Hello everyone,
Today sees the release of alpha update 181, featuring our very first Steam achievement batch of 10 (let us know if you’d like us to add more and which ones you’d want to see!) and major performance improvements thanks to Aleksi’s work at instanced batching - otherwise known as “magic” to the uninitiated.
Steam Achievements
Steam achievements allow us to reward the players with a completionist outlook on things with a few tokens. We’ve been very careful not to include any achievements that will subtract from the teamplay aspect of the game in a major form and we will continue to tread very carefully indeed when/if we add more to the game.
For the achievement art, we’ve opted to go with an old-timey photo style (and a hand painted, as was tradition during the era, for when an achievement is unlocked).
Update 181 Achievement List
Blue Name?
Meet a developer on the field of battle.
To War!
Join the battle in War of Rights!
Tactician
Watch a recorded match replay.
Dress Up
Create a customized uniform.
Barbershop Visit
Create a customized head.
Skirmisher
Play 100 games of Skirmish.
Conqueror
Play 100 games of Conquest.
Patroller
Play 100 games of Picket Patrol.
Untrampled
Pick up a flag from a fallen flag bearer.
Bullseye
Score a bullseye on a drill camp target.
Performance Improvements
Rendering for common world objects such as fences, buildings and vegetation is now binned to be rendered in instanced batches. This results in a significant CPU overhead reduction on the render thread, especially noticeable in areas with far view distances. In addition to the world rendering overhead being reduced, the per-frame setup of dynamic render objects is now much faster.
Here are a few off/on comparisons captured with a Ryzen 1700X paired with an RTX 3060 running the very high graphic preset setting:
Instancing disabled
Instancing enabled
Instancing disabled
Instancing enabled
Instancing disabled
Instancing enabled
Update 181 Patch Notes
- Added 10 Steam achievements.
- Added major performance improvements via instanced batching.
- Increased the max view distance of trees and bushes by 25%.
- Increased the max view distance of all non-vegetation objects by 40%.
- Drastically increased the max amount of rendered character shadows (from 30 to 150 on very high for instance).
- Increased the view distance of indirect light bounces (SVOTI) by 300%.
- Added 2nd Mississippi, 3rd Alabama, 14th Brooklyn and 20th Maine to the pool of customizable units.
- Added base spawn tags to drill camp picket patrol spawn points.
- Fixed a number of missing fence ledges and proxy walls, Limestone Bridge & Waterways Conquest areas, Antietam.
- Doubled the resolution of the speaker, muted and demoted icons on the name tags.
- Added a new grass model variant to the mix.
- Reduced camera movement on exit “at the ready”, melee mode and when selecting the revolver.
- Fixed a few potential issues with the overlook point at Harpers Ferry.
- Added 2nd Mississippi, 30th Virginia and 5th Alabama BTN national flags.
- Fixed the flipped artillery battery spawn positions in the Forest Stream Conquest area, Antietam.
- Fixed a flipped morale count during the battle report playback when playing the Skirmishes game mode.
- Cocking a revolver no longer causes the automatic freelook to kick in (if this feature is enabled).
- Servers running 150 or more player slots will now continuously warn their admins about possible performance issues if their hardware hasn’t been upgraded (this is free) by contacting Gportal.
- When getting killed and triggering last stand, thus causing an instant respawn, the player should now be able to move about just fine.
- The character customization level is no longer loaded immediately when starting the game or when leaving a server, but only while the character customization is to be shown, resulting in faster game startup times.
- Fixed an issue with joining a Skirmish server during a round transition after the battle report has finished resulting in the client remaining stuck in the static spectator camera.
That’s all for now. We hope you will enjoy unlocking the achievements as well as the major performance improvements of update 181.
See you in the fields of glory!
- The Campfire Games Team
