Golfing In Aether News

The third free expansion to Golfing in Aether is here, and the first update of season two, bringing ten new levels for all modes and themes. Update also brings a significant performance increase for lower-end systems, along with several quality of life improvements. There is also a 66% discount on purchasing the base game till Monday!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2293060/Golfing_In_Aether__Leviathan/


Above is a link to the free DLC (it should be downloaded automatically). The levels will work with all previous themes and in all game modes.



Slightly more levels this time around than previous expansions, as well as distinctive titular level featuring the large leviathan skeleton.

The level breakdown is as follows, one large late game level, four mid-game, and five early. Remember in a previous update there was the added ability to indivudally pick levels you want to feature in a session, as well as preset playlists such as 'early only' or 'mid and late' only depending on how you wish the play the game. This setting can be found in the custom sessions menu.


Levels are now constructed internally quite differently through a more efficient instancing (switched from using newer auto instancing with static meshes to instead using traditional hierarchical instant static meshes which does give greater performance) along with a fresh pass at the LODs of nearly all meshes to really push greater performance gains in the specific area of triangle rounds and render primitives. This is something that will effect low end systems more, but will also benefit high end systems when rendering all 9 islands at once, specifically if you’ve manually chosen to play on just large levels for example.

Below is performance numbers from testing on a Ryzen 3200G, no dedicated gpu, 1080p, medium settings. If comparing to a Steamdeck do note that not only is the deck slightly faster but it only has to handle 800p in handheld mode.

[h3]Small Levels[/h3]
Gentle Swing, 94% reduction in prims, fps increased from 84 to 95 fps. 11 fps gained.
Around the pond, 96% reduction in prims, fps increased 68 to 81 fps. 13 fps gained.
Tee Time 94% reduction in prims, fps increased 69 to 81 fps. 12 fps gained.

[h3]Large Levels[/h3]
Waterhole, 97% reduction in prims, fps increased from 51 to 67 fps. 16 fps gained.
Go For it, 92% reduction in prims, fps increased from 75 to 84 fps. 9 fps gained.
See you on the other side, 95% reduction in prims, fps increased from 68 to 86 fps. 16 fps gained.

Larger levels will typically see bigger gains as there was more in them to begin with, but most small levels tested still gained at least 10 fps. There is a greater jump playing with ‘other islands’ checked, which means rendering 9 islands at once, and average frame rate jumped from mid 30s to high 50s on average. It will be other factors such as shader cost and or shadows now being the bottleneck for this hardware.


When navigating menus previous navigation states will persist if you return to a previous menu if the current game state allows for it. This really helps for example if in practice menu, you pick a season then press back, the level you had selected will remain. The same will also happen when returning to the practice menu after playing a level.


Also included are various bug-fixes to issues found or reported which you can see in the full notes below. This is a very big update so its quite possible some minor issues slipped through testing, so if you encounter any then please let us know so they may be promptly fixed.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

[h2]General[/h2]

• Added restructure of backend code to better handle platform specific code i.e. Steam. Platform ids are also handled to make them independent of any specific platform sdk, this will help with error prevention and make it easier to update sdks.
  
• Fixed a potential issue with camera fade behaviour when returning to the main menu from a practice session.
  
• Added improved interfaces to reduce initial main menu memory usage. While the overall memory is low at about 1.5GB this will specifically help very low speed devices by spacing out when assets are loaded into memory.
  
• Added a new customization applying system backend to help target some memory savings. Specifically this will separate out textures used in the front end and in-game, and specifically load in-game textures asynchronous instead. This will make memory savings of around a hundred mb.
  
• Added new backend system to improve how levels are constructed at runtime. This should see big improvements on low end devices.
  
• Fixed an issue where if playing hotseat mode in singleplayer and you launch yourself into some water from the tee, your ball would be hidden.
  
• Added tweak to random level selection by increasing the no repeat pool once you’ve played all levels at least once to be based on number of DLC (the free expansions) you have active. For every expansion enabled (which are enabled by default) the no repeat pool will increase by 9 up to half the total level count. So for example if you have no expansions active this number will be 10, but with all 3 expansions it will be 30. This means no matter how random or not random the level selection is, a level will not be repicked until other levels have been picked for the next 30 levels. Do note that a level is a level is only stored in this system if it has actually been played, so if you quit on e.g. hole 3, levels that would of made up 4-9 are not stored as you didn’t play them. If you deactivate an expansion the no-repeat pool will shrink again accordingly.
  

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Fixed a rock clipping with a wall near cup on level behind the tee.
  
• Fixed appearance of some island meshes that had excessive amounts of grass covering on their underside. Only a few levels had this issue and as its on the underside it was quite hard to spot, but I’ve done a check of all 50 levels to be sure.
  
• Added Leviathan expansion assets and content.
  
