Welcome to the Developer Update for April 20, 2023! This is the 12th text Developer Update this year.
Today’s thumbnail is the last thing you’ll see before you respawn yet again in ville672’s Instagib Tournament. Forget kill streaks, achievements, and rank-ups – it’s all about that “M-m-m-m-monster kill”!
If you’d like to catch up, read our previous Developer Update from April 13.
Old Unused Account Cleaning
We will be cleaning up some old, unverified, completely unused accounts from our databases.
This means that if the account has ever been logged into, verified, interacted with, anything at all beyond creating the account – you’re fine and don’t need to worry. We are not deleting inactive accounts.
There is no ETA on this. We’re just letting you know it’s happening soon.
VCC 2.1.0 and Community Repositories
Did you know the VCC was updated to 2.1.0 earlier this month? Neat, right?
Did you know that update included Community Repositories?!
Starting with version 2.1.0 of the Creator Companion, you can add community repositories to your list of available packages. This allows you to easily use and update packages provided by other creators!
Some community creators might provide an “Add to VCC” button on their website! If that’s the case, you can click that button to add the repository to your VCC.
If that’s not the case - follow the steps below:
- Open the VCC and go to the Settings page.
- Make sure you’re on the version 2.1.0 or newer (it is displayed in the top-right corner).
- If you are not, scroll down and click “Check for Updates”.
- Click the “Packages” tab.
- Click the “Add Repository” button.
- In the field that appears, enter the repository URL you want to add.
- Click “Add”.
- A popup will appear, showing you the information about the repository, and a list of packages it contains.
- If everything looks good, click the “I Understand, Add Repository” button.
- The repository will be added to your list of installed repositories!
- You should be able to navigate to any of your projects and see the packages from the new repository as options to install into your project.
I’m a tool creator! How do I create my own repository?!
It’s easy! Check out our guide in the VCC docs.
VRChat 2023.2.1 Patches
Over the past week, we’ve released two 2023.2.1 patches! They fix a few issues with the release. Read up on p1 and p2 in our docs.
Server-Side Instance Changes
We recently pushed out some completely server-side changes that affect how instances work!
- If you try to join a full instance, you’ll receive an error before you start traveling instead of after you spend time downloading the world and loading it.
- Users will be denied entry into instances that aren’t network compatible and are told why.
- We fixed a variety of issues related to how Group instances were displayed on the web.
As a side-note, what I mean by a “full” instance is an instance at or above the “hard cap”, which for the moment is double the defined capacity for a world. We’re changing this soon, though.
Ongoing Development
Group Locations
Group Locations is a new overview page in the Main Menu!
You can find it in the the Social tab. Using it, you can see all group instances of all groups you are in.
You can also filter by groups and sort by name, users, and the number of friends in that instance!
Group Bans
Did you just discover that your Group+ or Group Public instance has been infiltrated by rats? Big chonky VRRats?
You already tried VRRat repellent and it didn’t work… so, there has to be another way right?
Well, we have a solution for you!
You can ban people from your Group instances! Banning a user will prevent them from joining any instance created by your Group! It will also punt them right out of your Group instance immediately. Begone, rodent!
Of course, this ban also prevents those users from joining your group, and also prevents them from joining that Group’s instances in the future.
BTW, if seeing the terms “Groups+” or “Groups Public” is a surprise to you, go check out our last Video Dev Update!
Even More Group Stuff but on the web
We’ve also made it possible for Group members with the “Ban Member” and “Manage Join Requests” permission to ban a user from a Join request:
Clicking that far right “cancel” symbol will ban “Bad User” from your group, which means they can’t request invites anymore.
We’ve also added a nice new “Block Group” dialog for the web, too:
You can block a group by clicking the button on the group’s details page:
There’s even more Groups stuff on the way:
- Filter Users by Role
- Sort Users by Join Date
- Member Search
All of these features are coming to the Groups web interface soon!
Conclusion
Lots of Groups stuff this week!
We’re excited about Groups+ and Groups Publics! We believe those instance types and Group Bans will allow users to organize and moderate their communities even more effectively. Groups+ and Publics will let new friends find their way into groups naturally in a moderated environment.
Thank you for reading, and we’ll catch you next time!
