Game updates/2018-02-28

Feb 28 Update

This is a small update to improve performance and stability.

Serbule Occlusion Culling

We've enabled basic occlusion culling in Serbule. (We've tried this before in previous versions of Unity but the results were not good enough; results seem better in this version.) It will modestly improve framerate in certain places (and when viewed from certain angles). It's not a huge framerate increase, but we can further improve the occlusion culling in the future; right now we're just testing out this very basic outdoor setup.

It's enabled by default. If you seem to have new crashes or weird behavior in the Serbule area, you can add the word NoCull to the Special Settings window to disable the culling. (Note that if you use NoCull, you will also disable occlusion culling in Gazluk Keep since it uses the same culling system. Other areas use a different system -- or none at all yet -- and will be unaffected.)

Super-Busy-Town Optimization

We've made an optimization that's intended to help framerates when a lot of players crowd together. When there are 15+ selectable things on-screen, the selection boxes stop being repositioned every frame. (In other words, the little box that outlines your selected target will be slower to respond to movement.)

This simple optimization generally improves framerates by several FPS in crowded areas. It's enabled by default, but you can disable it by adding the word NoSlowBoxes to the special settings window. If you do disable it, please send us feedback letting us know why! (So we can improve it in the future.)

"Auto-Adjust Quality Level" Revamp

After some tweaks, we're once again setting the "Auto-Adjust Quality Level" checkbox to "on" for new installations. (Existing installs of the game are unchanged.) This feature helps lower-end PCs find a quality level that gives good framerate, and is especially useful for computers that have good FPS in dungeons but bad FPS in outdoor areas. When your framerate is too low, it will reduce the graphics quality; if it's high it'll increase quality. It will change the quality between 'Bad' and 'Good' (and the levels in between), but not to levels below Bad or above Good. (Those are too shockingly bad and/or too memory-intensive to safely switch to.)

Other Changes

- Optimization: reduced the memory requirements when lots of players are in the same area

- Optimization: reduced the performance impact of the dynamic sky system used in Serbule and Serbule Hills

- Fixed "floating monsters" in Rahu

- Fixed bugs where error messages could get stuck on the screen when you logged out or changed areas

- Adjusted terrain to prevent faux-shadow effects at certain times of day in Serbule

- Added a note to the character creation screen that reads: "Welcome to Project: Gorgon beta! Character artwork is still in development, so when the final customization options are ready you'll be able to re-choose your character's face, body, skin, and hair. (There will also be three more races that can be unlocked through gameplay: fairy, orc, and dwarf.)"

- In the settings window, GUI tab, Chat features, there's a new option for "Hide Spoilers In Chat". It is on by default, meaning that spoilers will still work just as they did before this update. But if you hate having to click on spoiler tags to read them, you can now turn this off. Doing so will effectively "pre-click" spoilers so you can read them immediately.

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