• Added improvement to error prevention for the background construction of island meshes.
  
• Fixed the flag raising detection on Tee Time not fully covering the bamboo path so the flag would raise up and down slightly initially.
  
• Added improved LODs for nearly all wall and décor meshes to bring about performance improvements.
  
• Fixed and improved culling behaviour on leaf particles.
  
• Added distance fade to the snow of fences and tree’s when the camera is close similar to base mesh behavior.
  
• Added tweaks to the collision of the center part of windmills.
  
• Added tweaks to the flag raise position of various levels.
  
• Fixed a waterwheel rotating the incorrect way on take swing.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Added new navigation history system to remember navigation states as you go back several steps. For instance, if you selected practice, a specific level and then a season, as you press back on each menu the previously selected element will be the default selection when the menu opens. This works with both mouse and gamepad navigation, and you can interact with one menu with mouse, switch to a gamepad and previous navigation will be seamless. Several menus had selective history for the previous step but this unifies the system and expands to all menus with no limit to the steps.
  
• Fixed an issue with the timer display flashing (as if time is running out) during the start of a new level if you were to receive a time out via the six stroke limit while the game has no set time limit in the previous level.
  
• Fixed a potential issue with button click handling in graphics settings menus.
  
• Added memory improvement to all level preview pictures through repackaging with better compression.
  
• Added memory optimization to the intro logos by only referencing specific assets on demand. This is a minor saving but basically means a few MB of textures don’t need to be loaded on first visiting the main menu.
  
• Fixed an issue with saving theme settings from accessibility menu on first start of the game.

Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.

Today I want to share some screenshots of the upcoming free expansion coming this March which you can find listed below as coming soon.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2293060/Golfing_In_Aether__Leviathan/
Please note that this is work in progress and not due to release till sometime in March so some visual elements could well change in between now and then.


There will be several levels as part of this expansion, I can show off three of them today including the titular level which is one of the new late game ones. This features a large leviathan skeleton you have to navigate and offers some distinctive scenery from afar.


The goal of this level is to have your ball directed into the correct part of the lower vertical windmill so it can shoot through for the hole in one.


If you fail to reach the hole in one there is an additional shortcut route you can take to keep your overall stroke count to two. This involves aiming for the specific point on the slope so your ball enters the hole and travels along the shortcut pipe.

Also shown in the above screenshots is that this level works with all existing themes so can be played in Autumn or Winter appearance.


At the other end of the scale is two new small early levels that offer a simple challenge of reflecting your ball for the hole in one. Both of these are designed to be introductory levels you'd have appear at the start of your session but will still offer some challenge as you figure out how to get a hole in one.

'Zig Zag' features cross like sections where if you angle incorrectly over two reflections you'll miss the hole and roll down a ramp the other side of the hole. 'Rebound' is more focused on getting your power dialled in so you hit the a block on the other side of a jump ramp which will as the name suggests, rebound you into the hole.


There will of course be more levels than this in the final expansion release which is still quite a bit away, so I may do further teasers over the coming month. Unlike the previous two expansions this will not introduce a new overall theme/season per se ( autumn/winter etc.) but more about bringing distinctive levels that will continue to bring variety to the overall level pool.

There are also more additions on the way beyond this expansion throughout the year that are pretty significant, but I can’t quite talk about them just yet. I will however say the game will be continuing to receive development with this being the first addition of 'Season 2' so do keep an eye out for future news over the coming year.


Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.

For the first update of 2023 I wanted to target some quality of life additions including both user interface and graphical improvements. The size of the update at nearly 400 MB is due to the significant number of assets that have been tweaked.


First up is some improvements to the ES3.1 graphics mode. This is the graphics rendering you get when you pick “ES3.1 (for low end pc’s)” from the launch options, essentially this is the lowest rendering quality and uses mobile level rendering rather than the typical DirectX or Vulkan, so something like you’d find from a game being played on Android for example. The point of this is to make the game playable on really low-end hardware without having to turn regular graphics settings down so low that the game looks terrible.

PLEASE NOTE: The following in-game screenshots are of these lowest quality graphics. You may need to view these in a web-browser at larger size to see specific details.


[h2]Material based ambient occlusion[/h2]
For starters I’ve improved the material based ambient occlusion previously just on some wall pieces as it will really help with wall definition, especially more noticeably when running on a low-quality graphics preset or in ES3.1 mode. Every wall piece has had its mesh piece reworked to support this, with ones that previously had some shading being redone to a higher standard. Various other items such as fences, bamboo, and pipes have all been updated to feature better shading as well.

You will now see some material based ambient occlusion when running regular graphics mode (e.g. DX12/Vulkan) however as the shadows/lighting were already good here you won’t notice as significant of an improvement.


