Hello Beautiful People.
Update 1.6.7 mainly focuses on the creation of a new foliage tool, performance and scalability settings. This patch mainly fixes game breaking bugs and lays the groundwork for future optimisations.
Foliage
The creation of a custom tool was needed to fix several issues caused at the engine level. Issues that exist in every version of Ue5. Issues like invisible collisions being left behind on lower scalability settings and incorrectly scaled mega foliage.
The new foliage system comes with one notable trade-off. In exchange for more reliable scalability culling, culling will now occur at runtime (during gameplay) instead of before the player loads in.
Performance
I created a new material pipeline. This was done to better align with modern hardware and graphics cards. To reduce and stabilise frame time. However, only 11% of the materials have been converted to the new system. The remaining materials will be converted in future updates.
Scalability changes for lighting and reflections have been added with the goal of reducing frame time.
Around 93% of the world space has been removed to reduce engine bloat and improve performance. The released playable area remains the same. All of the space removed was inaccessible space reserved for future expansion.
With a reduced and more stable frame time, Walkabout will run a little smoother especially on lower end hardware. However, the performance features aren't finished being implemented so the gains will be minimal for this update.
I hope you all enjoy the update. Let's dive into the patch notes.
** Patch Notes **
World
* Removed Crocodiles
* Removed Boars
* Removed Dingoes
Foliage
* Created a new foliage tool
* Fixed a bug with low foliage setting removing all foliage
* Fixed the invisible collisions foliage bug
* Fixed the mega foliage bug
* Fixed foliage scalability not reliably culling
Performance & Rendering
* Reduced world space overhead by removing reserved space (93% reduction)
* Added visibility logic to the distance fog
* Further optimised post and screen effects
* Created a new material pipeline
* Converted 11% of materials to the new pipeline
* Added lighting tweaks to improve scalability
* Added reflections tweaks to improve scalability
* Added secondary blending to 77 materials (for blending in sand, mud, snow etc)
Bug Fixes
* Fixed a campfire lighting bug
* Fixed post and screen effects not toggling correctly
* Fixed a bug with the poison effect