Dear Stormworkers,
This week we have completely overhauled the visual design of the map screen.
Islands have visible patches of grass and sand, there are multiple depths of shallows visible around coasts, fog of war has a softer edge and contours are now sharper at close zoom levels. This has been part of an effort to reduce the amount of memory required from your graphics card. Previously, the map used multiple layers of textures to render islands, but this has now been upgraded to use generated geometry, which looks crisper and is a lot more compressed.
Some additional optimisations have been made to the map to improve framerates when large numbers of islands have been discovered, and overall this week's changes should make Stormworks a lot less demanding on integrated graphics with not much memory. We have also made the decision to remove the minimap for the time being due to it lacking enough detail to really provide any decent use. We may explore some different ideas for maps and compasses on the main HUD in the future, and are looking forward to hearing your feedback on the new design!
There are a few other fixes and features in this week's minor update, including expanded character support for players who are translating the game's text. As always, see below for the full changelog.
Much Love <3
The Stormworks Developers
Patch Notes
v0.5.21
Feature - Visual overhaul of the map screen including:
- Grass and sand are now visible on islands
- Island shallows have more layers
- Contours are sharper and closest zoom level has been increased slightly
- Fog of war is smoother
- Ocean is now blue instead of white
- Improved performance of map rendering
Feature - File thumbnails in vehicle load/save view are loaded only when visible
Feature - Expanded font support for Greek and additional latin characters
Fix - Optimisations to reduce GPU texture memory usage by roughly 90% (may resolve some crashes for players on integrated graphics)
Fix - Loading from main menu to game is now quicker
Fix - Removed minimap
Fix - Fixed microcontroller editor crashing when loading a different MC when component property window is visible
Fix - Fixed vehicles getting stuck in infinite load if they contain voxels that extend to the edge of their voxel tree
Fix - Fixed gripper connectors not attaching properly after being flipped vertically
Fix - Added localisations for more text
Fix - Fixed fuel prices being too high
Fix - Fixed being able to pick up deceased characters