[h2]Better LOD island quality[/h2]
All meshes used for walls and for LOD islands you see in the distance have been reworked to feature a much better quality low LOD level that better holds its form and feature material based ambient occlusion.

I’ve also tweaked the distant islands to get shaded a little darker outside the range of shadows so it appears a little more natural. The reason this occurs at all is because in ES3.1 mode there is essentially no sky lighting and instead the meshes are given emissive values to mimic the effect. When you combine this with shadows only being in the immediate surroundings of the player this would leave the far islands looking a little poor quality.


[h2]Water improvements[/h2]
Because the game uses forward rendering, that means there are no screen space reflections, so water without planar reflections like higher graphics levels feature it would typically have looked underwhelming. ES3.1 came off the worst, but I’ve been able to fake the reflections and give water an overhaul for quality in general. The idea being where certain graphical features are lacking I’ve faked features to at least visually get it close to how the higher end settings would look. It’s a lot better than it was.


[h2]Ball shadows[/h2]
Another improvement is I’ve got shadows for the balls working, this was kind-of a resolution related problem but I’ve been able to shift things around a bit to get these working properly. I’ve also tweaked the shadow bias to make things hold their form as the camera moves further away.


I’ve also done some user interface improvements specifically to better handle the switching between mouse/keyboard and gamepad mode. One improvement is that the mouse cursor will disappear when you are using the gamepad and will not cause hover/selections to occur. The other change is that I’ve added a threshold-based movement detection for the mouse to enter keyboard/mouse mode. This means that instead of having to click somewhere, simply moving the mouse beyond a small amount will show the cursor again as well as keyboard glyphs.


Also included are various bug-fixes to issues found or reported which you can see in the full notes below. If you encounter any issues then please let us know so they may be promptly fixed.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Added improved material based ambient occlusion for most wall meshes. This will improve the all-graphics quality levels but stand out more at lower settings where simpler lighting is used.
  
• Fixed various small wall gaps.
  
• Fixed some wall alignment on ‘see you on the other side’.
  
• Fixed a ground alignment on ‘center path’.
  
• Added material ambient occlusion to fences.
  
• Added improvements to distant islands in ES3.1 mode so they get better shading.
  
• Added slightly improved water appearance when not using planar reflection.
  
• Fixed ball shadows not rendering in ES3.1 mode.
  
• Fixed Shadow bias causing shadows to sometimes end abruptly in lower end settings.
  
• Fixed some rocks having low LOD levels a little close.
  
• Fixed a small quality issue with one of the pipes on Speed Bump.
  
• Added some ambient occlusion to pipes for ES3.1 mode to help give more depth where these appeared very flat due the limited lighting. This was unneeded for regular graphics mode.
  
• Fixed a slightly overlapping pipe join on Midhole Madness.
  
• Fixed various rocks clipping through walls such as in Turn Ahead and Goofy Golf.
  
• Fixed a tiny track gap on Cliffhanger due to incorrect scaling.
  
• Fixed a poly count inconsistency with a pipe on drop to the left.
  
• Fixed a wall incorrectly assembled on curve it.
  
• Fixed a few unnecessary wall pieces below the terrain on What goes around.
  
• Added a performance optimization to the ramp in ‘go for it’.
  
• Added reworked inside corner wall mesh piece at a higher and consistent quality with other pieces.
  
• Fixed a pipe alignment on Spin City.
  
• Added reworked pipe for one of the pipes used on Rock Bottom. Specifically this was the pipe you go through when heading to the left path at the start, not a hole in one route, so won’t effect leaderboards in any way.
  
• Fixed some wall alignment on go for it.
  
• Added improved lods for all wall meshes.
  
• Added improved meshes for all LOD islands. The tracks better hold their form over distance and support the material based ambient occlusion.
  
• Added material ambient occlusion for the bamboo pieces.
  
• Added memory reductions to all levels by removing excess wall pieces occluded by terrain.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Added improvements to mouse/gamepad control switching, by mouse cursor being invisible and unable to interact with UI elements while in gamepad mode.
  
• Added improvements to glyph mode switching by having a mouse threshold return to keyboard mode rather than have to click or press a specific button.
  
• Added new thumbnail for level hop and jump.

Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.

This update focuses on some tidy ups and improvements to the ES3.1 low end graphics mode. Notably I’ve fixed some lighting problems with the new Winter expansion and added in support for bloom.

Bloom is now enabled by default, but of course you can disable the feature if you wish by the added graphics setting for it. The performance cost for enabling is minor I found during testing and does help with the visuals a bit.

Other than ES3.1 stuff there are various bug-fixes to issues found or reported which you can see in the full notes below. While I won't be doing any feature updates over the holidays, do please let me know if you encounter any issues at all as these can promptly be fixed :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Fixed some lighting with the Winter expansion in ES3.1.
  
