Hotfix Patch for February 9

We are hotfixing some performance optimizations that we hope will improve baseline performance for most players.


The new version is 0.16.8.42669


Through diagnosing with players, we have identified Shadows cast by Decorative Lights as one of the largest contributors to poor performance. As such, we have a set of changes that we hope will provide better performance with similar fidelity, as well as more granular quality settings.

We have changed the default lighting settings in the game, and added two new graphics setting options: Decorative Light Shadows and Decorative Light Shadow Quality.

• Decorative Light Shadows will default to Off. This will only affect lights placed by players via the building system, and will not impact any other lighting sources in the game (example: sunlight).
  
• When 'Decorative Light Shadows' is off, player-placed lights will provide light but not cast shadows.
  
• If 'Decorative Light Shadows' is off, the Decorative Light Quality cannot be modified
  
• If 'Decorative Light Shadows' is on, the Decorative Light Quality can be modified
  
• There are now low, medium and high settings for Decorative Light Quality (previously, this was only controlled via the setting for overall Shadow quality)
  

While there will be some noticeable visual differences (lights may appear overall brighter, there will be less 'dark' spots / less contrast between lit and unlit spots in the base), we believe this still provides a bright, cozy base while dramatically improving the performance.

However, if you have a strong computer and can handle it, you are able to toggle Decorative Light Shadows back on to maintain the way the lighting looked before this change. And now additionally, if you want shadows but feel performance is suffering while in the base due to lighting, you can tweak the Decorative Light Shadow Quality setting and hopefully improve your performance.

If you have any feedback about these changes, let us know!


Make sure to restart your servers to grab the latest update, otherwise players on the new version will be unable to connect.

- TH Stephiroth