Hello, this is the Chrono Odyssey Development Team.
We want to thank everyone who joined the recent closed beta. Your support, curiosity, and genuine feedback have meant a lot to us. It’s been a privilege to watch players explore what we’ve built so far, and your input allows us to take an honest look at where the game stands and shape our next steps.
We were excited to see that many of you enjoyed the core experience of Chrono Odyssey. However, there are also areas that fell short. We heard consistent feedback on animations, motions, combat responsiveness, performance, optimization, graphics, etc. All forms of critique, whether big or small, are critical to the development process, and our top priority is to address these shortcomings accordingly.
To that end, we’re carefully reviewing all the feedback you’ve shared. Some of it will be addressed here in Part 1, while the rest is being thoroughly reviewed and will be covered in detail in Part 2.
Animation/Motion and Combat Experience Improvements (1/2)
Performance/Optimization
Lighting and Other Graphic Enhancements
Here’s a look at some of the key areas we’re working to improve.
1. Animations & Combat Responsiveness
1) Hit Feedback Inconsistency
This was a major issue during the closed beta test. Some actions felt sluggish or disconnected, with attacks, dodges, and blocks occasionally failing to register as expected. We believe this stems from packet desyncs between the client and the server, and will accelerate packet transmission to improve timing accuracy, redesign packet intervals, and refine the packet structure.
Currently, motion and combat packets are interconnected in a shared data stream, which may be contributing to sync issues. We plan on separating these into distinct systems, actively reviewing and resolving all collision detection inconsistencies to ensure combat interactions feel consistent and responsive.
2) Class Weapons
While each class has a wide range of abilities, we’ll be introducing a new system called the “Matrix” in the next test to give each weapon a more distinct identity. This system will allow you to choose from four progression paths per weapon (twelve in total) as each class has three weapons.
We aim to diversify skill usage of each weapon based on progression paths. Even if two players are using the same weapon, their primary skills may differ. The same skill can also produce different results depending on builds. Our goal is a wide range of playstyles, whether you're focusing on chaining skills, switching between weapons, or exploring other tactical options. Farming will become more dynamic, and players will need to find gear with stats that match their playstyle.
With added playstyles, we’re creating new animations to ensure each weapon feels distinct and expressive in combat.
3) Camera
We are fixing an issue where the camera angle affects visibility when you’re too close to walls or certain environments.
The following issues with the lock-on system will also be addressed:
Abrupt screen change when changing targets
Camera getting too close to the target during melee combat
Camera reset after combat
Skills being cast based on the direction the player is facing rather than the camera’s
We’re also addressing an issue where the camera shakes vertically in certain areas.
4) Controls
To enhance the overall feel of combat, we’re redesigning hit reactions by increasing the reaction duration from 1 to 2-4 seconds. This provides clearer timing for follow-up attacks and adds a greater sense of risk and reward when taking damage or landing hits.
We're also reviewing and fixing unnatural character movements and collision inconsistencies that caused characters to appear as if floating.
2. Performance & Optimization
1) GPU & Rendering Overload
We’re restructuring how assets are rendered to reduce GPU load and improve real-time performance.
High-resolution Nanite geometry will only be applied where necessary, while frequently repeated assets will rely on Instanced Static Mesh (ISM) or Hierarchical Instanced Static Mesh (HISM) to minimize draw calls and reduce GPU strain. Assets will be managed in batches, and draw calls will be consolidated to minimize CPU–GPU communication overhead and maximize rendering efficiency.
2) Development Efficiency
We're shifting level design toward reusable environmental assets to improve development efficiency and runtime performance to speed up production and simplify maintenance, while reducing memory, disk, and rendering overhead.
We're also minimizing redundant materials and textures by standardizing our art pipeline with trim sheets, ensuring high-resolution visual variety.
▶ Trim sheets?