• Added bloom to ES3.1 mode. It can be disabled in settings if you wish.
  
• Fixed some fences and windmill supports lacking snow in winter theme.
  
• Fixed a rock clipping through a wall on ‘all tee’d up’.
  
• Fixed some windmills not rotating on LOD islands.
  
• Fixed an issue where if in ES3.1 mode you created a winter session, returned to main menu immediately and then begun a practice session set to winter the lighting would appear incorrect.
  
• Fixed some redundant calls to set the lighting, it is now more centralised for error prevention.
  
• Added material based ambient occlusion to walls. This will be most prominent when in ES3.1 mode. It will help a bit with shaded faces by giving more visible depth, normally in ES3.1 these appear a little flat due to the lack of SSAO in forward rendering.
  
• Fixed a flag not correctly aligned with a pole in rail crossing as well as preventing it occurring in other levels.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Fixed some padding in the graphics settings menu.
  
• Added option to toggle bloom in ES3.1 mode.

Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.

This update comprises primarily of bug-fixes but I've also added the ability to choose what level selection you get to play with during custom sessions.


Now that the game through its two free expansion packs has 50 levels there is enough variety where I’m able to add the feature where you can specify which levels to be randomly picked during a custom session.


There is preset options for like ‘early levels’ and ‘mid-late levels’, but also the ability to fully pick each level individually by a new menu giving you complete freedom on the session you wish to play.

If your chosen levels number less than 9 then the remaining levels required will be pulled from the full available list. For instance maybe you only pick the first 3 levels to be chosen at random, then remaining six will be made up of any remaining levels you haven’t picked. If you have more than 3 of each early/mid/late stage the stage structure will be the same as the default (3 of each type) otherwise it will be completely random.

The levels you picked will still try to follow the convention of sorting levels early, mid, late, so if you specify lets say the 3 late levels, you’ll see those at the end of the game, not the opening levels. If you pick lets say one early level, it will show up within any of the first bunch of levels, it doesn’t specifically mean it will be the first level as everything is still shuffled around. As the selection is a bit more random here you may not get specific 3,3,3 grouping of levels unless you’ve specifically picked at least 3 for each.

There are buttons to add all or remove all from the list for convenience, so if maybe you just want to remove 1 or 2 levels you don’t like, that’s also a good use of this feature.

Players seeking to unlock the ‘Perfect’ achievement (which less than 0.1% of players have earned) can use this feature to pick levels they are more familiar with or simply find easier. As you have to pick 9 different levels and then hit hole in ones in a row, it’s still a challenging achievement.


Another few changes in this update is tidying up the achievements menu a bit as felt this could do with a quality pass. The images are now cached differently so should be more responsive, and I’ve tweaked the formatting of selected items to be easier to see. The button to actually access this menu was overhanging a bit with the back button on stats menu so I’ve fixed that too.

The remaining updates up till Christmas will primarily be bug-fixing now if anything does need fixing, I’ve been doing some extended testing but at the moment there are no outstanding known issues. In the New Year there will be continued development and I'll talk about future stuff then.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

[h2]General[/h2]

• Fixed an issue where the release press of the top camera / camera toggle could conflict with pressing B to exit out of the game menu.
  
• Added ability to choose what levels are played during custom sessions. You’ll find ability to change a ‘Levels’ setting in the custom sessions menu, when set to ‘custom’ an additional button prompt will appear at the bottom of the screen to take you to the new menu.

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Fixed some level LODs not loading correctly. I’ve made a workflow adjustment to simplify the process so will help with error prevention in future.
  
• Fixed a island lod for ‘Short Spring’ not being consistently performance optimized.
  
• Fixed the area for the flag raising up on levels ‘Water Hole’, ‘Speed Bump’, and ‘Getting Tee’d Off’.
  
• Fixed ball stopping a little short on midhole madness.
  
• Fixed ball exiting pipe a little too quick on ‘Go for it’.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Fixed the alignment of lower glyphs on the scoreboard (especially via session replay) overhanging to the right.
  
• Fixed some text getting cropped off on various prompts by widening the size of the prompt slightly.
  
• Fixed achievement icons sometimes not loading in the achievement’s menu. I’ve instead triggered the caching of these icons when opening the stats menu.
  
• Added improvement to achievement menu by having the progress bar selection colors going white when selected and color when unselected.
  
• Fixed text minimum width on achievement menu so progress bars remain consistent length.
  
• Added level selection menu, accessible via pressing Y or the levels button when level setting is set to custom in the custom session menu.
  
• Added remembering last practice menu index when opening the season menu and pressing back. This behaviour previously worked for the leaderboards.
  
• Fixed some gamepad navigation issues on the theme/season select menu.
  
• Fixed some max values on the achievement menu being incorrect.

Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.