Hey Hytopians!
We’ve been working tirelessly behind the scenes to make HYTOPIA smoother, faster, and more powerful than ever—and today, we’re thrilled to unveil a massive wave of improvements.
From a completely revamped World Editor to SDK optimizations and gameplay refinements, this update is all about stability, performance, and quality-of-life upgrades. Let’s dive in.
World Editor 1.6 – ‘The Great Refactor’
We’re thrilled to announce the release of World Editor 1.6, our most stable version yet. Many of you have been avoiding the editor due to instability, but we’re confident you can now rely on it without losing your work.
Key New Features:
- Redesigned UI with a ‘Compact Sidebar’ toggle for better use on smaller screens
- Placement Size Returns. Choose from 1×1, 3×3, 5×5, and diamond/+ placement patterns
- Search Bar added to Blocks, Models, and Schematics sidebar
- New ‘Options’ Panel on the right-hand side for selected tools
- Export Options for individual models and blocks as .zip files
- ‘Schematics’ Tab to store AI-generated structures
- ‘Remove Hidden Blocks’ Tool to automatically hollow out terrain
- Environment Model Preview and Stackable Environment Models
Performance & Stability Improvements:
- Massive code refactor improving both performance and stability
- 2-4x faster chunk loading on initial load
- Instanced meshing for selection area preview, schematics, and placement previews
- Fixed numerous bugs including ghost model placement and import/export inconsistencies
Check out the full World Editor update at: https://build.hytopia.com/
SDK Improvements
Our SDK has received several important updates to enhance both development and player experience. We’ve added basic telemetry to the server, making it easier for creators to diagnose performance issues. Visual enhancements include a new tint effect when players enter liquids, and liquids now render properly from the inside as well.
Performance has been a key focus – we’ve moved chunk mesh creation to WebWorkers, significantly reducing stutters by offloading work from the main thread. Developers can now support multiple worlds within the same game, and players will experience fewer disconnections thanks to our new connection recovery system that gives them 3 seconds before getting kicked by the server.
We’ve also fixed numerous bugs, including issues with collision boxes from JTF models, cutting related to “liquid” blocks, and texture atlas resizing problems. Players should no longer get kicked out of servers after a minute of play, resolving a frustrating experience many had reported.
Game Experience Updates
The Play Page experience has been completely overhauled with numerous optimizations to speed up loading times. We’ve added a stylish new loading indicator that shows the game as a background with useful tips, making the wait time more engaging. Individual game pages have also received performance improvements.
For creators, we’ve upgraded our package validation system to use the same VM as actual game hosting, ensuring consistency between development and production environments. This means fewer surprises when your creations go live.
Our matchmaking system now supports HYTOPIA SDK v0.54 and benefits from improved parallelism, making the matchmaking process faster and more efficient. The marketplace has been enhanced with real-time updates and better rate limiting for GET requests, along with improved matching algorithms that reduce load and response times.
On the authentication front, users now get a smart account created upon login, powered by the Privy team. We’ve expanded our asset library with new tropical and environmental models including trees, tree stumps, mushrooms, flowers, and cacti. Player animations have been significantly improved, with smoother movement for the default player entity and enhanced swimming animations.
Game hosting has undergone a complete overhaul, with all games now bundled at package validation time, reducing crashes due to new SDK releases. Game assets are now served through NGINX and a static web server, and we’ve ported all existing game packages to the new bundled format for consistent performance.
What’s Next?
While we’ve made significant improvements, we’re not stopping here. We’re actively working on fixing the broken texture system and adding support for various collider types including Trimesh (which uses the model mesh as the collider), Wedge (for stairs/ramps), and Sensor (non-colliding). We also plan to visually represent the collider type for each model to make development more intuitive.
Special thanks to our dedicated team members who made these improvements possiblen and to YOU for being part of HYTOPIA’s journey. Stay tuned for more, and as always…
Happy creating!
The HYTOPIA Team
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