Trim sheets consolidate commonly used detail elements (such as metal edges, moldings, panel lines, and bolts) into a single texture laid out within a 0–1 UV space. Each asset is then UV-mapped to the appropriate section, allowing for a wide range of visual details using just one shared material. This eliminates the need to create separate high-resolution textures for every object. In Unreal Engine, trim sheet–based materials are loaded only once, which reduces memory usage and optimizes draw calls. By instancing parameters like color, roughness, and metallic values, we can easily introduce visual variety without adding performance cost. Trim sheets are particularly effective when applied to modular environment pieces and background structures that are frequently used throughout the game world.
3) Memory Usage
We're restructuring the loading system by separating rendering data from collision data to reduce memory usage and improve system stability.
▶ Collision data loaded alongside rendering data?
Previously, collision data was loaded alongside rendering data even when it wasn’t needed. With the new structure, only rendering data is loaded by default, while collision data is selectively loaded based on player proximity and line of sight, completely avoiding unnecessary memory usage. For Nanite meshes, we’re planning to replace per-polygon collision with simplified low-poly collision meshes to lower GPU and CPU overhead. Unused collision primitives will be unloaded from memory to further optimize resource usage and improve loading speed.
We’ll be refining our Garbage Collection (GC) and memory allocation structure to manage unused areas more efficiently.
Unused cells and actors within the World Partition system will be automatically unloaded, and the garbage collection timing will also be adjusted to remove unnecessary references more quickly.
Resources will be managed based on their data layer state with only active layers remain loaded, while assets in inactive layers are prevented from loading altogether. This ensures that only relevant assets consume memory, resulting in better performance and system stability.
4) Stable Performance Across Various System Specs
We’ll be designing a dynamic loading system that adjusts based on the player’s hardware: high-end systems for broader areas and higher-quality assets, lower-end systems for nearby cells and lower-resolution assets. This ensures a balanced experience between performance and visual quality, regardless of system specs.
3. Graphics
1) Rendering Efficiency
We’ll be reducing unnecessary calculations and streamlining the rendering pipeline without compromising visual quality.
Redundant material shaders will be consolidated into unified master materials, managed entirely through instance parameters.
By improving ocean surface shaders and wave rendering, we aim to enhance realism while minimizing GPU load.
To further optimize performance, we’ll be reducing reliance on World Position Offset (Vertex Animation), simplifying material functions, and replacing screen space reflections with a mix of cubemap reflections to achieve a better balance between visual quality and performance.
2) Screen Transition and Quality
We’re working to improve overall screen quality by delivering high-resolution visuals and smoother transitions.
By adjusting and migrating our Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) settings, we’ll be reducing motion blur and ghosting artifacts.
▶ Temporal Super Resolution?
This update also enhances image clarity and frame stability compared to traditional Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA).
Additionally, we’re adding support for DLSS (NVIDIA) and FSR (AMD) to enhance both performance and visual quality.
Upscaling options will be available on compatible graphics cards to ensure players get the most out of their hardware.
3) Lighting
We’re working to reduce unnecessary lighting calculations by removing unused lights and limiting the excessive use of Stationary and Movable lights.
We're also transitioning to a cluster-based light management system to reduce rendering costs, light overlap, and shading complexity, resulting in more efficient rendering.
To improve the overall quality of lighting, we’re standardizing exposure values and redefining the priority and range of key lights to improve contrast fidelity and maintain consistent exposure across the scene.
Please note that this update includes a number of technical terms. We’ve done our best to explain things clearly, and we appreciate your understanding as we focus on sharing our development plans as transparently as possible.
Part 2 will take a closer look at what’s ahead. In addition to the areas we’ve already covered, we’ll continue improving combat systems, technical stability, graphics, and animations. We’ll also be addressing new topics such as sound, UI/UX, gameplay flexibility, in-game guidance, balance, content flow, progression, replayability, social features, narrative, server stability, and bug fixes.
We don’t plan on rushing ahead without first getting things right. We want the next version of Chrono Odyssey to reflect all the hard work and honest feedback that have gone into this process. Our focus remains on quality and delivering a more polished, complete experience.
Stay tuned for more details and as always, we look forward to hearing your feedback. Thank you again for being part of this journey.
- The Chrono Odyssey Development Team