This weeks update features a couple of quality of life improvements such additional mesh quality levels for snow, and an additional cloud layer effect. I've also included bug-fixes to anything found or reported during the past week.

Additional cloud layer

I wanted to start out with something that could work well with lower settings first. Essentially it adds an additional light layer of clouds like seen in the background that will render in front of the islands for addditional effect. Depending on the lighting conditons and current level theme it will adjust accordingly. This is intentionally minimal, you may not always notice it and will fade away as your camera comes within proximity of it. This will get tweaked over time and may be combined with additonal effects.

Additional snow quality levels

The snow found on wall meshes has gotten an additional quality level thats better poly count optimized for low and medium settings. This will give a performance boost when playing the winter theme on low end devices, with greater gains while playing with other islands active. Each of the low and high versions of the models have their own LOD models for when seen in the distance like on other islands.

Various other fixes and tidy ups

Check the full notes below for all the changes made, if you are aware of any issues then please let me know so they may be hotfixed. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

Patch Notes

General

• Added change to how system save games are saved, moved from asynchronous to immediate. Because the amount of data in this file is tiny it can get it out the way before saving profile data would save at the same time (which is more of an issue for some low end systems).
• Fixed an issue where ES3.1 brightness settings wouldnt always apply correctly.

Environment

• Added improvements to levels All Teed up and Stroke of Luck to add more visual detail to back sides of levels and optimize overall triangle counts.
• Fixed camera on Law of reflection not being smooth.
• Added improvements to flag raising detection radius to give more room for ball speed.
• Fixed a clipping rock on Now where do I go.
• Fixed a small wall gap on Tee Time.
• Fixed hats appearing a bit overly shiny on lower settings on non-windows platforms.
• Added additional mesh quality level for level snow which will be used for low and medium settings.
• Added additional light cloud layer that will render in front of distant other islands.
• Added version of the snow covered fence for lower quality settings.
• Added tweaks to some wall models that were had lod models with excessive spacing that stood out.

Interface

• Fixed Q and F1 keys not having consistent appearance in dark mode.

Discord Server

Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.