Todays update focuses on improving ghost recording, overall replication, and replay playback. Thanks to the replay mode in yesterdays update I was able to scrutinise the playback of ghosts and significantly improve them. Only new ghosts will contain added data required, but leaderboards will be reset before launch anyway.

In case you dont happen to care about replays as a feature, how ghosts and replays are handled is basically using the same functions as what multiplayer replication uses, so improving one can also improve the other. Plus given it can also be a bit hard to see what some other player is doing as their ball wizzes past you in multiplayer, the ability to record and play this replication back over and over is very useful for debugging purposes as you can imagine.

If you want to see a replay with these improvements then I recommend playing one of recently added levels such as Bogeytown, Spin Cycle, Drop to the left etc. as its quite possible you havent played these yet and thus will be easy to set a new leaderboard entry. Also if you are enjoying playing the demo then please don't forget to add the game to your wishlist :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/
Patch Notes
[h2]General[/h2]

• Fixed up an issue with replicated rotation for newer method.
  
• Fixed resetting in replay not undoing a balls rotation.
  
• Fixed undoing in practice mode not completely undoing data destined for leaderboards.
  
• Added various performance optimizations via reducing calculations needed to replicated movement.
  
• Added change to how ghosts and replays are handled to have much greater rotation accuracy while at same time decreasing data size. All previous leaderboard ghosts will no longer work with rotation as a result of this change but they are due to be reset before launch anyway. Location replication still works fine.
  
• Added improvements to saved leaderboards data by moving to a more event driven array setup. What this means is only changes need to be stored per index reducing data needed considerably.
  
• Added power level at stroke to stored data in ghost. This allows for reproduction of sound.
  
• Added marker for holeout to stored data in ghost. This allows for more precise replay length. Additional changes have been made so the entering hole sound plays when entering the hole.
  
• Added markers for hit sounds to stored data in ghost. This allows for reproduction of a hit sound when a ball impacts a specific surface. A limit of 1 sound per 0.05 seconds is in place.
  
• Added additional stroke launch sound level.
  
• Added improvement to the spawning of practice levels so they inherit the expected location range as you would find in a standard session. This specifically may affect lighting and other environmental factors.
  

• Added improvements to replay HUD timeline and skip time functions. The end time for newly recorded ghosts will be the holeout time and not end of recorded data. Also while the ball will play naturally beyond the holeout time, if you skip backwards the skip will start at the hole entry time.