Devblog september 2025

General

The Devblogs of August, September, October, and November, were all done at the same time.
This is because I was very focused on the update v0.4.6 released the 27 September 2025.
Then I immediately fall back in work on the patches v0.4.6.1 and v0.4.6.2. released 15 and 23 November 2025.

Search and development with Asset Editors

In early September I worked a lot with the Unreal Engine assets tools.

First you have to know in game my situation system will create and cache many data that can be used for many things like the Animation scripts, the Game Master, the AI, etc. For example here are the trigger zones used by the Macro AI to know the exact position of a micro.
They are used when Talas stand against a wall.

It’s not really visible like that but you can see the zones with talons shape and other zones.
That way talas know if you are under his talons, near or far from it, if you are on his left or right side etc.

To setup the zones and other data I use config files with the shapes and parameters.
But editing all that at hand is not really possible without a visual feedback and it takes a lot of time.
To save time I did my own tool to manage the zones directly from the level editor.
I just have to place the zones with data in a level, then my tool will detect all the zone in the level and directly update config file.

So it is easy to manage and if I need to update I can update the level and regenerate the data.
It works very well but that is not a common use and a bit “DIY”.

In Unreal Engine it is more common to open the asset and edit or import all that is needed directly in the asset editor. Example for Unreal users:
If you want add a socket to a skeletal mesh you open the skeletal mesh asset editor and add the socket there.
You don’t create a level, place the skeletal mesh, add a socket actor and then export the socket to the skeletal mesh.

And so because I had to work on the situation system in September,
I tried to make it more standard and create an full asset editor for the situation zones.

I was able to create the base but many things are very complex to do, and sadly after a full day focus on it I was not able to finish it, I can visualize and edit raw data but I can’t yet move the proxy shapes and edit custom data.

The issue is that the selection system, The 3D gizmos to transform the shapes, and general editing from viewport need to be done from scratch.
So it’s too complex for me right now and it’s not worth spending more time on this.
The system I have is already far good enough for now.
What is nice, now I know how to do basic asset editors, Maybe I will continue it in the future.

Toycar interactions and physics

I changed the Toy car Interactions to make it more intuitive.
If you exit the car while you look right you will exit from right, same for the opposite.
No need to press many buttons, and same in VR.

I also added physics to turn the car on wheels from the player side, like if you really push the car. It’s better than a simple teleport like before.

Update health system and new cheats

I updated the health system to make it less restrictive in code, it’s now possible to have negative health and push the max health limits.

Following that I added new cheat codes to set Max Health and Max Health Regeneration. Perfect if you want play as a durable insole.

And I also added a cheat to disable the minimal health.
Once you died you can continue to lose health for example if Talas continue to step on you.

You can found all cheat codes here: Cheat Codes List on GitHub

Separate modding asset in pak files

Before the v0.4.6 release I had to remove modding assets from the final build.
As explained in the previous devblog I used assets I don’t own for testing the game modding scripts, this made me able to test characters model from the community in the game.

But of course this content can’t be included in the final build, and I can’t just remove it like that, or the game will try to access data that doesn’t exist and crash.
So I reworked how the code manage dependencies on modding assets to make it fully dynamic.
The game now will search for modding init files at startup to know what the installed mods are, and it will load the assets only if the mod is activated in the game save.

With this new system I can literally remove the mod init and asset without breaking the game.
And here the paks files are useful for that. MMVS use pak files to store assets, it’s like a zip file that contain many assets inside.
So I can place the mods in separated pak files, and just remove the pak files I don’t want in the final build.

I just have to remove the mod pak files from the game build and as you can see, because the search is dynamic the game will found and load only the available mods. Here it loads only the internal mods ones from “pakchunk0”.

In source files I just need to move the mod init with the assets in a separated named chunks.

The game modding is still not planned for this update, buuuut it’s already pretty advanced now haha. If I want to share a mod, I just have to build it from the editor, copy-paste the pak files, and that works with a simple game restart.

I will have to make the game able to load custom mod pak files from a “Mods” folder in the game directory,
and with the mod init source file it will be easy to create mod with Unreal Engine editor.

Build manager and download page

To prepare the v0.4.6 release I update my build manager tool and I review the download page.

Before:

After:

To remind you the build manager is my own tool to check and manage the game builds, versions and download links.

v0.4.6 Release

The update v0.4.6 was released the 27 September 2025.
You can found the release post here: Macro Micro VR Service - Vore Update - 0.4.6 - Alpha (RELEASE POST)
And you can read the release log here: v0.4.6 - Alpha (Release log)

As planned this update still contains some bugs that will be for the most part fixed in the next patches v0.4.6.1 and v0.4.6.2.