Hello everyone!
The Lost Paws 0.9.0, the big performance update, is now up and running! This update makes a bunch of changes to improve performance across all computers and enhance stability to reduce FPS jumps. It also includes some minor localization and UI improvements. Lets get into it!
Performance
The most impactful change to the game is the breakup of the giant overworld scene into smaller scenes. While this does add a couple of loading screens into the environment, it actually reduces transit times on many computers and of course massively improves performance. We now have scenes split into the various districts of Doggo City and Beaver Town. This change vastly reduces loading times, reduces rendering costs due to less being in each scene, and most importantly reduces RAM and VRAM requirements slicing it as much as half in some cases. New transits points are now in the game which can be accessed at the old crossing points to go from one scene to another. Here is a sample of the new van on the bridge:
The other big change is a reduction in texture sizes. The two main targets for reductions were normal maps and mask maps that were large and taking up valuable VRAM. These in most cases can be reduced in size without actually impacting the visual look of the models in the game. The other big target was the mini-map textures which were originally left in a raw state for editing but now have been both reduced in size and compressed. Due to the size of the part of the mini-map you can see, the impact on the look of it is small. Combined both reductions save a good bit of VRAM.
Here is the full changelog for the update:
- World scene broken up into three with new transitions for each.
- Reduced settings of various graphical pipeline textures (2D cookie, decals atlas, etc.)
- Adjusted spawn sector boundaries to improve timings and reduce stutter
- Reduced texture size for various normal and mask maps
- Compressed mini-maps textures
- Improved dog collider for more realistic interactions with objects
- Adjusted various rocks on rock boundary near starting position in Beaver Town
- Fixed localization support for keybinding labels in the RPG panel
- Enhanced UI text overflow in various panels for all languages
Thanks for reading! We do intend to continue to enhance performance especially as we add many more things into the game, but we do believe that the worst growing pains have been addressed. We plan on adding plenty more as we begin looking towards full release so stay tuned. Thanks again and cya in the next one!
