dev-2026-02-12_2

this is our first automated build, so lets see how this goes!! we have a contribution from @QEU-B-458 to add automated builds. github is being a lil janky with me for some reason but it can be improved in the future. i need to keep focusing on the matrix overhaul for now.

we also have some more excellent contibutions from @Holy-Person !!! thank you so much for putting in all this hard work for the UI and just generally!!

What's Changed

• Fix Inspector Rendering On Top by @Holy-Person in #73
• Inspector Tweaks by @Holy-Person in #74
• automated builds and releases by @QEU-B-458 in #77

Full Changelog: dev-2025-12-12...dev-2026-02-12_2

please report bugs, question, complaints, etc.

i'm zodiepupper everywhere
matrix: @zodiepupper:matrix.pupper.dev
support email: barkvrsuppport@pupper.dev

a new inspector!

new builds!!

in this update, we have two new contributors, @Holy-Person and @Ap6661. thanks to Holy, we now have a completely remade inspector! it's easier to read, easier to use, etc. There is also a fix for obj imports and rotating grabbed objects with the mouse by @suspiciouslyBee and thankfully a rewrite of the Readme by @Ap6661.

PiperManiaDeluxe and I have been working really hard on the new networking update built using iroh, so finally expect that soon!

as per usual, let us know if there are any issues.

What's Changed

• Obj importing and mouse rotation fix by @suspiciouslyBee in #63
• readme rewrite and associated assets by @Ap6661 in #61
• Add Godot's Default .gitattributes File by @Holy-Person in #64
• Inspector Rework by @Holy-Person in #68
• Fix Scene Tree Focus Crash by @Holy-Person in #71

New Contributors

• @Ap6661 made their first contribution in #61
• @Holy-Person made their first contribution in #64

Full Changelog: dev-2025-11-07...dev-2025-12-12

dev-2025-11-07

new builds

... again!!

Some quick fixes for issues reported by Holy-Person again!

thank you so much, Holy-Person for testing and helping out!

some improved workflow!

i added the export folders to the git repo with some .gitkeep files.
i also added a new script that (if godot is already properly setup on your machine) will export all supported platforms, zip them up, and then shove them into a folder.

this reduces the barrier for me to release updates by a HUGE amount, so expect to see more immediate updates for bug fixes and the like from now on. i also want to finally add a github action workflow to automatically build and publish binaries to the github page when a commit is made, which would keep the github page up to date with nightly releases, essentially.

thank you! i am so thankful you're here.

as usual, contact me or make an issue if you find bugs (there are plenty) or need anything really.

this build is also already published to steam, so auto-updates should happen soon

i'm zodiepupper everywhere
matrix: @zodiepupper:matrix.pupper.dev

support email: barkvrsuppport@pupper.dev

Full Changelog: dev-2025-11-05...dev-2025-11-07

dev-2025-11-05

Here's another release with some quick fixes.

i'm working really hard to get this networking update ready for release still, so stay tuned.

as usual, feel free to let me know if there are any issues. the game should startup in vr by default, but it not you can use:
--xr-mode on --xr-mode off as a launch arguments to force XR mode to be on or off, respectively.

bugfix as reported by Holy-Person

this also pushes a quick bugfix/feature addition as reported here in issue #56

congrats to @suspiciouslyBee for her first successful PR here!

i'm always so happy and proud to see people submit issues or PRs.

barkvrsupport@pupper.dev
zodiepupper:matrix.pupper.dev
zodiepupper everwhere else

thank you for trying out my game 💜

What's Changed

• Add Error Message for swapping to vr when no XR server is present by @suspiciouslyBee in #54

New Contributors

• @suspiciouslyBee made their first contribution in #54

Full Changelog: dev-2025-10-11...dev-2025-11-05

dev-2025-10-11

finally!! another release lol

launch instructions!!

these exports are generated with xr enabled. so if you would like to run the game in desktop mode you can either hit the keybind to switch modes or launch the app with the command line argument --xr-mode off and it will launch the game in desktop mode.

i'm working on a launcher mode for the game to add some more user friendly startup config

i've been dealing with a lot of irl stuff, so sorry this has taken a looooong time. i now have a full portable workstation setup and it should finally be easy for me to get work done consistently without as many random tech and situational issues.

this update brings a lot of fixes and small changes. there is a full overhaul to the networking system coming soon, so stay tuned for that.

we are only 3 major updates away from the alpha!! so im working hard to get us there asap!

