August 2022 Client Update

Art & Effects

• Significantly optimized some visual effects using lines (impervious, impenetrable, immobile). This is especially visible when a large number of units with these effects are in play, specifically in Marshes of Madness scenario 2. Note: performance will still be degraded in that scenario, but it should no longer drop to 1-2 fps

• Made general optimizations to how the client retrieves some animation positions

• Fixed a performance issue in which an Avatar that had transfigured which was damaged before transfiguring and was then damaged after would cause both player's clients to become unresponsive (yes, this is the bug you think it is)

• Corrected an issue in which the faction specific avatar bases were not being displayed

• Fixed a visual sort order issue with the unit art for Myx Hurricane

• Corrected an issue in which spells and abilities that had effects drawn with a number of rectangles were not being shown in the Unity client. The list of things affected by this is very long, and basically is anything that had a beam effect going into the sky and a number of things where small pixels were used as "ashes", etc. Of particular note, this effected Sapping Beam, Thaw, Draconic Pulsar, Puppet Master, Channel abilities, Gravetend, Aid abilities, Dark Summons, Mental Link, Acrid Smoke, Scorch the Earth, Domain abilities, Annihilate, Converging Portals, ...

• Fixed some performance issues that could occur at the start and end of games due to an incorrect logging condition

• Made some optimizations to how a unit's visual position is calculated

• Fixed an issue in which effects that depended on getting a position from a part of the animation would throw an error and not render. This included:

  • Flamestrike

  • Flamethrower

  • Acid Breath

  • Arctic Bolt

  • Frost Cone

  • Freeze

• Fixed an issue in which units with composited effects could have those effects not face the correct direction (Avatar armor & weapons, Hydraxor heads, etc)

• Fixed an issue where line effects could stay present after they were supposed to be removed

• Fixed an issue in which some visual effects would not be positioned correctly depending on if the unit is facing left or right

• Fixed some visual issues with the effects for Invoke: Intercedence and Invoke: Vothsair Crush

• Reduced the number of particles when Domain abilities go off for performance

User Interface

• When a game ends by a means other than the shrine being destroyed (i.e., surrendering), there is now text below the victory/defeat header that indicates as such

• When observing a game and the game ends, the end game screen will now appear with details of the game ending rather than just unceremoniously dumping you to the lobby

• Made some adjustments to the Login screen for usability and in order to clearly show that there is a way to register in the client rather than going to the website

• The highlight in the rune dock will no longer appear if no controller is present since it had no effect anyway

• Fixed an issue in which the selection cursor could potentially not appear while in game

Descriptions and In-game Messages

• Fixed the in-game description of Darkmarsh Blackstaff linking to the description of an erroneous version of Amplify: Poison

• Fixed description text for Elemental Nexus abilities and added correct linkage so that they show ability flyouts

• Corrected an issue in which the name for the K'Thir Forest global was shown as "effect.k"

• Fixed descriptions for the conditions Poisoned, Scoured, and Diseased

• Improved the description of "Wind Cloak" from Zephyr