Patch 0.0.4.1 - The Smoother Patch
Overview: This patch is all about performance, optimization, and major quality-of-life improvements. Our headline feature is a brand-new caching pipeline that eliminates shader stutter for a perfectly smooth, hitch-free gameplay experience. We've also added a massive QoL upgrade: you can now toggle rooms on and off directly from a switch in the hallway, no Ops run required! This is all paired with a new visual "manifestation" effect, new assets, and important bug fixes.
Performance & Engine Upgrades
- Stutter-Free Gameplay (FREE-991): Resolved a critical shader stutter issue caused by a corrupted PSO cache. After a multi-day collaborative analysis of staging and application logs, we isolated the failure and implemented a new custom precaching pipeline. This system, which forces a cache clear and shader recompile, successfully captured 447 new PSOs and now bundles all runtime 'hitches' into a master file. This forces all shaders to be pre-loaded during the initial loading screen, resulting in a perfectly smooth, hitch-free experience. Also, we now have a 6 stage scripted continuous integration system for Windows.
- Material Refactor & Caching (FREE-987, FREE-981): To support this, we've "cannonized" over 500 materials to originate from a single parent root, dramatically reducing shader building. A new Generator asset was also created to help cache everything for the new shader pipeline.
Gameplay & Quality of Life
- Hallway Room Switch (FREE-989): This is a huge one! You no longer need to run to Ops to manage your rooms. A new "On/Off" switch is now located in the hallway right outside each room, allowing you to activate or deactivate them on the fly.
- Deactivated Room Visuals (FREE-946, FREE-518, FREE-449): Deactivated rooms now have a clear, visual indicator: a red force field. This makes it much easier to see what's online at a glance.
- Note: This is a visual-only change for now (it doesn't block the player) and is the first step toward our new staff training video.
New Art & Visual Effects
- New "Manifestation" Effect (FREE-986): We've added a stunning new visual effect for objects manifesting from nothing. The system dissolves the mesh into particles, vortexes them, and then smoothly lerps them back to their origin while fading the mesh back in.
- Thanks to the material refactor, the particles are even colored to match the mesh they are from!
- New Assets & Environment Updates (FREE-983):
- The new Manifestation Effect is visible on the new Zygnus Portal asset (not yet accessible).
- The "Softspace" pillar materials have been updated to the awesome new circuit board material.
Bug Fixes
- Damage Replication (FREE-982): Fixed an issue where room damage was not replicating correctly (again).
- UI Toggle (FREE-984): Toggling the UI "Off" will now also correctly hide player names.