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Steam News7 June 202629d ago

Following Seas 1.3 Hotfix 3 - Must have been luff, but it's over now.

I've added a number of fixes, with a primary focus towards improving clarity in the opening scenes, to make it less ambiguous as to the initial goal.

Full notes

Full Following Seas update

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What changed

2 fixes3 additions5 changes2 removals
  • Gameplay
  • UI and audio
  • Fixes
  • Performance
addedI've added a number of fixes, with a primary focus towards improving clarity in the opening scenes, to make it less ambiguous as to the initial goal.
fixedFixed numerous instances where the rope UI would become stuck after attempting to use other ship components while it was active.
fixedFixed a bug that could cause the Saettia mainsail to make like a millennial's sense of hope and disappear.
addedAdded subtitles to the intro cutscene.
changedMade some minor audio adjustments to intro.
removedChanged the default settings to improve performance on mid powered systems for those not wanting to dig into settings. Notably the reflections use about ~20% of cpu power, so it's now disabled by default. No changes made to existing settings files.

Following Seas changes

addedI've added a number of fixes, with a primary focus towards improving clarity in the opening scenes, to make it less ambiguous as to the initial goal.
fixedFixed numerous instances where the rope UI would become stuck after attempting to use other ship components while it was active.
fixedFixed a bug that could cause the Saettia mainsail to make like a millennial's sense of hope and disappear.
addedAdded subtitles to the intro cutscene.
changedMade some minor audio adjustments to intro.

I've added a number of fixes, with a primary focus towards improving clarity in the opening scenes, to make it less ambiguous as to the initial goal.

Fixes:

Fixed numerous instances where the rope UI would become stuck after attempting to use other ship components while it was active.

Fixed a bug that could cause the Saettia mainsail to make like a millennial's sense of hope and disappear.

Changes:

Added subtitles to the intro cutscene.

Made some minor audio adjustments to intro.

Changed the default settings to improve performance on mid powered systems for those not wanting to dig into settings. Notably the reflections use about ~20% of cpu power, so it's now disabled by default. No changes made to existing settings files.

Significant change to how lateen sail performance is calculated. Previously there were many cases where a sail's performance did not align with its visual presentation. Namely it was very easy to find yourself in a position where a sail is visibly luffing but mechanically receiving near full thrust. The severity of this was worsened considerably with the changes to positional forces, as it often left a ship in orientations where turning via the rudder would become impossible or very difficult -- as mechanically the ship was being turned by its sails, despite them appearing to have spilled all wind.

With this update, the chord depth of the sail, both along its foot and leech is sampled and the average 'depth' is compared against the length of these lines. It's relatively forgiving, but as this average distance approaches < 5% the effectiveness of the sail decreases rapidly.

The effect of this is that poorly positioned sails should have a more detrimental effect to sailing, and align better with their visual appearance. The downside is that you may need to increase attentiveness to positioning.

Another change related to this is that most ships should now be able to attain greater speeds.

In testing it was difficult for most ships to exceed 4mps/14kph, with some struggling to reach that. From my understanding this isn't too far from the expected average speeds of many of these ships, but under ideal conditions even the caravel should be able to hit 18-22kph. While I'd consider this in testing -- some ships have had their performance maximums increased by 10-25%, both for sailing and steering.

Another change to support the above is a move back to the CPU for sail particle evaluation. This may reduce performance for some, and increase for others, dependent on your hardware. (For me it costs 1-2 fps, but I have a 4070ti, so those with 20 series cards or comparable should see some improvement if you have a solid processor.)

Added text elements to pumps when using them, as it can be difficult to tell how much water is aboard. Current bilgewater in kg will now be displayed.

The L-CNTRL to highlight interactable objects will now also allow certain objects to direct you to specific manual pages. i.e. interacting with the capstan while holding L-CNTRL will display the prompt 'help' instead of 'grab' and the usual interaction key will jump to the manual page on kedging.

This is part of a gradual shift to a more guided entry to the game. There is still significant room for improvement, but my aim is to reduce the sense of ambiguity one you are on the island.

The various glowing components have been removed -- instead being replaced with a short series of objectives to guide the player at least through the very basics. This will automatically bring up relevant tutorial pages, and cover the basics of things like provisions, kedging, and sail control.

Source

Steam News / 7 June 2026

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