Early Access Update V0.8.8

This update serves as a foundational update for 2025, with roughly 100 crucial changes paving the way for many new features and mechanics going forward by making sure the game is presented in the best possible way utilizing best graphics practices.

The primary focus of this update is to enhance the game's graphics to be more modern by utilizing the latest technology. This includes transitioning the game from a gamma space project to a linear space project with High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering and finely tuned Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) tone-mapping and light authoring. These changes aim to produce a more realistic and vibrant interpretation of screen space color and ambient lighting.

Additionally, special attention has been given to significantly improve the game's graphics while simultaneously allowing room for continuous enhancements throughout the year.

The update also features a rework of weapon audio to enhance the "remastered" feel of the game, alongside numerous other quality of life improvements and fixes.

Lastly, both SteamDeck and PC/controller players will benefit from the updated info-popups, which no longer pause gameplay, allowing players to remain fully engaged in the action.

[h2]Main Features:[/h2]

Overhauled graphics & textures.
Remastered weapon audio system from the ground up as well as player footsteps and other ambient audio SFX.
Advanced terrain shading.
Gameplay improvements.
Quality of life improvements.
A.I. Improvements.
Enhanced immersion & quality.
More logical/streamlined graphics menu.
A Reworked introduction scene.
Numerous bug fixed and optimizations.

The full change notes are below:

[h2]Graphics:[/h2]

Improved color space from gamma to linear.
Improved textures.
Improved weapon materials.
Improved post processing.
Improved color balance.
Vastly improved terrain shaders.
More realistic terrain texturing, featuring more texture variety than before.
Improved grass rendering softness.
Realistic near-depth of field for weapon zoom/ads.
FPS Weapons now also receive post processing.
Reworked all interior lighting.
Improved physical appearance of dust clouds caused by stampeding buffalo.
Improved NPC eye shaders.
Improved quality of moon seen at night.
Entirely new rock materials and shader setup for increased realism.
Improved animal appearance and material.
Improved sunset/sunrise quality and interpolation.
Made blood darker and more realistic.
Improved quality of weapon muzzle flash.
Improved quality of distant horizon mountain backdrops.
New improved realistic convex scope glass for main weapon.
Improved some of the metal building construction/shanty's.
Shadows are now more defined and of a higher quality.
Improved quality of reflections.
Improved skin shader for first person weapon arms.
Improved glass shaders for vehicles and other items such as lanterns etc.
Improved appearance of grass dryness.
Improved tree and foliage appearance.
Improved sunshaft rendering.
Loading screens are back to the minimal black and white text from Poached V0.01 to offer a stark contrast between the new HD graphics.
Improved scope overlay realism.
Improved waterfall water-mesh material rendering quality.
General material improvements, as well as removing lighting errors where surfaces appear too bright to produce a color apart from white.
Improved Obstacle Course commander (General Van Jaarsveld) skin shader with new ambient lighting model that looks good from all lighting angles with basic subsurface scattering for skin simulation..
Improved distant horizon transition-fog appearance.

[h2]Audio:[/h2]

New weapons foley FX.
New gunshot audio, and more uniquely distinct sounds between rifles.
New Sound FX and nature ambience.
Improved player footstep audio.
Rifle weapons use an array of fire sounds different sounds for the "tail" of the shot versus the shot itself, thus to create a realistic sense of reverberation from the shots.
New intro scene monologue.
New voiceover for introduction scene.
New underground ambience for caves.

[h2]Gameplay:[/h2]

Info popups no longer pause the game.
Game balancing.
Weapon wheel now shows mouse cursor when using PC/Mouse and is also more accurate.
Improved some zone bounds for more seamless world streaming.
Saving your game is now not possible during direct combat although available if enemies are nearby prior to battle. This is to prevent players from accidentally spoiling their save slots by quicksaving while 8 guys are about to blow your face off. The plan is to add infinite saves in a future update, but this will work for now.
Introduction scene now also allows dialogue skipping via holding space for 3 seconds. Featuring the new VCR-Style FFWD effect.
Daytime is now longer.
Item pickup highlighting is now much more noticeable than before, assisting in spotting useful pickups in the heat of battle or when exploring camp.
The radio switch is now interruptible if the player selects a weapon before the game selects the radio on level start.

