A new era begins: V15 is here

https://youtu.be/sjcOpRIrc7I

From the team

We're extremely happy to announce that the biggest update we've had yet is ready for release! There are a lot of changes, some of which we will not list because they're either internal, already shared with other news post, or fixes from the original systems we pushed out at the start of our private beta.

We've also decided to remove HB13 entirely, as it's been outdated for almost 3 years now, and our verification servers are down, so new players aren't able to launch it anyways. We might go back to the old project and remove the verification process and re-bundle it back in Homebrew if the demand for it is high enough.

We've also made huge changes to the modding API, for most users, this isn't an important change. So we moved those changes to the bottom of the post.

The World of Homebrew

Our underlying world system has gotten a complete overhaul, allowing us to make worlds far larger than possible before.

This fixes the jittering you'd see when driving far away from the Valley, (or not so far away depending on your hardware..), and having insane amounts of space for future islands!

We also moved the islands around to better suit the new system, modified the existing islands, and inserted a new huge area to replace flat-lands.

To get a true feeling of scale, we suggest hopping into Homebrew Patent Unknown yourself, and fly around a bit.

Server Changes

The server has been rewritten to be more stable, and requiring less bandwidth per server instance. We've run these servers since the start of our beta phase, and have had very little issues keeping them online!

Work on the server will continue after this update, where we'll optimize the internals, making it less resource-intensive, and allowing for more players online.

Other Changes

With the lua changes, we've rewritten our gadgets to have more features, more control, fewer bugs, etc.

The Settings also got an overhaul, all running in Lua!

There's also Discord Integration, a new Weather System, Tornados, Lightning, Blimps that populate the world, allowing server-client of variables (like time and weather), all moddable through Lua! Feel free to play around with the default lua files (StreamingAssets/Lua/main/), and see what you can come up with!

We've spent a lot of time and effort making sure the Lua changes were stable and more complete, adding a couple houndred helper functions, to make everything easier for modders, and players.

Besides that, we've also implement a new audio-system in place, handling all the ambient sounds in the world.

In a future release, we'll be upgrading the audio for engines and the like to these new standards as well.

Main Changelog

• Fixed Mouse not locking correctly when in-game

• Fixed Game minimizing when alt-tabbing

• Fixed glitch where water would bug at a certain depth (causing FPS drops)

• Fixed Second Keybind not showing up correctly when bound to a new ID

• Fixed issue with Equation Box where it would replace the incorrect token

• Fixed wings not applying wind properly

• Fixed wings not applying underwater drag properly

• Fixed GPS boxes not displaying full world-position

• Fixed Ramjets not working as expected

• Fixed HBNoteBoxes not fading properly

• Fixed Spectator not working as expected sometimes

• Fixed in-game links that were no longer available

• Fixed UI elements that shouldn't be blocking, blocking

• Fixed Adjustment Tool (builder) slowing down the game immensely

• Increased fog distance dramatically

• Added "GameTime" to equation box ("time")

• Reworked Wing mechanics to work with new World System

  • This breaks Propellers made with wings and Rotator and Hemi Servo!

• Reworked Gadgets

• Reworked Buoyancy to be more accurate

• Reworked most chat commands

• Reworked Chat

• Reworked Terrain Shaders

• Reworked Steam Integration

• Reworked Default Vehicle Installer

• Reworked Settings

• Added Y-Invert option in Settings

• Added quick-switch between Qwerty and Azerty in Settings

• Added Weather Controller (see "/weather" in chat)

• Added Rain

• Added Tornado

• Added Vegetation and Vegetation Manager

• Added new Builder Tutorial (text-based)

• Added new Gameplay Tutorial (text-based)

• Added new Terrain (Desert)

• Added new Race Track in Desert

• Added new Airstrip in Desert

• Added new Airstrip in the main Valley

• Added Arc in main Valley

• Added Danny & Joe in the Airfield (Desert)

• Added HB13 Valley rework

• Added Discord Integration (lua based)

• Added async Part/Vehicle Browser

• Added Ambient Sound system

• Added Hints in chat (toggleable with /togglehints)

• Added new Shadow-System for vegetation

• Added Steam Display-picture loading in servers/chat

• Added Blimp AI

• Added Runway lights in Valley and Desert

• Replaced Default Vehicles with a new batch

• Removed Wheel Collision on your own Vehicles

• Removed multiple unused meshes and Materials

• Removed HE rounds from Vulcan

And many more internal changes and speedups.

Lua and Console Changes

There've been huge lua changes in HB, most noticably Lua has been upgraded to 5.3 from 5.1, allowing us to use the full range of RAM available instead of the first 2GB of your RAM, a ton of helper functions, and a lot of speedups. Another change to lua is how the lua files are formatted.

The old method required a main function, where you set some basic things like "self.gameObject", that is no longer required.

local mod = {}
function main(go)  
  myMod.gameObject = go  
  return myMod
end
function mod:Start()  -- triggers on start of script

end
function mod:Update()  -- triggers every tick

end

The new method doesn't need this anymore.

local mod={}
function mod:Start()  -- triggers on start of script

end
function mod:Update()  -- triggers every tick

end
return mod; 

As some of you might notice, at the end of the lua file, we now return the mod table. The other change is that your lua table doesn't need to be the same as the filename. So you can create all your mods with

local mod = {}

Making everything far less prone to errors!

If you want to learn more about Lua, or if you're not sure where to get started, be sure to hit us up on our Discord server, and ask around in #Moddinghelp. Needless to say, all our gadgets and world-mods have been updated to fully utilize these changes.

The Console also got an overhaul, it's far more efficient, and no longer requires you to switch between lua and console shell. You can simply type in any lua code and have it run, or trigger a console command!

EDIT:

We forgot to mention some additions to the equation box!

ifbigger(a, b, true, false)
ifsmaller(a,b, true, false)
ifinrange(a, min, max, true, false)
ifnotinrange(a, min, max, true, false)
ifequal(a, b, true, false)
time()

DREAM - BUILD - ENJOY

And join us on DISCORD