G'day Rat Racers!
This new update fixes bugs, improves performance and adds some goodies that didn't initially make it into the last major update.
This update also updates the Game Manual significantly to bring it up to date with the Anniversary update!
Improvements:
Improved GPU performance in cases where the GPU was pixel shader or texture fillrate bound.
Increased the brightness of Beach's night time lighting.
Improved responsiveness of the game's dynamic resolution scaling under high GPU load. This should resolve performance issues at high GPU load on some older PCs.
Added an approximate latency measurement to the in-race HUD; this displays how delayed online race interactions may be, in ms, and is affected both by the system performance and the network latency of all players in the lobby. NOTE: This value may be different across systems in the same lobby; this is normal and is no cause for concern.
Improved disconnection detection for players in lobbies with mixed Direct/relay network connections.
Changes:
CPU players now use random names instead of a CPU number & Rat fur colour.
Bugfixes:
Fixed a bug where the LOADING indicator could vanish too early on game boot while the game was still prewarming shaders.
Fixed a bug where the game's in-race HUD would become stuck on in the background of the results scoreboard if a player changed their race POV to spectate another player after finishing their race.
Fixed a bug where Shields would sometimes be instantly destroyed when used in replays made from online races.
Fixed a bug where Missiles that would target a player behind another player in online mode and score a hit could visually appear to miss on the thrower's screen.
Fixed a bug where it was possible for all players in an online lobby to get stuck in an infinite "Waiting for Players" loop if the lobby master's client disconnected before the race fully began.
Fixed a bug where it was possible to accidentally load into a Quick Race while exiting an online race while playing Rattus Velocitas on a matchmaking server hosted on a Local Area Network.
Fixed several issues with Beach's coconuts desyncing in online races.
Fixed a bug where Feral Hovercats in Desert (Night) were rather pacified in the presence of Cheese eating players in online races.
Fixed several bugs with inconsistent Feral Hovercat targeting in online races.
Fixed several bugs with online mode replays playing back Feral Hovercats incorrectly.
Fixed a bug where Cheese drop placement in online replays was nondeterministic in Desert (Night) if a player was hit by a Feral Hovercat while eating it.
Fixed a bug where it was possible to get trapped in a public matchmaking Lobby if the Lobby Master left right after an online race ends.
Fixed a bug where players that got disconnected during an online race (and therefore stopped moving on other player's instances of the game) would continuously drive forwards forever in replays created on still-connected players' clients.
Known issues:
Public Matchmaking only has Alpha class Thrusters available; this doesn't affect private lobbies. This will be resolved in a future game update.
The "Parry this you filthy casual" achievement is currently broken and triggers inconsistently; this will be resolved properly in a future update.
Some stuttering may be experienced on a first run of the game or after a GPU driver update when using Vulkan. This will be resolved in a future game update.
Beach with maximum graphics settings may run worse on some systems than intended.
Falling off-course while a high ping player is present in an online race lobby may result in respawning more than once.
Certain fade-out transitions don't work in splitscreen multiplayer.
Sometimes firing a Missile while an opponent is close behind you targets that opponent instead of who's in front of you.
Finishing a race in online multiplayer sometimes shows the incorrect finishing position in the top left before the scoreboard is shown if there were opponents also finishing their race nearby.
DNF'd players in online mode sometimes incorrectly appear as having crossed the finish line on the results scoreboard.
Disconnected players in online mode may cause a replay file saved from that race to display "--'--"---" as the finishing time and said players will appear to be missing on the scoreboard at the end of the race.
Dropped Cheese Rocket payloads from high-latency opponents may visually desync it's replay file later.
Portable Dash Rings when thrown by a player with a much higher latency than you will often appear far behind said player; a workaround is to use -enable-legacy-network. This doesn't affect recorded replays.
Online mode may run with a lower framerate than offline play at high latencies on some lower-spec systems; if this occurs, a workaround is to launch with the -use-legacy-network command line option.
If another application such as a GPU-intensive game other than Rattus Velocitas is running at the same time as Rattus Velocitas, the dynamic resolution scaling may dip to a really low resolution. It is recommended to close the offending application while playing this game. A workaround for GPUs that can handle it without losing frames is to add -disable-dynamic-resolution to your Steam launch options.
Turning on vsync may permanently cap the game's internal resolution to a low value on some monitors, especially if it's "not quite 60Hz" aka. the 59.89 NTSC refresh rate standard. Either turn vsync off or use -disable-dynamic-resolution in your Steam launch options if this affects you and your GPU is strong enough to handle native resolution at all times.
If a player disconnects during an online race, the replay for said race may incorrectly reproduce item interactions around the disconnected player's position.
Replays recorded on Beach with a high latency (>200ms) opponent may have Coconuts erroneously explode in cases where they didn't in the original race.
Sometimes replays recorded from online mode may incorrectly colour a player's sonic boom with Cheese boosting colours after the boost ends if the player then passed through a large number of Dash Rings.
Rarely, a crash may be observed on Linux systems using the proprietary NVIDIA drivers when using the default graphics backend. (Vulkan) A workaround is to either use OpenGL or switch to the Windows version by selecting a Steam Proton runtime. Please note that Proton is not officially supported.
In some cases Missiles may still target the wrong player in a replay file made from online mode where latency was highly variable.