We’ve been busy listening to everyone and improving some features. 1.26 will have a good deal of graphical improvements, performance tweaks and improvements along with some neat feature adds. We have released our latest build on the experimental branch. Please report bugs and issues in game using the F1 menu. If you'd like to track the patch progress and follow more closely with development, check our [url=https://changelog.survivethenights.net/]changelog[/url] and please consider joining our [url=https://discord.gg/survivethenights]Discord.[/url] [u][b]How to get into experimental branch:[/b][/u] [olist] [*] Open Steam and go to your games library. [*] Right click on STN and select "Properties" [*] Navigate to the "Betas" tab and select "experimental" in the drop down menu. [*] Close the properties window. [*] You will find a single experimental server titled EXPERIMENTAL_SERVER. Join this for some testing. [/olist] [h3]Graphical Improvements (Environmental Changes)[/h3] Graphical improvements are a big part of 1.26 as is performance, as you can imagine the two go hand in hand. Andre has spent a good deal of time over the past couple of weeks improving vegetation shaders, fog shaders and lighting among numerous other visual changes. [b]Fog and Lighting Improvements[/b] We’ve improved fog effects in 1.26 leading to a more cohesive and eerie vibe all around. Fog has been a bit of a thorn in our side for some time, causing performance issues and just generally never looking right. There was a point where we had been happy, however a river/ocean shader update through a wrench into the works. I would take a good deal of reworking and work around to get our original fog shader working again and that’s exactly what Andre has done for 1.26 We’ve reintroduced the old fog system which is made to work with our day cycle system. The results speak for themselves, along with the looks we’ve gained some performance which may be noticeable on low end rigs. Lighting has also been improved, you’ll notice bright crisp mid-day lighting. Colors have been balanced for an improved general atmosphere while also upping the creepy factor. We’ve tweaked lighting to reflect nature render changes. [list] [*] Reduced grain [*] Increased sun mesh brightness [*] General small tweaks to the lighting [*] Reduced AA and sharpening from AA to improve ghosting and fix black edges around some objects [*] Graphical improvements to terrain grass detail rendering [*] Improved sharpening on image effects to fix black outline around objects in the distance [*] Anti aliasing tweaks to fix ghosting and blurriness [*] Improved fog effects. [*] Water improvements to work with new fog [*] SpeedTree shader improvements [*] Sun now always visible when it should be. [*] Increased sun brightness for improved graphics [*] Improved resolution of distant terrain meshes. [*] Improved textures and resolution on terrains in the distance. [*] New distant tree models created for every type of tree. [*] Fix for bright campfire smoke in the distance [*] Fix for dark terrain lighting artifacts on grass and dirt in the distance [/list] [img]https://i.imgur.com/wIft2ja.png[/img] [i]Old Fog System (with its issues)[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/FeX0Rfs.png[/img] [i]Added water fade to remove that rough edge[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/p7X7fAO.png[/img] [i]The results of updated fog/water shaders[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/gUzckMf.gif[/img] [i]Old and new fog comparison 1[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/4HC2Qjd.gif[/img] [i]Old and new fog comparison 2[/i] [h3]Full Resolution Comparison Shots[/h3] [img]https://i.imgur.com/VcSPYY5.jpg[/img] [i]Mountain Sunset Before[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/0M8TLaX.jpg[/img] [i]Mountain Sunset After[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/GO8BG2G.jpg[/img] [i]Power Station Before[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/8YNR058.jpg[/img] [i]Power Station After[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/CXPXqzO.jpg[/img] [i]Union Point Before[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/cvf5GuE.jpg[/img] [i]Union Point After[/i] [h3]Distant Terrains and Trees[/h3] The fog improvements aren’t the only environmental improvements to go into 1.26 another big performance and visual improvements are distant terrains and trees. These terrains and trees are loaded at a distances and drastically help with performances. The new distant terrains and trees are more visually pleasing along with being better on performance. [img]https://i.imgur.com/JjaAyPZ.gif[/img] [i]Distant terrain old/new[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/9nO3EcC.gif[/img] [i]In game distant trees/terrain old/new[/i] [h3]Crafting and Inventory Improvements [/h3] We've watched a lot of YouTube videos and live streams of the game over the past couple of weeks and one major thing that has stood out to us is the need to make our inventory/UI experience