Major Update: RUBICON Graphical Overhaul, Optimizations, and Adjustments
Hello everyone! We are extremely excited to bring you this update, as we've been very busy, but we're ready to show off what we've got!
Full notes
Full RUBICON update
Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.
Repeated intro
Hello everyone! We are extremely excited to bring you this update, as we've been very busy, but we're ready to show off what we've got!
What changed
0 fixes2 additions2 changes0 removals
Maps
Performance
Gameplay
addedOur biggest piece of feedback is performance, so we spent some time putting together a larger fix to help make the game run better on many platforms. At the same time, our new rendering methods allow us to improve read-ability of the surfaces in game. Because the map of RUBICON is always moving, we cannot use conventional tactics of making the reflections of the environment pre-rendered. In order to make surfaces more reflective we've had to use a few tricks here and there. This is an example of the effect: Old rendering:
addedNew Rendering:
changedHere is another example of a room that many said was hard to see in with adjusted visuals and reflections:
changedAs you can see, the faces of the hard models are far more visible in this room. In-game the difference may be more noticeable, but it is most readable on the faces of the black hexacubes. A fun fact for any developers out there; RUBICON actually has no lights in it. The entire game runs off of a combination of shader manipulation and emissive textures. Because of this, making reflective surfaces is quite difficult. In an earlier version of the game we used very low-intensity lights, but even so we found it very difficult to properly utilize them in the game without causing an excessive amount of render lag.
RUBICON changes
addedOur biggest piece of feedback is performance, so we spent some time putting together a larger fix to help make the game run better on many platforms. At the same time, our new rendering methods allow us to improve read-ability of the surfaces in game. Because the map of RUBICON is always moving, we cannot use conventional tactics of making the reflections of the environment pre-rendered. In order to make surfaces more reflective we've had to use a few tricks here and there. This is an example of the effect: Old rendering:
addedNew Rendering:
changedHere is another example of a room that many said was hard to see in with adjusted visuals and reflections:
changedAs you can see, the faces of the hard models are far more visible in this room. In-game the difference may be more noticeable, but it is most readable on the faces of the black hexacubes. A fun fact for any developers out there; RUBICON actually has no lights in it. The entire game runs off of a combination of shader manipulation and emissive textures. Because of this, making reflective surfaces is quite difficult. In an earlier version of the game we used very low-intensity lights, but even so we found it very difficult to properly utilize them in the game without causing an excessive amount of render lag.
Our biggest piece of feedback is performance, so we spent some time putting together a larger fix to help make the game run better on many platforms. At the same time, our new rendering methods allow us to improve read-ability of the surfaces in game. Because the map of RUBICON is always moving, we cannot use conventional tactics of making the reflections of the environment pre-rendered. In order to make surfaces more reflective we've had to use a few tricks here and there. This is an example of the effect: Old rendering:
New Rendering:
Here is another example of a room that many said was hard to see in with adjusted visuals and reflections:
As you can see, the faces of the hard models are far more visible in this room. In-game the difference may be more noticeable, but it is most readable on the faces of the black hexacubes. A fun fact for any developers out there; RUBICON actually has no lights in it. The entire game runs off of a combination of shader manipulation and emissive textures. Because of this, making reflective surfaces is quite difficult. In an earlier version of the game we used very low-intensity lights, but even so we found it very difficult to properly utilize them in the game without causing an excessive amount of render lag.
We're extremely excited to bring you this update! Please feel free to reach out to us on Twitter if there are any issues you encounter. The update will be released along side an 80% off sale starting on March 22th at 1:00pm EST. The sale will run until the 29th of March, so grab it while you can! Thank you so much for reading! We hope you enjoy battling it out in the RUBICON!
