This is our 4th patch this week, and we didn't hold back!
Patch highlights:
Added 5 Ancient Equipment slots & 16 Ancient Equipment items with every killable gatherable, mob, boss, and player being able to drop these very rare items.
Optimized networking code and improved a lot of UI elements.
Full patch notes & some design idea inclusion as we worked to deliver this patch.
Healthbar animation speed increased to prevent skipping the animation on rapid hits. (Toxic ability ticks, rapid-fire bow, etc.)
Improved placement & icons for killfeed.
Fixed an issue where gatherables had a small collision field still active after death.
Dimension Equipment removed for the current game mode
We will be adding a new rare equipment drop system in its place , which will help us be more true to our unique vision. We don't want to provide the player incentive to feel like the game is a race for power—plenty of existing Fantasy MOBAs do that. Our design is aiming more for the feel of a satisfying marathon to obtain gear, with low valleys and high peaks. (This became Ancient Equipment in this patch)
^In response to the Dimension Equipment removal, we have removed vanishing essence for now—we plan to reintroduce the system if we have a core loop fitting its use case need, or in a future game mode.
Improved item toasts text and removed background from it.
Increased environment brightness scattering by a small amount to increase visibility in day and night time.
Added user has joined messages.
Improved text chat look and functionality.
Base health increased by 3,000 to 8,000—this is in preparation for the power players will be obtaining from Ancient Equipment rare drops.
Better saturation blending on grasses that had interesting colors.
Improved collision on gatherables of larger sizes.
Moon cycle now stops at end game, rather than popping right after end-game and teasing players with a bonus drop window.
Flattened rank health rewards a bit more for better balancing.
Ancient Equipment is not corrupted and triggers a DB save immediately when obtained.
Typically quitting a game will cause player's DB to not save their progress which is intended as a penalty for leaving a match—we have added an exception to this on ancient equipment drops as they are very rare.
Added inventory filtering tab for Ancient Equipment.
Swapped out the default lighting from Lumen to Screenspace, Lumen can still be enabled by players, but since it has a high performance cost we want to have it be an option players must turn on.
Net relevancy changes to optimize networking, improve client & server CPU performance, & prepare us for a potential future of high player quant modes & larger maps.
Improved net relevancy code for healthbar—putting higher dependence for accuracy on server updating when net relevance begins.
Scoreboard Stats moved from client side reliance with net relevance being important for tags & states, to a server component.
The above 2 changes allowed us to change our net relevance on NPCs and Players to be more optimized, and when added with a previous change we made a month ago to mesh rendering distances, back in patch 0.24, we are setting ourselves up to not only improve the performance of the game, but for a future where we could potentially offer higher playercounts in gamemodes & larger maps.
We updated our Mob spawner logic to allow us greater developer control, improved PCG blocking, & dynamic optimization of spawn distances based on different types of mobs—allowing us to return humanoid mobs without paying true humanoid skeleton CPU prices.