[h2]A.I.[/h2]

Made enemies slightly more decisive.
Improved enemy crouching/take cover animation.
Decreased the amount of times enemies will "blind engage" an area they think you are in when you've escaped from that area without them noticing.
Improved enemy hearing, specifically in terms of being able to hear each other pass on alerts.
Improved enemy general behavior, as well as new routines to help attempt to prevent enemies from attacking too close in large groups and will try harder to spread themselves out.
Fixed unrealistic delay between enemies exiting a crouching a crouch state and opening fire, as they will now aim their weapons as they stand up and immediately open fire as they stand up.
Enemy hearing can now react differently to louder volume weapons such as the sniper rifle.

[h2]Wildlife[/h2]

Buffalo might decide to charge you. This will result in instant death so please don't get too close to the buffalo, they are officially known as the most vengeful animal in all of Africa so they might also attack you if you decide to kill another or fire your weapon near the heard. (Which you should not do)
Fixed an issue with Buffalo/Warthogs sometimes getting stuck on trees while running away from gunshots as well as sometimes disappearing in front of the player.
Some animals can now lie down to sleep.
Game now auto-saves when you enter a buffalo zone. [See first point]

[h2]Improvements & Additions:[/h2]

Added a small amount of extra detail to some of the asynchronous world streaming zones.
Main menu now fades in naturally instead of zooming down.
Improved goat ragdoll falling animation by adding forced horizontal velocity as often the ragdoll ended up with it's bum in the air and then baked.
Blood puddle stains are now more moderately sized for increased realism.
Death screens and end-level stat/score screens are now plain static black and white (instead of a film "cutting" background" to reduce flashing lights and potentially headache inducing flickering over long play periods.
Various close-distance "texture detail" tiling normal map improvements.
Improved Braai/Barbeque texture quality vastly.
Improved Braai/Barbeque burning charcoal geometry.
Improved character selection character materials.
Added some small additional details to some exploration zones, as well as adding some gravel paths/dirt roads.
Improved shebeen/bar interior.
Improved warehouse interior.
Improved caravan interior.
Improved scratch detail on metal surfaces.
Refined some of the hand gesture animations for NPC's.
Improved character selection screen hair shaders for character #4.
New high definition normal maps for buffalo and warthogs.
Improvements to asynchronous world streaming algorithm.
Improved and simplified anti-aliasing options.
Throwback introduction scene with improved visuals.
Removed redundant options from graphics menu and made layout slightly more logical.

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

Bug Fixes.
Fixed issue with certain enemy entities being loaded in a few second after loading a save game that was saved during a battle.
Fixed issue with cursor appearing in loading screens if the sleep action causes a new scene to load.
Fixed bug that made it possible to scare away animals by pressing the fire while your weapon was reloaded, now ensuring animals only react to actual gunshots.
Fixed issue causing radio station to sometimes lose it's timestamp progress when exiting the shebeen.
Fixed weapon wheel binding display not loading correctly and other small U.I. bugs.
Fixed bug causing some UI elements to crop weirdly after re-enabling the game hud from a game loaded in "hud disabled" state via the options menu.

[h2]Optimizations:[/h2]

Performance optimizations.
Removed all remaining left over third party post processing solutions in favor of a fully built in approach.
Cleaned up enemy tracer spawning system to prevent error visuals and use less memory during intense gunfights.
Optimized trees to use a single shared material and texture for all 17 tree types.
Enemy animation optimizations.
Integrated the warehouse portion of the map into the game's asynchronous world streaming system.
Improved wildlife animation culling.
More FPS weapon textures are now only streamed into memory from disk if the player has the weapon, as before but now covering all weapons.

And as always, in addition to the comprehensive list above - many other small tweaks, secrets and polishes have been made, too numerous to mention.

Note: Due to major internal configuration changes at this time all post processing effects [except for motion blur & screen-space reflections] will be enabled on default for new & current installations, but please feel free to disable them in the advanced graphics option settings. (Sun shafts are also disabled by default due to their experimental nature.)