PATCH ANALYSIS
Jaws of Extinction 0.2.7.10 is now here! Some massive changes made to boost performance, focusing on an improved visual look as well as improving overall performance of Eden-Nadir.
The new home for our developers digest will be here on our Steam community news. Originally on our website, we feel that the place you will all want to read it is on the platform you are playing it. So while our website gets an overhaul, the Jaws of Extinction Developers Digest will be available here for the foreseeable future.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE FOCUS FOR THIS PATCH?
0.2.7.10 main focus was to improve the performance of the game. While our lead developer was moving house, the other half of the programming team spent some serious time doing some R&D into how to optimise the game, what was causing the most drag on performance and what we could do to improve and fix it.
Many aspects have to be considered when developing a very visual game, the quality of your assets, the resolution of all your textures, lighting, shadows and the list goes on.
The first thing we attacked head on, was foliage. Eden-nadir is made up of more foliage than anything, if this was not optimised correctly, it could cause major issues.
We optimised all foliage LODs, textures and culing distance when adding all the new "SpeedTree" assets into the game months ago, but more needed to be done! So with tweaking the textures, improving LODs (level of Detail) and removing unnecessarily high-poligon assets, we started a foliage clean up that will go on over the next few patches to be released.
As well as optimising foliage with a fine-tooth comb, we also looked at the grass, how dense it needed to be for a good balance between optimised and looking good.
Next on the list was how complex our landscape material shader was and what we could do to reduce complexity at the same time as fixing a bunch of issues we have had with material surface recognition since we first released the alpha (used to calculate wat sound FX and decals to spawn for footsteps).
The only option was to completly start again, due to the numerous attemps to correct this on the original landscape material, never to get anywhere with fixing it. So that is what we did, completly starting again, optimising as we went, with new textures and logic that can be used once performance was not an issue any more (tessellation).
While we started to optimise buildings even further, we decided we needed to continue to develope the world, with new locations and also prepare for what was to come in the near future (water vehicles & wreck-diving).
So using our new found knowledge of improvements we have made to materials, textures and LODs, we added a new lighthouse location, that will get an interiour and additional work to it very soon. We also added rocks in the ocean arounf the shores and wrecked ships that you will be able to explore at depths and climb abourd for some great loot.
The last main object on the improvement list was the ocean and lakes, our original water shader was overly complex, just like our landscape shader and need to be improved. So using new logic to captur reflections and moving away from using Screen Space Reflections, we started another long journey into improving the overall look as well as performance of all things water. With a new underwater look as new interaction effects, we feel the new watch has made a drastic improvement to JoE.
NEXT PATCH
The official date for the next main patch version 0.2.8.0a is due on Friday 28th June 2019, BUT! We have decided, going forward we will be releasing a number of small patches (Hotfixes) between each main patch, to bring you all fixes soon, so you don't have to wait 2 weeks to fix broken elements of the game.
The first mini patch will be going out Monday 17th June 2019
We are also opening up our STAGING branch (unstable) to the public, this will alow you to test new parts of the game currently available of the main branch (Stable).
WHATS COMING UP SOON
For more details on whats to come you can always visit our websites road map. But for a quick overview, here is what our focus will be over the next few months:
- Performance
- AI Version 3.0
- Additional protagonists
- 4 player coop
- Exclusive DLC Apparel redemption
THINGS TO REMEMBER BEFORE PURCHASING JOE
As we have stated from day one of our unlisted launch on Steam, JoE is heaverly in development by two developers and a single 3D artists. We know it is very performance demanding and many bugs coming out of the woodwork, please make sure to read the following statement from our Steam store page before your purchase, as always all your support is appreciated.
BEFORE YOU PURCHASE: AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE DEV TEAM
In the spirit of our ethos of transparency and integrity we want you to know that our game is at ALPHA stage in EARLY ACCESS and will therefore contain many bugs and have performance issues on low to mid-end machines. We’re really proud of how it plays so far (it’s a lot of fun!) but if your rig DOES NOT meet the RECOMMENDED spec then the game may not perform well and as much as we appreciate your support we would suggest that you wait until later in development before you invest your money. We don’t want you buying something that’s going to disappoint you.
Please also be aware that multiplayer is not yet implemented. This is under development and planned for Q4 2019.
COMMUNITY LINKS
Steam Community Forums
Official JoE Discord Server
Official Twitter
Official Facebook
PATCH NOTES
https://steamcommunity.com/games/617850/announcements/detail/1604885233176780397
https://steamcommunity.com/games/617850/announcements/detail/1604885233165500975