What's Changed

• libik setup fixed by @QEU-B-458 in #50

Full Changelog: dev-2025-06-17...dev-2025-10-11

dev-2025-06-17

here we are, finally with new builds! there is a lot of work in this one, mostly a lot of quality of life fixes.

the first version of avatars with IK is here thanks to the excellent work by lyuma on renik!!

there is the beginning of a much more robust import pipeline thanks to an excellent contribution from @PiperManiaDeluxe!! (and a small edit of that code by me)

so now, when you import images or any zip/resonitepackage which contains images, the header will be read automatically and they should be imported if the engine can import them. this is the beginning of a huge improvement that will let us just add headers to detect in the list of known file headers and the import pipeline will automatically route them from there!

thank you, Lyuma and Piper, for you're amazing work! i'm thankful for everything you do!!

and thank you, to all the supporters who make barkvr possible. i really wouldn't be able to do this work if it wasn't for all the people choosing to support this work financially.

there is the beginnings of the prototype UI for the visual scripting, stay tuned it will be released in a working state very very soon!!

sorry for the slow progress, i have been a bit stressed due to irl stuffs. but i'm feeling more ready to work now, so things should slowly ramp back up to full speed!

please, as usual, report your bugs and complaints on github, message me wherever you feel like it (zodiepupper), message me on matrix (@zodiepupper:matrix.pupper.dev), or email me support@pupper.dev

thank you all so much! see the generated list of changes below for more detail on what happened since last release!

What's Changed

• Add header checking for loading images from bytes by @PiperManiaDeluxe in #30
• Fix incorrect desktop mode rotation by @PiperManiaDeluxe in #35

New Contributors

• @PiperManiaDeluxe made their first contribution in #30

Full Changelog: dev-2025-05-05...dev-2025-06-17

dev-2025-05-05

here are some new builds!

here we are, late again lol...

we've pushed 16 commits since the last release! made some progress on important things and i've moved house! also, there are a lot of very very exciting things i can't wait to share that are coming soon for me and the project. if all goes well, progress will speed up dramatically.

• inspectors now dynamically change how fast they load fields based on how long it took per field
• inspectors now only generate one at a time locally (this needs a lil improvement but huge perf gains)
• added more export configurations to make it closer to a single click to export for all platforms when all deps are met
• inspectors now properly accommodate more integer fields, allowing for new things like being able to play animations on imported meshes
• overhaul how the game detects and handles switching between XR and flat (desktop) modes
• fixed the notifyvr utility to be visible in desktop and XR modes
• fixed notifyvr utility to be configurable
• removed old attempt at a better handler for openxr hand tracking, will be replaced with a unified interaction system later
• updated the xr vendors plugin
• forced the buttons to show panels in the inspector to be on top of the panels to prevent edge cases where the ui isn't scaled correctly
• dramatically improved sorting for the add_node inspector panel, the searching is now infinitely more usable
• fixed some network issues with asset loading
• fixed some setting defaults not working correctly (still needs more work)
• updated the terrain3d plugin
• added the mirror object that lyuma created. it's still not fully working in XR mode until the next godot version (4.5) but it works on desktop already
• added setting to set ui scaling (only works in desktop for now, fix coming soon)
• removed old testing nodes
• started work on switching to a menu summon button in the context menu instead of it just floating around
• changed context menu to say "editor" since it fits on the button correctly
• fixed inspectors being on the wrong collision layer
• fixed arbitrary file uploads while networked. the files now get their byte data added to the object and that is sent over the network (this needs to be changed so it doesn't block the sync loop)
• fixed a major bug in the networking code that was resetting the timers at the wrong spot causing only one user's connection to receive data from each client (only the first connection was getting data)
• began moving the inspector tree tracking code to the event manager (journal) to start that major performance and networking overhaul
• fixed the laser visual for controllers (broke the cursors in some cases but it will be fixed soon)
• added a button to delete held items
• did some supporting work for the PR to godot to fix FBX imports at runtime not loading meshes (i'm am working on getting the fbx importer to include textures next)
• merged the fly and noclip buttons
• made it so spanwing items from the context menu aligns their position and rotation with the context menu to put it directly in front of your hand when spawning
• localmenu now registers itself as a singleton (this is to facilitate the new context menu summon button for the big menu)
• imported images now embed a reference to the texture on the root of the spawned object (on the StaticBody3D) for easy access and extraction
• made it so clicking with vr controllers unfocuses last focused UI element like it does on desktop mode

Full Changelog: dev-2025-04-01...dev-2025-05-05

dev-2025-04-01

new builds!

important changes:

