This one isn't too exciting if you're not in the level designer crowd. But the things the level designer crowd will be able to do with this IS exciting, or will be very soon, so there is that. ;)
Release notes: https://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Release_Raptor:Pre-Early-Access_Release_Notes#Pre-EA_Demo_8
That said, the lighting system has been overhauled AGAIN. The adaptive lighting stuff was being a surprising pain and didn't feel natural to me. Overall I was not able to get the effects I wanted with dramatic contrast areas AND sufficiently light general areas.
So I had to redo a bunch of stuff, and try a lot of things that didn't work, and finally I have something that works. The raptor itself has had some visual upgrades as part of this, in terms of its texture work and having a new custom shader I made for it. More will be done in the future, but for now that's plenty.
The raptor is also better about being able to get through small doors without moving around funkily, since she rears back now instead. I'm sure that will be tuned substantially in the future, because it can look slightly goofy at the moment at times, but it's a lot better than before, and sets the basis for fixing the rest of it later. In the meantime, there are bigger fish to fry!
The "apartment building" plan has actually grown thanks to ambitious folks on the level design team, and then my own ambition with that. I don't want to spoil anything with that, but some of the level pieces that are there are already pretty incredible, and we have a bunch more planned prior to the EA launch. Getting really close to finally tying a lot of this together now!
Oh, and in terms of the new lighting stuff, there are more useful tools for tuning that to your taste now. The ambient light setting from the last release is still here, but the old brightness/contrast settings are gone. Instead you can now set the overall exposure (essentially a form of brightness or gamma), and you can also set the amount of light that is just in the area right around the raptor itself. Using those tools you can actually get a hugely varied set of looks, from things that are very bright and cheerful to very dark and moody. I'm okay with that. :)