Hotfix (v0.6.22)

A lot of testing for Star Vortex happens on Steam Deck, and I recently noticed the framerate taking a dive. This update improves performance there, along with gains on all lower-end systems.

This is ongoing work, so if you notice FPS drops during specific fights or when using certain weapons, please let me know.

Patch Notes

Balance Changes

• Shield Recharge upgrade increased from +5% to +10% per level.

Quality of Life / Accessibility

• Menu and overlay blur transitions are now faster.

• Death screen pause delay slightly increased.

Performance

• Steam Deck now defaults to Fastest quality, medium particles, and ship shadows off.

• Disabled anti-aliasing on Steam Deck for improved frame rate.

• Shaders and ship templates pre-compiled during load to prevent first-combat freezes.

• Fixed weapon aim-assist scanning further than needed.

• Reduced HUD redraw overhead during combat.

• Improved pathfinding efficiency for AI ships.

• Ship explosions now use pooled effects to prevent stutters.

• Ship debris chunks are now pooled with simpler physics.

• Removed dark cloud overlay layer.

• Debris smoke trails capped per ship class to reduce lag spikes.

• Radial display now caches slider and text values to reduce unnecessary UI redraws.

• Clouds shader now uses a baked noise texture instead of per-pixel procedural noise.

• Ship shadows and outlines merged into a single half-res pass.

• HUD notices are now pooled instead of created on demand.

• Interaction prompts now cache resolved text per controller.

• Health bars skip positioning while hidden, reducing overhead with many ships.

Bug Fixes

• PDLs no longer appear in the linking panel as assignable.