabled in this build (will enable them again once the new input system and custom interactions are fully implemented).
  
• Core: Unable to pick up checker pieces with the pinch gesture.
  
• Multiplayer: Players cannot create private rooms. This feature is disabled in the current release due to bugs. It will be released once the bugs are fixed.
  
• Multiplayer: In online multiplayer, the interactable room objects might disappear when the room host leaves the room.
  
• SFX: When interacting with checker pieces and boards the SFX is not audiable!
  
• VFX: Backgammon board triangles are not correctly positioned.
  
• VFX: Guide poster does not show the Tic-Tac-Toe rules (side note: this might change in the near future with the upcoming tutorial content).
  

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop a line in any of social platform of your choice. For urgent cases or if you just want to chat, visit the artArmin Discord server (or artArmin Twitch livestreams).

Discord: https://discord.gg/qPx3g98
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/artarmin
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg4FvfrJPydR0oabCfrSAXw
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/artArmin
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/artarmin
Instagram: https://instagram.com/artarmin
Github: https://github.com/artarmin
Website: https://www.artarmin.com


Thank you for playing the game and your continuous support.

Armin