Major Performance and Graphics Update (0.997, 2019 04 12 )

Finally: Our new big Performance and Graphics Update has just been released and it contains a lot of new content and improvements!
Enjoy and ... Farm on!

Characters

• New NPC models, textures and animations. New NPCs tend to be similar to old ones in appearance, but better quality and with better skeleton.
  
• New NPCs can speak (mouth movement) and blink their eyes. They also yawn, chew and so forth.
  
• All female NPCs have hair or hats.
  
• Decreased probability of glasses for NPCs (only for a new game, not from saved game).
  
• Additional sets of different clothing for all NPCs.
  
• NPCs can switch parts of clothing.
  
• Different NPC faces within the same model
  
• Clothing and faces persist through save.
  
• Hight of various NPCs adjusted.
  
• Skinmeshes of various NPCs corrected.
  

Repairing & Design

• Buildings can now be painted in different colors.
  
• When buying concrete plaster in building materials store, player is given 24 colors to choose from. Plaster will be in a chosen color and when finishing external walls using this plaster, they will have the color too.
  
• Player can buy plasters of different colors one by one - materials on the palette will have the color selected for him to see
  
• Last chosen color is remembered in the menu.
  
• If rebuilding with plaster with a color, player tab menu shows current plaster color on a rebuilding main icon.
  
• Buildings in the distance (compressed) properly display colors of painted walls.
  
• Fixed flickering of colors when transitioning into a compressed building.
  
• Ability to repaint painted surfaces with new color (but not the same one).
  
• Better animations when adding concrete plaster.
  

Machinery

• New tractor added.
  
• New tractor by default has similar color as in cover art (but not when its already loaded from a game saved when it was green).
  
• New tractor has more powerful engine and a bit bigger tank.
  
• Improvements to new tractor's physics shape and balance.
  

Animals

• Added rooster to be bought in the agro store.
  
• Hen breeding introduced. If there are unpicked eggs from previous and rooster is present, there is a chance that new hen will hatch.
  
• If the henhouse is full and egg hatches, chickens are automatically sold with proper info.
  
• Introduced ducks and geese, to be bought separately in agro store.
  
• Ducks and geese are not dependent on the bird food, they feed themselves by the lake nearby.
  
• Ducks and geese give eggs with much less probability than the hen do. However these eggs are better and more expensive if sold.
  
• Ducks and geese stay in player barn overnight and player should look for their eggs there
  
• Pigeons introduced.
  
• New animals correctly stated in farm stats info (reformatted a bit to fit).
  

Additional & Bugfixes

• Restored proper info regarding fixing player farm buildings.
  
• Fixed bug allowing to buy animals and seedlings even if not having proper money.
  
• New/improved PBR lighting. This includes global illumination, physical reflections, direct and indirect lighting and fogs.
  
• New HDR curves and tone maps.
  
• Improved AA filtering.
  
• Improved transitions between different mesh LoD stages.
  
• Less invasive bloom (no overbrights).
  
• Problems with Tree LoDs fixed.
  
• Wide number of code optimizations (mostly on the CPU side).
  
• Fixed missing mirror sockets in some vehicles.
  
• Render issues when moving fast fixed.
  
• Reorganized agro store menu. Divided into 3 categories switchable with tabs for clear navigation.
  
• Added new greenhouse vegetable: bell pepper.
  
• Added canned bell pepper to be cooked by player.
  
• Wife can cook delicious stuffed peppers if bell peppers are stored in the pantry.
  
• New greenhouse plants also correctly stated in farm stats info.
  
• Improvements to digging with wheels.
  
• Improved shadow projector quality and probing density.
  
• Improved shadows detail and ranges.
  
• More precise NPC position.
  
• Fixes to HDS physics after game load.
  
• Fixes to bales and material physics after game load.
  
• Fixes to near world physics recovery after player quick travel.
  
• Fixed bug when fixing/rebuilding a part only partially and moving back, it was sometimes rendered huge and somewhere else.
  
• Optimized grass rendering.
  
• Lowered speed limit that determines if a trailer can be unhitched. Was 12 or 18 km/h (depending on a vehicle), lowered to about 4 km/h.
  
• Improved physics parameters for Amazone KG4000.
  
• Shadows from vehicle wheels should be displayed properly.
  
• Fixed blinking of iron fences in distance.