Golfing In Aether News

This update contains several fixes after doing some extended testing to ensure everything is working correctly as both the holidays are soon approaching and I’ve been doing a lot of feature updates recently.

Most of what I found was minor stuff as a result of recent updates and I’m not aware of any outstanding issues, so if you encounter or know of anything else then please let me know :)

I’ll be holding off on any feature updates over the next week to ensure everything remains playing nice. But I can certainly do a hotfix or two if any issues are discovered. Otherwise my focus will be getting levels done for the upcoming free winter expansion that I hope to put out in early December. Keep an eye out for a blog post on that soon.

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


[h2]General[/h2]

• Fixed an issue with the inversion of the x axis during free camera movement.

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Fixed a camera on ‘Drop to the left’ being connected to the wrong hole.
  
• Fixed a half corner ground mesh like found on ‘Mind the gap’ clipping through the wall slightly.
  
• Fixed small gaps on some ground pieces with hole parts.
  
• Fixed an overlapping ground piece on the three hole ground piece.
  
• Fixed a very small out of alignment ground piece on mid-hole madness.
  
• Fixed non smooth normal appearance on the cup.
  
• Fixed normal and optimized the large ramp on ‘downhill from here’.
  
• Fixed various minor alignment issues on ‘Drop to the Left’.
  
• Fixed an issue with physical materials that would stop the ball a little too quick in some spots.
  
• Fixed some seasonal behaviour with water wheels.
  
• Fixed winter coming a little too early via the presence of a rouge snowman.
  
• Fixed placement of some fences that were a little too close to the track on rounded end pieces. This includes levels like ‘drop to the left’, ‘curve it’, ‘bogey town’, and ‘one hill over’.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Fixed an issue where the fading in of top HUD was no longer seamless since a recent update.
  
• Fixed an instance where the achievements menu couldn’t load an image putting a bad texture instead.
  
• Fixed an issue where creating several profiles one after the other during shared input mode would not reset settings to default during each new creation.

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

Just a small update today to remove the now expired Halloween Event. Any rewards earned will remain and so will the Autumn seasonal theme, just without the pumpkins. Hope you enjoyed playing it!


Since yesterdays update I got chance to make an achievements menu found via the stats menu. This is nothing fancy and the information you'll find here is identical to the info you'll find in Steam. The point is just that it is more easily navigatable when using a controller in-game, as well as being a press away from the rest of your stats,

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


[h2]General[/h2]

• Removed Halloween 2022 event. Rewards unlocked from completing event will remain.

[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Fixed minor wall gaps on ‘Crazy Golf'.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Added changes to main menu and season select menu to remove references to Halloween event. Autumn season minus the pumpkins remains.
  
• Added achievements menu found via the stats menu.

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

This is a quality of life update that also includes various fixes. I saw room for improvement when it comes to the gamepad controllers and setting them up, especially when factoring in local play.

The update is a few hundred mb due to upcoming free winter DLC content continuing to be added to the game as well as various background changes to support it. This is due for release in December and I'll discuss it more in a seperate event post soon.


[h2]Support for single stick or D-pad only controllers[/h2]
Firstly I wanted to support controllers that aren’t your standard twin stick variety, this could be perhaps a single switch joycon or even retro controllers like the Six Button Control Pad which have several remakes by companies like RetroBit and 8BitDo. These may only either have a single stick or dpad input, and/or not have the full button set.

To solve this I’ve given the option to define what controls the camera, which can include mapping to a DPad. I’ve added button behaviour for switching to free camera, allowing you to press and hold the mapping previously assigned to just ‘top camera’ so you can also enter free camera. When free camera is mapped to the same control as regular camera a combination mode that lets you move forwards and back, and turn side to side. When enabling free camera in any mode I’ve set it so the vertical camera is aligned flat as well.


[h2]Local player controller remapping[/h2]
Secondly, I wanted to allow local player controllers to be remapped. For this end I’ve created an independent system from the keyboard and mouse remapping that handles gamepad mappings on the fly based on what local profile you’ve chosen.

To make remapping controls to the types of controllers I described above an easy experience I’ve added a DPad only preset. I’ve also added a Southpaw layout (swaps sticks) for anyone who would want that. I don’t currently have an individual Joy Con preset but plan to test these in the future and set this up. If you can think of other preset configurations that would be desirable to have then please let me know.

Previous button mapping settings for the gamepad will be lost, but everything relating to deadzones and sensitivities will remain. Local players couldn't remap controls previously so the only place you will need to adjust anything is in the main gamepad settings, but this is only if you wish to have a custom mapping.


[h2]Gamepad Settings menu tidy up[/h2]
A third improvement I wanted to make was to group remapping’s and settings by an overall category. For instance you’ll see ‘Camera Adjust’ which groups the Zoom and Switch camera buttons together, which is found directly below ‘Camera Movement’. I also wanted to reduce the vertical rows so achieved this by having some options such as for zoom in and out, next to one another on the same row with an indicator for + or -.


