v2.2.0 is now live on the public beta branch. To access all the features detailed below simply right click on the game in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> Select Beta from the dropdown list.

Beta notes

• If it doesn't appear right away, try restarting Steam.
• A beta branch is also available via GOG Galaxy.
• The aim of a beta is to allow players early access to new features on the understanding that there may be minor bugs.
• If you do encounter a bug it's unlikely to be game-breaking, but it's still recommended to either start a new save, or make a back up save of your current game before updating to the beta.
• To help this update move out of beta as quickly as possible, consider reporting any bugs you do find on the Steam forums in the Bug Reports subtopic.
• The update is back-compatible in both directions, so if for some reason you need to roll back to the previous version, your save file should still load.
• If you use a lot of mods, please read the section at the end of this announcement for some extra information.

Optimisations and more

This update is all about building a foundation upon which Megaquarium can continue to grow. After the launch of the remarkably popular DLC, Freshwater Frenzy, last year and the continued success of the game's Steam Workshop, it became clear to me that some parts of the game needed a significant overhaul if the game was going to be able to continue to grow.

Performance boost!

The major feature this update is a big performance boost which should allow every player out there to build bigger aquariums and enjoy a smoother framerate while they do it. The exact improvement you will experience will depend on your specific hardware, but I'm expecting most players to see a 50-100% boost in average FPS. This has been achieved by a complete rewrite of the game's rendering engine. Almost every object in the game (including modded objects, more details below) are now integrated into my own specialised rendering pipeline. This pipeline takes advantage of direct memory manipulations to get the vast arrays of mesh data from where they are stored to where they need to be, in record time. In addition, much of the per-vertex computation (offset, rotation, scaling and animation blending) has been shifted onto the GPU to lesson the load on the CPU. If that weren't enough, I've introduced an experimental feature called 'Multithreaded rendering'. This feature is designed for players with CPUs with at least 4 physical cores. In this case, 3rd and 4th cores will be used to do rendering calculations, freeing up even more headspace for the main two cores. The trade-off is that this feature may cause a slight animation delay, especially on less powerful PCs. If you try it out, let me know what you think. Believe it or not, there is still further optimisation to be done - especially around pathfinding and memory allocations. But I decided to leave these for a future update so that you, the players, could start enjoying this one!

UI redesign - bigger text

The secondary feature of this update is a redesign of much of the game's UI to devote maximum space to text and maintain a minimum text size wherever possible. This was made a priority after several players came forward complaining of having difficulty reading the text in some areas of the game, especially on lower resolutions. Check out the following before and after screenshots to get a feel for the impact of these changes.

The effects are most noticeable if you open the two images in two separate tabs and flick between them. I hope you'll agree that the changes are significant and make a big difference to the ease of reading all those complicated tank stats! In some places, where the text is too long to display in full, the text is truncated and an ellipses (...) is added. Most of the time, the full text can be seen via a tooltip when hovering over the text. Finally, a small feature that has been requested several times over the years: there is now a setting which makes the per object count in the build menu visible at all times without needing to hover over it. Like the performance boost, these improvements are about getting the foundations of the game into a great place so it can continue to grow.

What's next?

The perceptive among you will notice that I keep alluding to the idea of the game "growing" in this post. I think it's finally time to announce that new content is indeed in the works. I'm tremendously excited about it and can't wait to start sharing the details with you, but that will have to wait for another time. A big thank you to everyone who's been waiting so patiently. steamhappy

Modding

I've worked hard to try to make the optimisations included in this update as compatible with mods as possible. With that in mind, mods are now automatically assigned a "voCollection" on load to enable them to integrate with the custom rendering pipeline. This means that mods should now run roughly as fast as vanilla objects!* *Models will still run slower the more meshes and vertices there are, so try to keep these to a minimum where possible. In my testing of over 30 of the most popular mods, I didn't find a single mod that failed to work with the update installed. However, I did discover some mods which are "incompatible" with the optimisations. These mods continue to work but could cause the game to run slow, so they are marked with an 'unoptimised' icon in the Mod Manager. Thankfully this should be easily remedied. Currently the only cause of incompatibility is the use of multiple materials within a single mesh. To make a model compatible, the modder needs to divide meshes up so that each one only has a single material. Additional sources of incompatibility may be discovered during the beta, so please check the game's log file and the mod's info panel for issues with specific mods. If you spot any issues with any particular mods while playing with the new update, then please let me know via the Megaquarium Workshop Forums and I will see if I can solve the issue.