cohesive. We've rolled out category dividers, sorting and click windows to the containers and crafting pages. Streamlined the dropping/moving/moving all flows and introduced a quick craft button via the crafting lists click window. While there's still improvements to be made, these changes should make things nicer to use. [b]Crafting/UI[/b] [list] [*] Crafting categories are opened automatically when filtering items via the search option. [*] Newly unlocked craftables are now labelled so they’re easy to find. [*] Added click window functionality to the craftable items list. [*] Added ability to quick craft via the click window. [*] Crafting complete sound now plays when crafting max. [*] Scroll position is saved when returning to the craftables list from a recipe. [/list] [b]Inventory/UI[/b] [list] [*] Player inventory now only automatically returns to the ‘All’ tab after 30s without accessing the inventory. [*] Consumables now show in the relevant tab in player storage. [*] "Take" buttons from containers and updated UI to use the Click window method the same as the inventory. [*] Added 'Take All' button for each stack of items within a container. [*] Containers now have category divider to match the inventory [*] Containers are now sorted in the same way and the inventory. [*] Move All button only shows when moving to container when quantity of item is greater than 1. [*] Containers can now be sorted the same as the Inventory. [*] Click window no longer closes when dropping items if the quantity is over 1. [*] Improved spacing around items in the container window to match the inventory. [/list] [img]https://i.imgur.com/S8c0Fai.gif[/img] [i]Searching now opens categories [/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/uafRYyC.gif[/img] [i]Quicker crafting with the updated click window[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/cs62FFp.gif[/img] [i]Crafting sorting and sort by level[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/Fb9bMzD.gif[/img] [i]Container dividers[/i] [img]https://i.imgur.com/dyQAgKc.gif[/img] [i]Click window and move all in containers[/i] [h3]Patch Notes - Experimental Update[/h3] [b]Environment & Graphics[/b] [list] [*] Graphical improvements to terrain grass detail rendering [*] Improved sharpening on image effects to fix black outline around objects in the distance [*] Anti aliasing tweaks to fix ghosting and blurriness [*] Improved fog effects. [*] Water improvements to work with new fog [*] Speedtree shader improvements [*] Sun now always visible when it should be. [*] Increased sun brightness for improved graphics [*] Improved resolution of distant terrain meshes. [*] Improved textures and resolution on terrains in the distance. [*] New distant tree models created for every type of tree. [*] Fix for bright campfire smoke in the distance [*] Fix for dark terrain lighting artifacts on grass and dirt in the distance [/list] [b]Crafting/UI[/b] [list] [*] Crafting categories are opened automatically when filtering items via the search option. [*] Newly unlocked craftables are now labelled so they’re easy to find. [*] Added click window functionality to the craftable items list. [*] Added ability to quick craft via the click window. [*] Crafting complete sound now plays when crafting max. [*] Scroll position is saved when returning to the craftables list from a recipe. [/list] [b]Inventory/UI[/b] [list] [*] Player inventory now only automatically returns to the ‘All’ tab after 30s without accessing the inventory. [*] Consumables now show in the relevant tab in player storage. [*] "Take" buttons from containers and updated UI to use the Click window method the same as the inventory. [*] Added 'Take All' button for each stack of items within a container. [*] Containers now have category divider to match the inventory [*] Containers are now sorted in the same way and the inventory. [*] Move All button only shows when moving to container when quantity of item is greater than 1. [*] Containers can now be sorted the same as the Inventory. [*] Click window no longer closes when dropping items if the quantity is over 1. [*] Improved spacing around items in the container window to match the inventory. [/list] [b]Performance [/b] [list] [*] Improved stuttering caused by terrain grass details [*] Lighting tweaks to compliment image effect improvements [*] General image effect improvements and performance fixes [/list] [b]Admin[/b] [list] [*] New player/welcome message config option now implemented. [*] Disabling drone camera smoothing now disables smooth movement and fov changes on top of mouse movement [/list] [h3]Links[/h3] Discord: https://discord.gg/survivethenights Patreon: https://patreon.com/a2zinteractive Changelog: https://changelog.survivethenights.net Twitter: https://twitter.com/STNgame Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/STNgame YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/a2zinteractive Website: https://www.survivethenights.net Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/a2zinteractive