*The English language support update is scheduled for July 5, 2024, at 10 am PDT.
Hi everyone,
with Kuro no Kiseki turning into Trails through Daybreak, we are also happy to release all the improvements we made to the PC version while the localization was in development. We might have gone a bit overboard with this, so the full list is... sizeable. As such, we've extracted some highlights to talk about in more depth -- you can find the full unfiltered list towards the end of this post.
Highlights
Improvements to Previously Discussed Features
As you might know, Trails through Daybreak has been out on Steam for quite a while now in Japanese. Back when we released this port, I posted about various features of the PC version here.
This included things like arbitrary resolution and aspect ratio support, support for high frame rates up to 360 FPS, a field of view setting, and various new graphics options for things like increased draw distance, shadow quality and resolution, volumetrics, screen-space reflections and so on.
For the current release, we've further improved the arbitrary aspect ratio support, fixing quite a few corner cases, and also made physically-based animations at high framerates act much closer to the 60 FPS baseline. You can find the full details towards the end of this post.
Further Graphics Improvements
On top of everything we included in the Japanese PC release, we've added quite a few new graphical features.
Improved Shadow Caching
Let's start with something that benefits everyone, and not just those with GPU power to spare. In this version of the game, with the new default shadow caching setting, you'll see improved shadow quality at no performance cost (or, potentially, even slightly better performance).
This image actually shows the same shadow resolution (and performance) on both sides, with the old behaviour on the left and the new one on the right.
MSAA and SGSSAA Anti-aliasing Options
One issue with the previous release (and all versions of Trails through Daybreak, really) is that there is no effective way to combat some of the specular aliasing in the game, especially in motion. We've implemented MSAA and, in particular, SGSSAA in order to change this.
While these settings require significant GPU performance, they do a very good job in greatly improving image quality and stability in motion.
The difference is much more extreme in motion than it is in a still image.
Note that I believe that Trails through Daybreak might be the first full game ever to actually offer a hardware SGSSAA option. (Do let me know if I missed something!)
Improved Static Reflections
The game features two types of reflections: dynamic screen-space reflections (for which we already offered several quality options in the original release), and static reflections based on cubemaps.
For this release, all the latter were recreated at much higher quality.
This results in higher quality even at the new baseline setting, and there is a further improved option available.
Better UI Rendering Quality at Low Resolution
This one is especially useful to people playing the game on the Steam Deck or other relatively low-resolution handhelds. UI text is now much more readable on these devices. The improvements also do carry over to other resolutions, but they are basically unnoticeable there.
HDR Support
We added native HDR support to the game. Note that of course the content was not authored for HDR, but this allows you to use HDR without any hacks, to set the maximum brightness, and to control the brightness of UI elements independently of the game's overall brightness.
BGM Info Display Option
A fan favourite returns with the BGM Info display option. This allows you to have the game display the name of a BGM track whenever a new one is played.
New in this iteration is the option to only show this information once per unique track played in each game session.
There's more that deserves some spotlight, but I'll stop here and move on to the shorter patch note format.
Full Patch Notes
Here are the (reasonably) complete patch notes:
- Miscellaneous fixes and improvements:
- English localization, of course
- Fix a potential crash in camp menu when rapidly using direct shortcuts
- Prevent possible crash when switching the volumetric light option from "off" to another setting
- Improve auto message advance behavior, and add an option to control the delay
- Implement default language auto-detection from the platform (Steam, GOG, Windows)
- Use Steam Dynamic Cloud Sync API
- Modify physics at higher framerates to be closer to the reference behavior at 60 FPS
- Add a compatibility warning if the mod "ENGPATCH.p3a" is loaded (This is obviously no longer necessary, but might lead to subtle issues when playing the game)
- Allow mouse camera movement in some specific situations where it was previously disabled
- Be more resilient when users decide to remove the .dlls for any platform (Steam, GoG, EGS); the game will now continue to work, and just disable the respective integrations
- Slightly improve the I/O behavior of the game when looking up assets
- Don't use scan-code lookup for extended keys; this could cause issues when trying to do things like binding an action to "volume up" (please don't)
- Fix BGM stopping in specific circumstances in one event
- Clear gamepad input upon controller disconnect
- Graphics-related fixes and improvements:
- Implement MSAA, SGSSAA, and transparency MSAA, and add options for all of them
- Implement HDR display support, including separate 3D and UI brightness options
- New UI texture filtering implementation for sharper and higher quality UI/fonts, especially at low resolution
- Change shadow caching behavior, significantly increasing shadow quality; also add a setting to control its behavior
- Improved baseline quality of static reflections (cubemaps), and also offer a higher quality version of them
- Fix the light culling compute shader on AMD GPUs (and improve performance due to less lights being considered)
- Add an option to switch between the old (PS4-style) and new (updated PS5-style) water shading pipeline
- Scale more 3D UI effect internal rendering resolutions according to the display size and portrait supersampling setting
- Fix a rare issue that could lead to sporadic black pixels on water
- Use high-quality resampling for resolution scale (very minor quality improvement)
- Fix a 3D scene in the game which had minor missing geometry (glass panes)
- Unlock a small number of animations that were previously limited to 30 FPS
- Fix display mode changes leading to stars on night maps being lost until the next area load
- Overhaul all the graphics presets, and add a new "Console" preset
- UI-related fixes and improvements:
- Add BGM info display feature and an option to control it
- Add option to always show the turn order in battles
- Use a separate page for autosaves in the load menu to improve navigation
- Shorten save titles for better readability in save/load menu
- Apply the font size setting more consistently
- Fix button prompts to show message backlog during dialog option selection
- Fix draw order of close button prompt on alignment result screen
- Fix button prompt spacing in help message when unlocking voice DLCs
- Revamp the settings menu and categories to better accommodate new settings
- Fix button prompt label alignment in orbment/equip screens
- Fix date format, change character list and add more vertical space in save details in save/load menu
- Improve mouse handling in the settings menu
- Allow mouse hovering over guest members in camp/status and shop
- Make button prompts on event pause screen clickable
- Play tab change sound when switching tabs in notebook using the mouse
- Aspect-ratio-related fixes and improvements:
- Fix alignment of character name introduction in ultrawide
- Fix alignment of message backlog button help in ultrawide
- Fix alignment/background of connection effects screen in ultrawide
- Fix alignment of message log components in ultrawide
- Enable black bars for game-over screen
- Fix "Arc Dominator", "Pandemonium Ruler" and "Twilight Kiss" craft scaling at non-16:9 aspect ratios
Note that, due to the various increases in asset quality as well as the inclusion of the English translation, the game's storage requirements increased to ~17 GB.
We are extremely proud of the current PC version of this game, and hope that everyone enjoys it!
- Peter "Durante" Thoman