1 August

Patch 0.39.0

0.39.0 has some great new additions thanks to feedback from the community and some additional engineering help provided during my recent trip out to Microsoft.

There is a ton more coming down the line soon as things are starting to come together in the Procedural Maps, Art dept, and PvP system. If you want to stay up to date with the latest info and updates, make sure to join the QuiVr Discord as I post updates and talk with everyone daily!

Thanks to the help of some fantastic Microsoft engineers, I learned a bit more about shader performance, and more importantly how to measure it. Due to this new knowledge I was able to review some of the existing game shaders and adjust them to strike a better balance between visual quality and performance.



Rocks in QuiVr use a custom shader to apply a high quality 'cover' texture (usually snow, but sand, moss, etc are all possible) over a high quality rock texture in a way that doesn't require massive individual textures to get good quality up close.

Previously this custom shader was based on the Unity Standard Shader, which is a 'realistic' shader that can be used as a base for almost any material (stone, plastic, metal, etc). However, by switching to a Lambert base (which uses diffuse reflection instead of a more realistic approach) we can get similar results with less than half of the math operations per frame, per rock, which is a massive performance improvement.

Similarly, the ground shader previously used was also based on the Standard shader and had a detailed normal map. However, you're very rarely up close to the ground, so I've switched it to a diffuse only map which changed it from 192 math instructions to only 43.

I'll be continuing to look through the existing shaders to see if I can squeeze out some more performance while retaining the visual fidelity of the game.



The PvP Testing section of the game has now been merged into the main branch thanks to some suggestions by the community. Due to the fact that it is a completely optional experience to the core gameplay loop, I've enabled the button in the default branch since that's pretty much what Early Access is for.

Please Note: The PvP Matchmaking and game system is very much still in development and may not work correctly, much less be a balanced experience. I'm currently looking for feedback on bugs/crashes related to the PvP experience (though I'm always happy to take suggestions on improvements), so keep that in mind if you decide to try it out!

The Queue is passive, so just hit the button and when a match is found you'll be notified and (if you don't cancel the request) removed from whatever you're currently doing to join the 1v1 PvP game (additional player modes will be added later).

• Fixed Multiplayer enemies running backwards
  
• Attempted fix for teleporter enemy attacking before reaching gate
  
• Duplicate resource name fixed
  
• Fixed smoker not working on lowest quality setting
  
• Heal achievements reduced [250, 500, 1000]
  
• Rapid Fire requirement reduced to 8 (down from 12)
  
• Improved hitbox for armored enemy (normal and elite)

Thanks as always for your continued feedback and support!

25 July

Dev Update - Week of 7/26/2017

As is sometimes the case, it is difficulty to keep up with weekly updates while away from my main development computer.

This week I'm in Seattle, working with Microsoft on some really cool stuff that I'll be able to share more about very soon (part of which is major optimizations to the game systems since they have some experts on hand!), as well as visiting with Valve for a bit which I'm super excited for!

So, while I'm still very hard at work on improving the game, there won't be a patch this week.

However, if you missed it (maybe because you're not part of the Official QuiVr Discord where I post many more updates about the other branches in progress), there is a new branch where you can try out the PvP system I'm working on ;)