The majority of the first Phase 2 update for Guardians of Orion revolves around OPTIMIZATION (and remastering!)
OPTIMIZATION
We have gone through the game and have completely remastered segments where need be including: content and code! This mixed on a larger scale has seen performance gains across the board.
We have also started going through as many shaders as possible from Phase 1 and remastering them for either improved visual rendering or shader simplicity - OR sometimes both if lucky enough.
The Harvester was one of the two-for-ones:
We were able to cut a ton of spaghetti as it was overly complex and in the end a basic shader setup was more powerful visually and will of course process/compute better in real-time. This mixed across many shaders will add to overall performance gains.
Now the performance gains won't be quite as large as they could be, but that is intentional.
This is due to us going back and remastering the majority of the game to fast-forward it through nearly two years of time and ensure that it looks the best it possibly can moving forward through Phase 2.
I wanted to attach a comparison of the MOAR REGION from both phases to illustrate this level of quality jump:
We are getting very close and we cannot wait to share what we've been working so hard on. Will keep you posted as beta + official release approaches.
To read more about additional changes for the upcoming update, please check this announcement forecasting the changelog:
https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791440487256/announcements/detail/1688171385763904528
To read more details about why a Phase 2 of development is happening for Guardians of Orion, check the original announcement:
https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791440487256/announcements/detail/1652136246491216093
https://youtu.be/3HrNQLJnebg
To see more comparisons between both Phases, please check this thread:
https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791440487256/announcements/detail/1716320065658190431
Thanks for reading!