Overview

The UI has been almost completely rewritten from scratch. Every menu, every HUD element, and the logic behind it all. This was the main purpose of this patch. In addition to the new menu eye candy, the total size of Hide and Seek has shrunk by approximately 1.3gb.
This should result in faster loading of levels and less stutter (loading from disk is actually what makes the game appear like it is crashing) especially on computers with slower hard disks.
There are also a lot of visual upgrades in game such as upgraded fog on the levels with fog, Screen Space Multiple Scattering, improved volumetric lighting, and more.
And, very importantly importantly, a bug fix where if you didn't adjust graphic settings, made the game default to max settings resulting in very bad performance on lower end machines.

UI Overhaul

The UI is totally new. You can see an early preview here, or just launch the game. :)

• Main Menu, Settings, Server Administration Panel, Hats Gallery, End of Match Score Screen are all new, animated, and will always be consistent across all levels, and I won't have to update it on every level as I did before. :)
• New and consistent audio (music, feedback, etc...)
• In Game HUD has been reworked to also be consistent across levels, and also animated.
• Escape will now work consistently and close any popup, go back to previous page, etc...
• There is now more messaging, and more detailed messaging throughout the game explaining more clearly what is happening and what you should be doing.
• On the End of Match Score Screen, players can chat while the next level is loading, at least until the server has fully loaded the level.
• Controls Menu "Reset Defaults" no longer resets all of your settings, only the controls.
• Graphics Menu bug fixed that, if you have not applied any custom graphics settings, made the game run at max settings on your native resolution resulting in very bad performance on low/mid range machines.

Haunted House

• Particle System fog removed, replaced with a global fog, SSMS, & volumetric lighting. Enjoy.
• Ivy and Moss growing on the house now sway in the wind.
• Draw calls reduced resulting in lower CPU overhead - more work still to be done here.
• The lake is now less murky and more bloody.
• Fixed one of the patrolling spiders not being animated properly.
• Fixed grass texture issue introduced in last patch

Halloween Hedge Maze

• Improved global fog, SSMS, & volumetric lighting. Enjoy.
• The lake is now less murky and more bloody.
• Inside the maze there is now more grass, swaying more realistically, and is cheaper to render.
• Birds are (again) no longer animated since they were eating a lot of CPU time (like up to 10fps) on older/slower processors.

Hedge Maze

• Removed fake volumetric lighting and replaced with global realtime volumetric lighting, sun was moved too so it's brighter inside the maze.
• Inside the maze there is now more grass, swaying more realistically, and is cheaper to render.
• Birds are (again) no longer animated since they were eating a lot of CPU time (like up to 10fps) on older/slower processors.

General Improvements/Bugfixes

• Auto Kick AFK will now only affect the Seeker, when they are not counting. Hiders and Spectators will never get this message.
• Removed screen space sunshafts and enabled global volumetric lighting on all levels.
• Flashlights of Hiders and the Seeker once more are volumetric lights.
• Flashlights no longer go through walls unexpectedly.
• Reduced application size by ~1.3gb resulting in much faster loading, and (on my test machines at least) resolved the "game looks like it crashed" issue. There's more work for me to do here to really make the loading smooth, but this is phase 1.
• Fixed a bug that prevented proper light status when playing on non-dedicated servers