Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? 🙂
I couldn’t resist and decided to release another small patch — but one that I believe is important for the overall visual perception of the game, especially since atmosphere is absolutely crucial here.
The new rendering method gave us a significant performance boost, made the image cleaner and less blurry, and added more depth to textures. However, since it doesn’t support SSAO, it also introduced an issue with “floating objects” and a flatter-looking image.
This was especially noticeable in interiors. If you look closely, you could see that objects lacked shadows underneath them — something that never happens in real life. As a result, objects appeared to be hovering in the air.
In this patch, I addressed this by adding Ambient Occlusion via post-processing, which essentially creates fake contact shadows around objects.
The difference is immediately visible in grass, trees, and foliage. Previously they looked flat, but now they have a sense of volume.
And of course, in interiors the feeling that objects are floating has disappeared. Look closely at gaps, under cabinets, bread, sacks, bushes, and other objects in the before-and-after screenshots — you’ll notice that proper shadows have appeared.
In motion, the effect is even more noticeable. It also slightly reduced overexposure — for example, Ratmir’s tunic is more blown out on the left side in the older version. Overall, the change may seem subtle in screenshots, but personally, the lack of contact shadows really hurts my eyes in games — everything ends up looking flat.