• startup performance fix
• fixed labels in enum and number fields
• fixed a gizmo issue making it disappear inconsistently
• inspector has been updated to try to optimize the speed it generates fields based on how long each loop takes
  • should be a big performance improvement
• fixed issue with vector3 fields where it was writing upon selecting a target
• added the ability to change which node appears at the top of the inspector tree
  • focus parent, and focus selected buttons
• set the inspector tree to focus the shared world root by default when spawned
• fixed inspector buttons and copy message button grabbing focus and locking movement
• code cleanup
• added terrain3d plugin
• removed spawn bindings for the old inspector
• added copy/paste button for resources in the inspector's properties panel
• fixed notifications on desktop by overhauling my notifyvr plugin
  • this still needs work for vr users, so please let me know of any issues with the notifications
• make it so enum fields will appear for string enums
• make it so animation player's current animation field appears as an enum instead of a string field
  • this makes it much easier to see what animations are available on an object
• expanded how many nested resources the inspector can show, limiting to a certain depth to reduce performance cost
  • this will be heavily expanded on soon
• fixed localmenu disappearing while in vr
• compiled gdopus and godotik for linux on arm64, making that a valid export target now!
• in-progress functionality for equipping avatars using the new ik utils
• styling update to message bubbles in matrix room chats

sorry it took so long. slowly improving my workflow to hopefully get these out more consistently.

lemme know if you have any issues! don't be shy to tell me if something is weird or you don't like something! i want to improve things as fast as i can. expect new builds every week.

as usual, if you run into issues then make an issue! (on the github); alternatively, you can yell at me in whatever communication method you have access to and i'll add it to the list. bug fixes are relatively high priority to me when reported, so feel free to point out all our issues (politely)!!

which builds should you use?

the builds that say "vr disabled" have vr disabled at the godot export time, all other ones should be exported with openxr enabled so they will work in vr. (if i missed any platforms that you want, hopefully that you can test on so i can know if it works, lemme know!)

shoutout

i wanted to add a shoutout to shocktail for doing a very needed cleanup on the settings code. i also touched it a bit and now we've got a pretty good system for quickly adding new settings.

What's Changed

• rewrite to settings, hopefully to make it easier to read and modify later by @shocktail39 in #10

New Contributors

• @shocktail39 made their first contribution in #10

Full Changelog: dev-2025-03-10...dev-2025-04-01

dev-2025-03-10

A lot of work has gone into this update (83 commits so far!!), but there are still a lot of rough edges! that's why this is still being referred to as a dev build.

i will be adding more builds to this list later but for now it's back to the existing exported platforms. i ran into some issues building the opus stuff for the other platforms, and the libik library isn't built for every platform yet. i'm working on both of those.

we now have a lot of new features. i'll try to list some important ones here, but you will always get more info looking at commit messages.

• VOIP
• import assets directly from matrix messages (uploading to a message is coming very soon)
• faster import pipeline
• new inspector!
• new layout for some ui and the desktop mode ui gets put directly on screen.
• faster logging in
• tons of performance improvements, especially for the inspector!
• gltf (.glb) export button (dumps the file into your device's download directory)
• scene (.tscn) export button (dumps the file into your device's download directory)
• new IK system that offers ik nodes you can add to any rigged mesh!
• a ton of bugs!

i am aware of a large number of issues, but please feel free to let me know what issues you run into! i am aware that webrtc connections might take multiple tries (the functions that auto-retry the connection are brokey right now and i'm already working on fixing them and adding some extra features for reconnecting when a connection is dropped and for some fancier joining methods). inputs need some work still, ui needs a lot of work (a custom 3d first ui library will come at some point and overhaul every single aspect of the UI and UX of the app). lots of random things don't sync properly, and i'm working on them as well. there is a simple change i need in the godot engine, but i am working on a workaround to fill the gap for now and get it working, that workaround is coming very soon.

once some more polish is done and i get some utils for automatic vrm avatar setup, i will be focusing on more bugs and on getting a secure scripting environment for gdscript so we can have as close to native performance but with security and some nice QOL features added.

lemme know if you have any issues! don't be shy to tell me if something is weird or you don't like something! i want to improve things as fast as i can. expect new builds every week.

Full Changelog: dev1...dev-2025-03-10

barkvr dev1

This is a first release of a development build of barkvr. this does not yet include voip or easy setup tools for avatars. voip will be included in the very next update after i get back from a week break. i have also started work on setting up github actions to automate builds from now on, so there will soon be a constant feed of builds here.

this is still early days, very rough stuff, all feedback is greatly appreciated and bear with me while development continues.

stay tuned for more updates very soon.

on linux and windows, to launch in vr mode launch with the argument "--xr-mode on"