[h2]Additional glyphs for Six Button Sega Controllers[/h2]
Another addition is I’ve made further improvements to controller glyphs and also added a new option for Sega pads. This was born out of personal interest in getting a pair of RetroBit controllers I had working seamlessly. By default, triggers are mapped to C and Z, so those glyphs have been changed to match. I’ve also given a matching look select and start buttons.

I’ll be testing other pad brands over time and perhaps other kinds of retro pads, but these were just controllers I already had and used. But by all means discuss controllers you have and your experience with them, as I’d be happy to expand support where it makes sense to do so.

As part of this update I've also allowed local players to set their own button glyphs with the default being Xbox. These are only displayed in places like the settings menu itself and game menu.

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

I was able to identify and fix a few other issues while doing testing for the gamepad changes including instances where the quick chat appeared as if it was hotseat mode when playing split screen, and i've also tidied up some non-clipped text for player names on the HUD if you have a really long name.

Please let me know if you encounter any issues, I'll be doing a small update tomorrow to remove the Halloween event and can include hotfixes to any issues then.


[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Fixed minor wall gaps on various levels.
  
• Fixed lilly blocking camera when you fall in the water which could cause abrupt camera movements.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Fixed an issue with overflowing text when the player has a very long name and you are playing split screen.
  
• Fixed Quick Chat not appearing on each players screen in split screen. It was only showing on screen one due to a behaviour issue treating regular play as hotseat.
  
• Fixed scaling of gamepad settings menu for player 1 in split screen.
  
• Added controller remapping to local player settings.
  
• Added glyph setting for local players.
  
• Added ability to define the input for camera, free camera and quick chat in gamepad settings. Presets for D-pad only and Southpaw have been added to quickly change stuff.
  
• Added improvement to gamepad settings menu by condensing and categorising options to reduce the number of vertical rows.
  
• Added glyphs to match Sega six button control pads.

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

While starting work on the upcoming free winter expansion I was able to make some performance improvements and fix various issues found. This update makes a lot of changes to various level geometry and shaders, so why it is a few hundred MB. Normally I try spread updates out but due to certain fixes being made and the decent improvements to performance I didn't want to delay it till next week.

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

Before I get into explaining the improvements I just want to say as always the FPS in this game is certainly not low, pretty far from it. None of these changes are reactionary, its simply a case that I continuously like to make improvements where and when I identify them.

While users running mid-high end systems already will have fps in the hundreds, improvements like these can let lower systems reach higher settings easier as well as save on energy when running identical settings if a battery powered portable for example.

[h2]Reflections[/h2]
I’ve managed to come up with an additional way of reducing the reflection pass, by around 40% this time. Essentially what I went and did was disable the full lighting pass from being executed in the reflections. Now normally this would of course leave you with essentially full bright meshes and it would look horrendous, but by going a step further I instead set specific meshes for the reflection capture with identical color to what they would have previously been when shaded.

Essentially, you’ll be able to notice no difference from a visual standpoint but with a 40% reduction in rendering cost of the reflections.

[h2]Shader Costs[/h2]
A second idea I came up with was to reduce the shader cost of rocks either surrounding ponds or those closest to the track. Basically the rocks normally have a form of terrain blending so they aren’t sharp against the connecting terrain of the island and this is relatively costly to perform.

But what I noticed was in a lot of levels if you have a stack of rocks, only the very outer rocks actually connect visibly with the terrain, so from your gameplay perspective most rocks don’t actually need to perform this function. Of course these rocks are generally the closest to ponds as well, so a bonus benefit here is the secondary rendering cost of these going via the planar reflection is reduced as well.

[h2]Shadows[/h2]
Next refinement was to manually optimize shadows for specific levels and geometry. Due to the unique circumstances of having isolated floating islands, and each level being independent this gives real opportunity go that extra level with tailoring the shadows to certain setups.

Essentially if a level is small the shadow range can be decreased, meaning a side effect is the resolution over range increases, thus this and the cascades can be reduced boosting performance. In fact due to these tweaks the relative shadow resolution has actually been increased at the same time as performance being increased. A number of meshes I also gave custom geometry for shadows to help reduce noise.

With such targeted shadows you start to notice things like normal irregularities and general quality issues more significantly, so I also did a full pass on every single track mesh to really bring in line the seamlessness of the modular parts. I also noticed some bizarre behavior in one of the shaders relating color between pipe meshes, rocks a couple other things and have fixed this.


I identified one of the season select menus had an issue with dpad navigation after the recent update (thumbstick worked) so thats been fixed. There are also various collision and physical material related issues on different levels and these got tidied up as well.

If you encounter any issues let me know as I can often hotfix them pretty quick.


