Performance & Flex Goal vote

Hey folks,

This week we’re announcing the results of our backer flex-goal voting and how this impacts all of you. We’ll also be taking a closer look at the impacts of some under-the-hood changes coming in 0.7.0!

Flex Goal Voting Complete!

A few weeks ago we invited our crowd-funding backers to join our backer site, where they could participate in a vote to determine which feature we would work on shortly after our Early-Adopter DLC.

We presented our backers with two options for post-release content. A mini-campaign or extended survival mode features. The results of that vote are now in and we’re pleased to announce that improved survival won with 51.5% of the vote, as such we will be developing the survival mode prototype into a fully realised feature post-release free for all players!

So what can you expect from an enhanced survival mode?

New maps

Mutators

Regularly updated survival challenges

The ability to create your own survival challenges and send them to your friends (possibly with Workshop integration)

Leaderboards, high scores, unlockable cosmetics and achievements

And everything fully voiced by the one and only Richard Ridings

We’ll be starting work on this mode shortly after release and you can expect survival mode to be added not long after the release of our first Early-Adoper DLC!

Performance Optimisation

As part of the ongoing work into 0.7.0 we recently pushed a huge amount of performance improvements to our internal build and the difference is staggering. Where previously certain levels and dungeon arrangements were causing the game to chug we’re now finding the performance to be as smooth as a chunder’s backside.

Shortly prior to this pass we recorded some stats on the previous internal build one of our developers came up with the following:

Pre-Pass performance on Campaign 4

Avg: 21.80 FPS

Min: 5 FPS

Max: 44 FPS

Post-pass performance on Campaign 4

Avg: 54 FPS

Min: 43 FPS

Max: 60 FPS

We’ve yet to see how this has affected the vast majority of systems however on the rented machines we were playing the game on at the press event last week we found that performance was smooth in all but the most extreme circumstances on the highest settings.

Here’s a video we’ve compiled to demonstrate some of the improvements. This video is recorded with fraps and all fog of war turned off, moving the camera in this manner pre-patch on a level as large as this would previously have caused some significant issues.

We’re going to be having another big push for performance improvements in the next few weeks, the results here are just the first few tentative steps towards an optimised, enjoyable experience for all!

Campaign Preview

This week we’ll be sharing with you a little bit more than a few teaser screenshots of the campaign and instead we’re going to invite you to watch Yogscast Hannah playing through the first four levels of the campaign in an early build of 0.7.0!

In these videos you’ll see plenty of the improvements coming in the upcoming patch and we’ve still got a few more coming before it hits live!

You can also see the full livestream over on the Yogscast Twitch Channel!

Be sure to drop by next week when we’ll be talking about one of the most anticipated changes that is coming in the 0.7.0 release!

Until next time Underlord,

– WFTO Team

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