Game updates/2018-11-03

Nov 3 Update

This is a small bug-fix update. The Halloween event is NOT over yet -- it will run through the middle of the week (Wednesday or Thursday).

- Fixed navigation issues with the boardwalks in Serbule and Anagoge Island

- Fixed bugs that prevented the thick green "queued ability" overlay from showing up on a queued ability

- Fixed bug where the faces of some male elves were lighter-colored than their bodies

- Fixed bug with human and elf female eyelashes (they looked creepy in some light conditions)

- Tried to work around undocumented behavior with Windows 10 firewall: if you log out or disconnect due to being AFK too long, the firewall would sometimes refuse to let you reconnect to the server, requiring you to restart the game to log back in. The exact cause of this is unknown (it's probably a bug in the firewall), but we've attempted some fixes and will see if it helps

- Worked around Unity 2017 bug that caused the lowest graphics tiers (Bad, Abysmal, and Retro-Terrible) to be less efficient than they should be

- Partially worked around a Unity engine bug involving shadows (where performance gets worse at certain times of day when facing certain directions outdoors). This is a partial fix, meaning the issue persists but is reduced. There is a side-effect of our work-around, though: interactive elements such as monsters, NPCs, signs, lamps, chairs, etc., are no longer lit by the sun or moon. Usually this is completely unnoticeable, but sometimes it can be really surreal: "why is that lamppost not casting a shadow?!" If it's distressing, you can disable this fix by opening Settings and adding EntityShadows to the special-settings box. (There are better ways to address this problem in bleeding-edge versions of Unity, so we anticipate that this workaround is temporary.)

- We'd like players to test out a new experimental graphics feature: spherical culling. To enable it, open the Settings window in-game and add SphereCull to the Special Settings window. Normally the game uses frustum culling, meaning anything that's not right in front of the camera isn't rendered. This is theoretically optimal: why render stuff that's not on the screen? But it has side-effects. One problem is that when you spin around in a circle, a lot of art assets have to be swapped in and out of video memory, which can cause framerate to drop momentarily. Spherical culling means everything in a circle around you is rendered. This may have a lower framerate overall, but it will greatly reduce "turning lag". Please try it out and report your experiences with it (especially bugs, such as missing water or other things being invisible)! And remember: you may need to lower your settings to effectively use this, especially if you've overridden settings like view distance or animation distance!

Note: there was a second update on Nov 3 to address problems with character-creation. This did not entail server downtime, just a client patch.

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