Hi everyone!
Sorry for the delays in getting this update out. It took a lot longer than anticipated. Sorry for not keeping you all updated on the progress too. I’ll work on keeping to the devblog schedule and responding to discussions. The good news is you won’t have to wait this long for the next one. Improving performance was our main goal but we’ve included a few new graphics options and some bug fixes too.
Performance
The best way to show off the performance improvements is with a video. On the left is patch 0.6.02 and on the right is 0.6.03. This is recorded on a Steam Deck.
You’ll notice an overall performance increase on lower end PCs such as the Steam Deck. Higher end PCs will see improvements with stuttering so the game should feel smoother.
Graphics settings
A couple new graphics options have been added. First are some presets; Low, Medium, High, and Steam Deck. This will set up your graphics options to things that we have found work well on various devices.
We’ve added two new shadow rendering settings. You can now set the distance shadows render and the number of shadow cascades. These can be used with the shadow resolution setting to help you find a good balance between distance and quality. Using the presets is a good starting place if you don’t want to fiddle with the settings.
Lastly the graphics settings are now saved to a text file so if something gets messed up, you can delete the file and it will reset your settings. The file is located in:
“C:\\Users\\\\AppData\\LocalLow\\Arcane Alpacas\\Dagger Directive\\GraphicsSettings.config”
Feedback
I saw some comments that we have not been responding or that we’ve abandoned the game, rest assured we have not abandoned the game. We’re here and working on it! I have not done a great job keeping up with Steam discussions and I did forget to put out the dev blog last month. I will work on improving communication and sorry for creating concerns!
Future Content
While we’ve been focused on performance that doesn’t mean we aren’t working on other things. Here’s a preview of the custom weapons system and one of the new guns.
You’ll be able to upload weapons to the Steam Workshop for others to use. Magazines can be shared so a weapon you make can use a magazine that already exists in the game, or one someone else made. We’re still working to improving the workflow, UI, and general polish.
* Yes the Thompson will be in the Workshop for everyone at launch!
Here’s a sneak peak at a new gun coming with the next update:
Below you can view the patch notes, thanks!
- Dan
Patch Notes
Nov 20, 2025 - V0.6.03 Performance improvements
Notes:
[AI] Replaced the vision with a more accurate and performant system
[Animations] IK has different quality levels at different ranges
[General] Lots of small performance improvements, too many to list them all. This is where most of the time was spent.
[General] Improved pooling performance.
[General] Improved hitbox and collider performance.
[General] Improved stats and achievements performance.
[Graphics] Added graphics presets for; Low, Medium, High, and Steam Deck.
[Graphics] Added new graphics settings for Shadow distance and Shadow cascade count.
[Graphics] Improved the grass quality for lower grass detail settings
[Graphics] Antialiasing settings are now named Off, FAA, MSAA x4, MSAA x8 and not just low-high.
Bug Fixes:
[AI] AI no longer becomes stuck when drones are active.
[AI] Fixed AI getting stuck when failing to path in the idle state.
[AI] Ai can target the Zodiac now, it was set to the wrong faction.
[Bullets] Fixed an error in the projectiles that kept them from fully penetrating an object in some cases.
[Graphics] Fixed lower detail grass looking stretched out.
[Networking] Improved host time out to fix host migrations.
[Networking] Fixed connection error handling, if you get an error connecting you’ll end up back in the main menu instead of stuck in a loading screen.
[Networking] Improved spawning which should help reduce the number of errors when loading into some of the heavier scenes.
[UI] Fixed scope sometimes rendering when iron sights are active.
Known/existing issues:
[Graphics] Turning shadows from on to off can sometimes not take full effect until you load into a new scene.
[Networking] Leaving and rejoining a game as a host can cause the server to get into a broken state. We’ll have a fix in the next update.