Visual Improvements, optimization, and major bug fix patch, oh my!

Overview

Hello all! Today's patch brings us multiple visual improvements, extra LOD (Level of detail) levels, optimizations, stability, and a fix to a strange load game bug that may have left a few of you confused. The game not only runs better, it looks better while doing it. I have also brought back the old campfire scene at the beginning of the game for those of you who joined early access at the beginning. It has now been optimized as to prevent the crash to the desktop bug that caused it to be removed. Prettier than ever it is! In the last update, I had improved my terrain texture generator tools to give much more detailed battle levels. This update improves upon that with better grass detail placement and slope detection. Each terrain type (Grass, snow, sand, rock) etc now comes with unique tree and grass textures, as to match the terrain and season. Snow levels now have snowy trees, and sand & dry grass areas have dry dead trees. Snow during battles makes a comeback and is now heavily optimized as to prevent the game slowing down to a chug, and now runs in local screen space as opposed to world space, so it should be a lot more consistent. There was an odd bug to do with loading the campaign map that may have left a few of you confused. Basically, whenever you begin a siege battle the game saves to a temporary location just in case you decide to quit half-way through, this prevents the siege from disappearing when loading your game. The trouble is, under certain circumstances, it wasn't saved before the battle loaded, so after the end of the battle, it would load everything from your previous manual (or automatic) savegame. You would still have taken or defended that castle, but, the world could have been in the place it was 5 minutes prior. It took a lot of confusion and "wait, no, that doesn't look right" moments for me to even realize it was happening. As for the rest of the updates.....

Campaign map

• An issue with your hero's hair not showing, or disappearing resolved. - Issues with incorrect text loaded into some UI slots have been cleaned up. - Hero stats properly loaded after the battle. - All building upgrade costs have increased. - Mint produced coins amount adjusted (decreased) per level. - Tavern hero's price increased. - Selected unit resource amounts will update when trade cart enters the town. - Quest tier enemy army population increased (except easy level). - Hero army cost reduction clamped - removing any 'positive' income influence if over cost amount. - Fog reduced for each weather state. - Hero rank title level needed has been lowered. I.E, level 8 to become lord instead of 12 (If they have a castle as a vassal). - Chance of peace button should now always be interactive unless chance is 0%. - Chance of peace 'Chance' now influenced by hero diplomacy level. - Failing to kill a hero during assassination battle that was won should now properly load the quest details to its new retreated army. - Unit cost displayed and actual cost should now be correctly displayed. - Current game speed setting now shows as selected. - Trees change with the season. - All units button added when creating an army. - All resources button added when creating an army. - The current season now displayed in the top panel. - Tutorial hero set as town lord. - Bank gold button now disabled after player banks gold in town. - Fixed a strange issue with loading level after some siege battles. - Hero cost authority reduction fixed preventing heroes producing income. percentage of reduction lowered. - Removing the entire army from a siege will now correctly transfer all resources. - Enemy retreating from assassination quest battle will now be recognized if they are killed at a later time. - Message archive panel added to the side panel. - Tier 5 units daily upkeep increased. - Faction logos added to faction information panel. - Button icons added to faction panel. - Forced march button icon added. - Snow particles optimized. - Minor errors fixed.

Battle scene

• Terrain grass details color altered. Billboarding removed. - Units in AI armies properly face enemy army after maneuvering. - New grass textures depending on terrain type. - Terrain texture will change to snow if the weather is set to snow. - Fog adjusted depending on weather condition. - Al mounted units base agility set - agility is reduced due to armor. - Clearing baked materials from memory before scene transition. - Units no longer move around erratically after a battle ends. - Long range LOD's (Level of detail) optimized. - Units will load at the appropriate LOD level at the battle start. - Graphics optimization. - Ranch level start position facing fixed. - Tree textures now reflect the terrain/season. - Siege defense buttons now highlight when moused over. - Tier 5 ranged weapons more powerful. - Unit armature cleaned - slight optimization. - Siege reinforcement positions adjusted. - Snow particles re-introduced. Optimised. - Particles now live in local space, following the camera position. - Minor null reference errors fixed.

Main menu

• New theme music. Placeholder asset removed. - Campsite scene re-introduced. Optimized.

Summary

So there we have it! Today's patch is a big improvement on the game visually and performance wise and is really starting to come together. As of setting the build live on the test branch last night (And public this morning), I have already found some small improvements and are on my to-do list now so back to it I go. Take care everyone, and enjoy the update! Cheers - Kerry