Knights and mercs - welcome to the weekend Update #175 which mixes performance boosts with doors-go-boom and a really big pile of fixes for your community F10s, including a lot of key map updates. This update includes some new ways to change the environment with explosions, map updates for a number of the new maps and objective crosses, improvements to the rules on secondary objectives, improved timeline clarity and better tattoo rendering.

If you're enjoying the updates - please take a moment to help us share the game with a review.

Doors can go Boom!

On our quest to get the game fully ready for drones, we needed drones to explode. And we thought, if we're making drones explode … we should make doors explode (and a few other things, like bridges, but more on that later…). So, with this update we're excited to roll out a (most cinematic) update where doors can now be blown open. The first place this is landing in the game is in the Carnivore mission, and I won't say much more than that for spoiler purposes. The ruined doors are less wide open, so they can be better used for cover and are more restricted for cover but make a lot more sense in situations like these. We're excited to get past this initial integration and then get this into the game and storylines in other interesting ways.

If you happen to be in the way of an exploding door, expect to take some Pure Damage!

FPS Performance Boost + FreeSync / G-Sync

With Update #175, we've improved our rendering pipeline, enabling uncapped frames and supporting modern solutions like AMD FreeSync and NVIDIA G-Sync. With this change, we expect that most hardware (in which the CPU and GPU are reasonably aligned in power) will see a performance boost and sometimes a very significant FPS boost as well. To get the very best performance from FreeSync and G-Sync set V-Sync to disabled and set screen mode to "Fullscreen".

We hope this update sees the game running even more buttery smooth for you!

Secondary Objective Improvements

With Update #176, we've hit a number of bugs and needed improvements to the secondary objectives.

We fixed an issue where Lockbox count (Looted X/Y) was not always updating on time and would lag behind by a lootbox or two until you changed character turns.

We also fixed an issue with the Send a Message objective would fail to print the actual kill count into the victory screen and instead give nonesense code text.

Finally, we've adjusted the objective generator to be more strict about avoiding objectives that are simply too close to each other. This will be especially good as the list of possible secondary objectives keeps increasing but for now - even with 3 types - it is important to avoid situations where you basically bag 2 objectives by doing one of them (kill 10 … kill 12).

Map Updates

There has been a lot of map activity recently with big waves of new proc-gen combos (all the Bodyguard combos) and new maps every week. We're catching up on issues with maps, objectives, pathing and more in this release.

• We fixed a bug in the new Decommissioned Core where some of the terminals were just backwards and inaccessible.
• We fixed a bug in Sewers map X Bodyguard objective where the exits were laughably close to the start point.
• We fixed a bug in Wreckspire where one of the 2 extraction objectives would not appear or activate.
• We tweaked a number of starting and spawning locations to improve the 4 new maps.

Load Game Performance

On the performance topic, we've made some tweaks to load game performance to speed up the loading of the table in the case that you have more than 10 saved games. For those players out there with 100+ saved games in your list (we see you!) this should help you get the UI open fast as ever.

Also, we fixed a rare bug that could be caused by input jamming (clicking and hitting spacebar alot) that could cause a game to load twice and have extra performance drag on the way into the mission.

Tattoo Rendering

Finally, in preparation for upcoming additions to the face detail texture appearance option set (currently offering smooth or freckled), we've improved how tattoos are rendered over the face. Previously, they became basically "hard matte" and ignored a lot of the texture detail from anything below them. This update allows them to basically keep the texture detail - roughness and extra surface details - of what is below them while still painting in a single tattoo color. This makes tattoos look a little more natural but will be especially important to allow tattoos and scars to cross correctly.

v1.9.21 - #175: - 11/17/2024

- New exploding door capability, debut in Carnivore missions
- Performance boost for frame rate in almost all configurations, enabling Free Sync / G-Sync solutions instead of V-Sync
- Fixed secondary objective for "Looted X/Y lockboxes" not always updating
- Fixed typos in Send a Message secondary objective (kill goal) not showing kill count
- Fixed bugs with timeline where character might be finished with treatment / recovery but still locked
- Enhanced performance for Load Game list especially if you have a lot of games
- Fixed bugs with blank keybindings sometimes appearing when using Alt-Tab
- Fixed bug where you could accidentally double load a game, causing performance drop when loading
- Fixed impossible to reach backwards terminal in Decommissioned Core mission map
- Fixed issue with Sewers map when bodyguarding a VIP - cleaned up too many exits, too close
- Fixed issues with Wreckspire map sometimes having an extraction point listed in objectives but not active
- Improved secondary objectives to avoid overlapping objectives that are too close to each other
- Balanced and improved recently added maps
- Improved tattoo roughness rendering (less "hard matte") in prep for additional facial detail options