Icarus Week 171 Update | Massive FPS improvements with Distance Field Shadows

Week 171 features a substantial performance improvement, with large changes to light sources, shadows and light radius.

These changes are described in detail below, along with examples, so you can jump in and learn how you can implement these changes into your game to get large FPS (frames per second) boosts (based on our testing).

We’ve also got a massive breakdown of the three new bosses coming with Great Hunts, including some lore, combat insights, and what you can expect when facing these goliaths.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements:

• Added 40% elemental damage resistance to all tamed creatures; this ensures they take the same damage from physical and elemental damage
• QuickMove now prioritizes Processor inventories, notably on the Electronic Food Trough Ctrl-Click will go where needed
• All Pistol and Rifle ammunition icons redesigned

This Week: FPS Improvements

What’s the TL;DR?

• 'Light Shadows' are now significantly cheaper to run
• Lights have an increased radius

Light Shadows

As many gamers will already be aware, rendering shadows can be frustratingly expensive, and lowering your Shadow Quality setting in most heavy-hitting games will likely net you a big performance increase. Icarus is no different in this aspect, but we’ve also tried since the very beginning not to take the simple route many other games take and just turn shadows off.

We want to continue to leave the power in the hands of our players as much as possible, while still being responsible game devs and knowing where/when to draw the line and ensure that all players are being given the best chance of a good experience when playing our games.

So, with that in mind, we’ve meticulously gone through over 100 of our light-emitting deployables (most of which cast shadows) and done a pass over the settings to ensure they’re as optimized as possible. One particular setting we’ve opted for is to use Distance Field Shadows instead of the traditional, more expensive, default shadows.

In this small test scene below (which has about six active shadow-casting lights), we can see a direct comparison between ‘Default Shadows’ on the left and ‘Distance Field Shadows’ on the right. Even with just six lights, there is very little visual difference but almost double the frame rate in this scene.

How Does It Work?

Shadow Rendering cost is directly related to the number of triangles within the radius of the light, and many of Icarus' meshes contain a significant number of triangles to get to the high level of detail Icarus is known for.

The problem with this is that it makes rendering default shadows from lights extremely expensive for the GPU. Luckily for us, there is an alternative method of rendering shadows via a simplified version of the mesh that is automatically generated by Unreal, called a “Distance Field Mesh”. This is a simple approximation of the mesh, and while that may sound like a degradation of shadow quality, it is usually the opposite, with the mesh now casting much softer shadows. This lends itself to a more realistic representation of light as it bounces and scatters throughout a room.

Expectations

To ensure we’re not setting up the wrong expectations, we want to be clear that this change will only affect you if you have your “Light Shadows” turned on in your settings. However, now might be a good time to turn it on and try it out to see how your performance fares with this latest change, if you haven’t been using it so far. Additionally, Light Shadows will only be visible if you have your “Shadows” quality set to High or Epic. It's also worth noting this is set to 'ON' by default, so it's worth checking out your settings when you load up.

Light Radius Increases

In addition to FPS improvements for shadows, this week's update also includes another substantial improvement for most light-emitting sources: increases in light radius.

We initially kept this radius value very small in order to help with performance costs, to the point where some of the lights were actually pretty much useless. Now (with the significant cost reduction generated from our shadow changes), we’ve been able to increase this radius much larger to make the lights more usable and to affect a larger area.

You may find that your base is much brighter now, so it is also a chance to remove some light sources you no longer need, saving you power and giving you even more performance improvements.

Going Forward

As with all things, this is a balance between costs and visuals. We do have some decent control over the visual quality by tweaking the “resolution” of the Distance Field Mesh; however, doing this increases the memory consumption of the mesh exponentially and will also increase the cost of shadow rendering. So, we’ll be keeping an eye out (and an ear out for your feedback) for egregious meshes that need an increase in quality. In general, we’re expecting the quality at present to be the baseline for this change to remain meaningful.

The final thing worth mentioning is we’re aware that Distance Field Shadows don’t cast shadows off skeletal meshes, so things like player characters, creatures/mounts/pets, and any animated Deployables won’t cast shadows. There are some things we can do here regarding using hidden dummy meshes and capsule shadows, which we’re investigating, but in the interest of getting this optimization out to players as quickly as possible, we’ve elected to skip this part for now and introduce further updates later on.

Next Week: New SMG Craftable Firearm

Next week, we’ll introduce a new craftable SMG (Submachine Gun), as we talked about previously before they were delayed to undergo some more changes.

This week’s new bullet icons are a sneak peek of the style we will use for ammunition going forward. Next week, we’ll reveal more of the arsenal.

Coming Soon: Meet the new Great Hunts Bosses

This week, we’re introducing you to the three new bosses you’ll be encountering in the Great Hunts Campaigns.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3315290/Icarus_Great_Hunts_Campaigns/

Rimetusk

Rimetusks are incredibly strong, with thick ice-like armor covering their vulnerable areas. They live in harmony with Vespers and will often summon them to help in a fight. Their stomp is a powerful attack that should always be avoided if you want to walk away with your life. The Rimetusk is an example of what happens when the scientific protocol is ignored. An apprentice was tasked with researching chemical interactions with local flora and fauna within the Prometheus region. He instead chose to conduct his own enzyme research. This did not end well for him, or his team.

Garganutan

Thanks to their chemically enlarged hippocampus, garganutans often use their surroundings to their advantage in a fight. Because of their enhanced intellect, most prospectors will abandon any conflict or interaction with these creatures out of fear for their safety. The Garganutan is the direct result of unsanctioned experimentation conducted on the surface of Icarus. Researchers were trying to gather data on the effect of exotics on the brain and whether it could increase the capability of some animals to learn faster or to a greater extent.

Quarrite

Quarrites have a rather remarkable skill: They consume entire mineral deposits to strengthen and replenish their armor-like coating. They then use this armor to trample or roll over their prey to great effect. Believed to be native to Icarus, the Quarrite is a peculiar creature that, upon first glance, appears to be made of rocks. This is its armor, which must first be removed in order to damage the creature. It can often be found in arid, rocky terrain, which helps it to blend in with its surroundings.

Your support makes these updates possible.

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