Localisations

There is some new text as part of this update which has not been localised yet. If you are playing the game in any language other than English, you may see a few bits of text that are in English. This is nothing to worry about and will be corrected prior to the update leaving beta.

v2.2.0 changlog

• New graphics pipeline for increased average framerate and increased capacity for on-screen game objects.
• Reduced memory allocations for reduction in frame spikes due to garbage collection.
• Added experimental feature: multithreaded rendering, accessible via the graphics options tab.
• UI redesign - increased text size, increased tooltip size, reduced empty space.
• UI redesign - Some text is truncated with an ellipses (...) but the full text can be read by hovering over it.
• UI redesign - space for icons in individual object window now changes based on number of icons. So when there are only 1 or 2 icons, only a single row of space is taken, but for tanks with 15+ icons it now has space for 4 rows so that everything is legible.
• UI redesign - Increased opacity of omni-present in-game buttons.
• Added a setting which makes the object count in the build menu visible at all times.
• Current Prestige value has more momentum and does not rise and fall so drastically. Your average prestige will remain the same but you won't experience the same oscillatory behaviour.
• New guest and staff models, there are now more combinations of guests and staff because glasses and hats have been divided into their own meshes.
• Some staff have had their hair style or color changed.
• Freshwater Frenzy - Breeding survival chance increased by 2% across the board.
• Freshwater Frenzy - Breeding survival chance affected by game difficulty. Easy +2%. Hard and Brutal -2%.
• Freshwater Frenzy - Added a place sound for fry and eggs.
• You can no longer assign LMB, RMB or MMB to hotkeys.
• Added a new tooltip to tell you how key assignment works on the key assignment tab in the options.
• Added a confirmation before starting a new game if one is already in progress.
• 'Browse Workshop' button in Mod Manager now scrolls so it doesn't overlap mods.
• Guests and staff can now be rotated while picked up.
• Reduced size of guest and staff colliders slightly so it is easier to select objects behind them.
• All scrollable menus have scroll speed capped at some value. The value can be edited via gui.data.
• Text for toggles in the build menu are now on one line in all languages.
• Dropdown menus now use full box height.
• Improved readability of downdown menu for podium.
• Added 5120x2160 as official resolution.
• Fixed bug where podium was not included in zone unless the access square was in the zone.
• Fixed bug where scrollable menus would effect each other when overlapping.
• Fixed bug where water in UI would distort text.
• Fixed bug tooltip for items on gift shop shelf window was wrong.
• Fixed bug where contents of Rank Up menu was not scaled correctly on non-1080p height monitors.
• Fixed bug in bounds calculation during load causing root rotations of geometry to be ignored.
• Fixed bug where objects won't make sounds after being picked up and dropped.
• Fixed bug where staff were not making a sound when they initiated feeding.
• Fixed bug where staff were making the sweeping sound when giving a staff talk.
• Fixed bug where staff would do a single frame of their last animation when they were dropped causing a flicker effect.
• Fixed bug where staff doing a fixing task while carrying some fish food would clip with the fish food.
• Fixed bug where top right toggle values were not being reset between games even though the UI made it look like they were.
• Fixed bug where guest thoughts would appear in English at the beginning of some levels, even if the languages was set to something else.
• Fixed bug where you could click a second level button after clicking a first. No effect, but animation would play.
• Fixed bug where if you pressed escape while a dropdown menu was open you could get stuck in the menu and not be able to cancel the dropdown.
• If using 'manual save path.txt' it is ignored if the slash after the drive letter colon is not present.
• Updated to Unity 2019.4.25f1.
• Updated to latest version of Steamworks.net.
• Modding - voCollection is automatically assigned when left blank. It is recommended to leave it blank and the game will assign the most optimal voCollection automatically.
• Modding - added 'unoptimised' icon and tooltip to Mod Manager for mods which have multiple materials in a single mesh. These objects are not assigned a voCollection and continue to run with the (slower) legacy graphics system.

[ 2021-05-05 11:08:34 CET ] [ Original post ]