[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Fixed several very minor visible seams on grass where track pieces connected.
  
• Fixed some collision gaps with some wall mesh types, such as found around the edges of the ponds in ‘Ponds of Rage’.
  
• Fixed a coloration mismatch between rocks with moss/grass on top vs ones without.
  
• Added significant performance optimization to shadows so that the render cost is around half of that previously while also improving the overall resolution slightly.
  
• Added performance optimization to water reflections by faking the lighting pass on the meshes inside the reflection.
  
• Fixed various wall gaps on ‘Rock Bottom’.
  
• Fixed a coloration miss-match between different parts of pipes.
  
• Added some assets and tweaked existing to provide support for future Winter Expansion (December).
  

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Fixed an issue with navigating one of the season select menu’s when using the dpad.

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

This update gives the interface a tidy up, brings new controller gylphs and lets you navigate via the thumbstick. There are also some in-game performance improvements and several bug-fixes.

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

This update continues the trend of various tidy ups and small improvements. I was able to reduce the render cost of the water reflections in highest quality mode by quite a bit so expect performance improvements if you are still GPU bound.

Highest settings make use of a planar reflection for water, which is pretty costly in relative terms, probably occupying about a 3rd of the whole GPU pass. However, in actual numbers this still leaves FPS very high in the hundreds, so its use here is fine. In this update I set the planar scene captures to use a manual list of objects rather than the whole scene as previous, this also takes the island LOD rather than the current visible. At no noticeable difference the cost here has been reduced by more than half. As this reflection type is exclusive to highest settings you will not see any difference or performance gain on other settings.

I also managed to identify a graphical glitch relating to the priority of the reflections which could see them not being visibly active during sessions and this is now fixed.


[h2]Thumbstick menu navigation[/h2]
I’ve added in the ability to navigate all menus using the Thumbstick, previously only the dpad was supported. Operating the Thumbstick will behave identical to the Dpad.


[h2]Reworked Text[/h2]
The font itself has been changed very slightly for practical reasons. Specifically, the previous font didn’t have the characters and formatting in an ideal setup for localization and required fallback fonts which just made everything looking mismatched and tacky. The new font is very similar in type to the old one.

This does however bring general improvements to the readability on small displays and I’ve done a ton of fixes to alignments to make sure everything is consistent.


[h2]Reworked Icons[/h2]
Every icon graphic has been reworked to appear sharper at higher display resolutions as some were appearing very slightly blurry previously. This includes the controller and keyboard button glyphs which have been completely reworked. The keyboard glyphs specifically now use images rather than text on-screen so take up the same room as the controller glyphs would.

The light and dark options are now directly hooked into your menu theme choice. Essentially when you pick the dark theme you get the light icons that appear against the dark background in places. Having white on white was pretty pointless, and dark only icons without an outline didn't show up too well against dark backgrounds.

There is support for Xbox, PS4, PS5 and Switch Glyphs as before.

[h2]Various Other Fixes[/h2]
With more testing and various issues being reported there are several fixes in this update which you can read about in the full patch notes below. If you encounter any issues then please let me know as this can likely get hotfixed pretty quick.


[h2]Environment[/h2]

• Fixed a rock clipping a wall on Goofy Golf.
  
• Added performance improvement to water reflections when in Highest quality settings (specifically targeting planar reflections). This makes the water use the reflection of the island LOD meshes instead of the active meshes, which are much cheaper to render and in the reflection hard to really notice the difference.
  
• Fixed some T pieces with ledges having slight wall gaps.
  
• Fixed the intro being cut-off when accepting an invite mid process.
  
• Fixed a graphical glitch that could leave the water reflections sometimes being disabled while playing a session with other islands active.
  
• Fixed an issue with bamboo path on Tee Time.
  
• Fixed a roll issue on some levels like Mid-Hole Madness due to taking physical material from the wrong mesh lod.
  
• Fixed an issue with the right hole on Mid-Hole Madness not triggering camera.
  

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Fixed progress indicator for pumpkin event (and what I’ll use for future events) not inheriting the correct highlight color.
  
• Added revised bottom glyphs text appearance, this uses a regular font rather than a bold upper case.
  
• Added changes to the fonts used to better improve character support, notably with localization.
  
• Added rework of the prompt background for all menus that make use of it. This will fully support extreme resolutions and peculiar ratios.
  
• Added new controller and keyboard glyphs set that scale better and focus on improve readability.
  
• Added new menu icons for various setting menu’s and the return to main menu button.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Free Camera Remapping icon in gamepad settings wasn’t updating when the glyph set was changed.
  
• Added ‘Enter’ as select button in menus and set as the default Glyph for keyboards. Spacebar is still present as a means of select but not advertised.
  
• Fixed accessibility menu not showing deadzone in the camera axis widget.
  
• Added ability to navigate all menus with the Thumbstick which functions identically to the dpad.

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