For rat racers playing from lower end hardware, I've included a fix for dynamic resolution not scaling when it should with specific framerate targets.

G'day Rat Racers! Here is a set of bug fixes and game adjustments to improve the gameplay experience.

• Item balance has been adjusted: - Boost obtained from consuming Cheese dropped by another player reduced from 64ms to 16ms - Portable Dash Ring drop chance increased from 18% to 19% - ??? Item drop chance decreased from 2% to 1% - ??? Item no longer randomly explodes in circumstances where it has otherwise no reason to self-destruct.
• Missiles now warn the player they're locked on to with an "INCOMING" crosshair.
• Being baited by the Cheese Item now causes slowed sparks to appear on the player's vehicle.
• Reworked the Collision Detection for the Cheese item when dropped. This fixes the following issues: - Sometimes collisions with dropped Cheese in Replays didn't replay correctly. - When already eating a piece of Cheese, players were briefly blocked by dropped Cheese on the road.
• Improved CPU artificial intelligence in cases where targeting an Item Container's more favourable than targeting a Dash Ring.
• Optimised CPU and memory garbage collection performance of Item Containers and their visual effects.
• Optimised CPU and memory garbage collection performance of Mini Volcanoes' fireballs in Volcanic.
• Optimised CPU and memory garbage collection performance of Coconuts present in Beach.
• Optimised CPU and memory garbage collection performance for ALL Explosion effects.
• Optimised CPU and memory garbage collection performance of Bombs, Cheese and Shields.
• Introduced asynchronous race loading; if this causes hangs, please launch the game with "-disable-async-load" in your Steam launch options.
• Fixed a hang on AMD graphics cards running Radeon Software 22.6.1 when loading into a race or back into the menus.
• Fixed a rare crash on NVIDIA graphics cards when loading into a race or back into the menus.
• Fixed a rare hang on NVIDIA graphics cards when loading into a race or back into the menus.
• Changed certain physics interactions to be more deterministic; now Replays should reproduce close to exactly the same as the original match it was recorded from, as well as making bomb bounces more predictable.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to cancel gravity while in freefall by using certain items.
• Fixed a bug where thrown away items (in Item Containers) that hadn't yet landed on the ground could physically block players.
• Fixed a bug that made it possible to throw away items while eating.
• Fixed an edge case with Missiles at their maximum flight speed where it was possible for them to miss a target going around a corner while also going round said corner themselves.
• Fixed Replays showing the incorrect estimated race time. Older replay files will show --'--"--- instead.
• Fixed a case where it was possible to fail to finish a race in Forest if the player finishing was too far to the sides of the finish line when crossing it.

• Fixed a regression introduced by the gamepad freeze fix; now Rumble on compatible controllers should work again.

• Fixed a bug that caused the game to hang if using a wireless PlayStation(R) controller with rumble enabled. (NOTE: Rumble still requires connecting said PlayStation(R) Controller via USB) This resolves the known issue where having controllers connected wirelessly with rumble enabled freezes the game; the workarounds are not needed anymore.
• Fixed a bug where toggling the reduce buffering setting didn't reload the graphics settings automatically.
• Made reduce buffering off the default setting for new installations; on systems that only meet the minimum GPU specifications, this setting may cause stuttering so it's recommended to keep this setting off there.
• Fixed Missile targeting sometimes skipping targets when fired with a viable target directly in front of you.
• Improved visibility of the road in Forest by lining extra rocks along the sides.
• Updated the Game Manual's Troubleshooting section to reflect this patch's changes.

- Fixed an issue where the Performance Ratio could swing wildly in one direction after a streak of failing to beat the EST time then a race where you did beat it. This was rather prominent on fresh saves, now fresh saves should have a more stable performance ratio. Saves from the release build of this game will eventually correct themselves as well. - Fixed an issue where the wrong slash character ('/' instead of '\') was used when displaying the Performance Ratio in the Player Profile - Adjusted the audio mix of the Ghost Missile (??? item) explosion to make it more distinguishable from a Shield shattering. - Fixed a bug where dropped Cheese didn't properly disable it's glow effect when picked up.

G'day, rat racers!

The game is now out! Thank you for trying it out and have fun!

Now, for issues I'm aware of that could make it difficult to run and/or may impact gameplay. Some of these I will attempt to address in a future patch; stay tuned!

• Dualsense haptics on Linux systems sometimes don't behave the same as on Windows.

• Using a Gamepad via Bluetooth with Rumble enabled may cause the game to hang if other non-Gamepad devices are connected. If this occurs, it is recommended to disconnect any other bluetooth input devices while using your wireless controller if you want to use rumble.

• Using a wireless DualShock/DualSense gamepad on macOS with Rumble enabled causes the game to hitch every time haptic feedback plays.

• Sometimes boosting has slightly erratic haptics on a Dualsense controller on some Windows setups.

• Mouse navigation in the pause and results screens doesn't work.

• Controller LEDs on DualShock/DualSense gamepads turn off after race completion.

• Attempting to use the Wayland launch option on some KDE Plasma setups on Linux may result in the game instantly closing without any error message.

• If your graphics card doesn't support Vulkan 1.0, enabling "Reduce Buffering" and "Use Vsync" at the same time may result in the game dropping to a low framerate on the first spike in GPU utilisation; workaround by disabling vsync, reduce buffering or lowering the graphics settings.

• Integrated Graphics Cards mistakenly have realtime reflections enabled on first launch; disable them in the options menu if performance is subpar.

• Input latency with some graphics cards and display combinations on Windows with Vsync enabled is excessively high.

• Frame times can be erratic on Vulkan drivers using GDI+ to implement the Vulkan swapchain; set FPS cap to unrestricted or turn on vsync for a workaround. WARNING: Running unrestricted framerate may cause your PC to overheat - please assess your PC's cooling system's ability to cool your CPU and graphics card under load before setting your framerate to unrestricted.

• AMD graphics cards on Windows with Radeon Software version 22.6.1 or older when running with Vulkan may freeze and crash to desktop after enabling 4x MSAA. If your AMD graphics card has the GCN4 microarchitecture (also known as Polaris/Vega) or newer, please upgrade your drivers instead!

• The game may hang on NVIDIA graphics cards if the Vulkan/OpenGL present method is set to Auto and the game's FPS cap is set to unrestricted. If this happens, change the setting for the game via the NVIDIA App/Control Panel to "Prefer native" instead of "Prefer Layered on DXGI Swapchain"

• A rainbow flash behind the UI will appear if the race replay is still recording and you attempt to navigate to either "view replay" or "save replay" while both buttons are greyed out.

• The race position at the start of a race is incorrect until every Rat has passed the start line.

• The camera rotation when changing POV in replays is incorrect for a single frame and/or spins around instead of changing seamlessly.

• The displayed race position in cases where players have already crossed the finish line will show up incorrectly. This is a purely cosmetic bug and doesn't affect the finishing position.

• The performance ratio visible in the player profile may sometimes fluctuate way too erratically if the player fails to beat the estimated race time too many times.

• Missiles if shot from 1st place will target the last place player.

• Race courses on Beach sometimes have self-intersecting geometry errors in the generated cliffs that can trap players.

• Performance on Volcanic race courses may be lower than expected.

One more thing I'd like to clarify in the game settings themselves is the "Reduce Buffering" option. This is also explained in the game manual, provided in PDF format and available at first launch or from the options menu. What this does is reduce the number of frames simulated ahead to 1 to reduce display latency, at the cost of performance on CPU bound setups.