Greetings! The first big Quality of Life patch is here. This update brings in a lot of improvements to the game both in terms of optimization, new layers, new assets & graphical exploit fixes. We will dive down into the changes in depth below. As per usual changelog can be found at the bottom. [h3]Graphics Settings & Exploits - PLEASE READ[/h3] [u][b]PLEASE READ[/b][/u] [i]Due to changes in restrictions to graphics settings, we encourage all users to reset their user cache in order to avoid conflicts with the new settings. In particular, those who play on LOW settings. You can reset your user cache by pressing the temporary reset user cache button on your main menu or by going to Settings -> Game tab and pressing the "Reset User Cache button" in the lower right corner. Additionally, you can see this article for more info: [url=https://offworldindustries.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052332231-How-to-clear-your-user-cache]https://offworldindustries.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052332231-How-to-clear-your-user-cache[/url] If you still have issues, please submit a ticket with our support via the link above.[/i] Now onto the actual news surrounding this. As with any multiplayer game, a few groups of people will try to find ways to circumvent settings in order to gain a tactical benefit, this is obviously a problem for those who play fair and by the rules. Now, this particular issue has two primary sides that we need to take into account when we balance graphics settings. In one group we have the players who have hardware that just cannot perform and they require these measure in order to play, on the other hand, we have the players who purposefully lower the graphical fidelity of their game to get an edge in combat. We want to punish the latter while avoiding influencing the former too much and that is the balance we have been working on striking. So this patch will bring along some updates to detections that prevent players from using what we call ".ini exploits" which is players editing a .ini file with Unreal Engine render settings in order to alter the visuals of the game beyond what you can normally achieve with the in-game settings menu, This is stuff like disabling the fog, lowering render distances of foliage and objects amongst others. We have been working through this list with our QA and our publisher to find the most troublesome configurations and they have been locked down so that any player that tries to use them will be unable to play the game until they revert the changes to our defined limits. The second change is the in-game graphics menu. Here we have made a couple of changes that primarily concern the Shadows. It is no longer possible to turn off Shadows entirely, in the past the LOW Shadows settings would turn off shadows, this no longer happens. Additionally, we have removed the Distance Field Shadows checkbox and integrated it within the Shadows Quality options. Distance Field Shadows will now be turned on when you select High & Epic Shadows Quality. We have also removed the Eye Adaption setting as it isn't really used. [h3]Optimization, New Tree Trunks, Dinant Improvements & Layers[/h3] The next item on the list regards Optimization, and we have been working through many of our assets over the last month in order to lower the amount of memory used by the game. We will obviously continue improving both assets and code in order to get as much performance as we can out of the game. But even with these optimizations, we have to realize that Post Scriptum is a very big game with a lot of underlying code running that eats up performance, we hope to upgrade our game engine further in the future to allow for more performance gains. Now let us talk about Dinant. We have taken a good look at this map since it is one of the worst maps for vehicle traverse. For Dinant we have done a couple of things, we have created some new roads to make traverse a bit easier, particularly in the city & the hilly terrain in the north of the map. We have also improved the culling so that buildings don't disappear at higher distances, this is obviously ongoing and may have a negative performance impact, but we will monitor this closely and make adjustments where needed. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31533869/6f71aaef61c9cb5fb5ffbdca6011d5b1cc07708f.png[/img] [i](Added a new road going north from the German main to the northeast of the map.)[/i] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31533869/04c3133f56e43f19dead110c15fc73957330081a.png[/img] [i](We decluttered the main road to make vehicle traverse a little bit easier while retaining enough cover for infantry.)[/i] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31533869/bbcf2a43d06c82c64d4f5108ed7e67129c9ca362.png[/img] [i](This new route on the west side of Dinant will connect you with the road along the northwest bank. In the past vehicles had to drive over the railway to get here.)[/i] We have also spent some time on making improvements in our foliage, this includes optimization, but also the addition of some new tree trunks for most of our tree assets, in the past we didn't have any proper bases for trees and it is very noticeable. With these new bases, the foliage and environment will feel much more believable. As we have made changes to most of our foliage, you may see some oddities with tree bases sticking out of the ground further than they should and we encourage you to report these bugs to us via our [url=https://discord.gg/postscriptum]discord[/url]. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31533869/5757add357d26e12573a8ba436afd68c809ebd31.jpg[/img] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31533869/89379aa0f35fc95b74bad09fbe2d494149726336.jpg[/img] Lastly, we have added a couple of new layers to Chapter 1, we are aware that the gameplay can become very stale when there are no new layers to play on and we are actively working towards creating more varied and refreshing layers to play on. [h3]Localization[/h3] As the last announcement, we have now added updated localization for the game, we have added the following Languages: - German - French - Spanish - Italian - Brazillian Portuguese - Russian We are still missing the Chinese in both Simplified and Traditional, both of which will come a little bit later. These localizations couldn't have been done without our Community Localization team, so huge thanks to them. Should you find any issues with localization, we highly encourage you to report them on our [url=https://discord.gg/postscriptum]discord[/url]. [h3]Changelog v2.1.1231.838[/h3] [b]Optimization & Performance[/b] [list][*]Made several fixes to stop the exploitation of the .ini config files. [*] Changed so that shadows can no longer be disabled using the LOW Shadow Quality setting in the Graphics menu. [*] Distance Shadows are now automatically enabled when using High & Epic Shadow Quality. [*] Removed Eye Adaption checkbox. [*] Dinant culling fixes to help prevent long-range sniping behind culled objects. [*] Tree optimization + Texture mipmaps + lod values tweaked [*] Added UCX collision to new Oak & Norway trees. [*] Optimized most of our foliage assets. [*] Added new Norway spruce trees asset, materials and textures. [*] Added some new Oak trees textures and materials. [*] Added some brand new tree stump meshes and materials. [*] Optimized a lot of general game textures. [*] Optimized a lot of Plan Jaune textures. [*] Optimized a lot of Day Of Days textures. [/list] [b]Bugfixes[/b] [list][*] Fixed missing H35 Wreck. [*] Fallschirmjager gear fix (to be tested) [*] Fixed UCX Collision for Plan Jaune mudroad. [*] Fixed Cliff spline not looping properly. [*] Fixed TraceViewToggle command. [*] Fixed TraceViewToggle text being too small. [*] Fixed LODs for SM_factory_small_Long. [*] Fixed MAS-36 Materials LOD. [*] Fixed LOD for US Syringe. [*] Fixed US Tank Crews in Chapter 3 using Chapter 1 equipment. [*] Fixed TraceViewToggle console commands & added additional debugging information. [*] Fixed an exploit that allowed players to spawn on enemy spawn points. [*] Fixed scrambled textures an Oosterbeek barn asset. [*] Added missing kits to Fallschirmjäger mesh. [/list] [b]Geo & Layer[/b] [list][*] Removed ambience layer from Geo & updated Veghel to add Van Lieshout Boerderij (Leroy's Grandparents farm) [*] Wolfheze Geo raised trees + new lod values [*] Fixed some geo issues on Dinant. [*] Fixed various geo issues on Heelsum. [*] Fixed broken collision on Doorwerth Castle. [*] Improved Dinant Geo for vehicle travel + updated minimap. [*] Fixed some broken trench collision on St Mere Eglise. [*] Fixed broken collision on Tobruk Bunker in Utah. [*] Fixed some Carentan Geo issues. [*] Fixed Arnhem Geo causing vehicle to explode in a particular trench. [*] Fixed Arnhem Geo issues allowing players to see through textures inside some buildings. [*] Added Offensive Driel S06 & S07, Oosterbeek S06 & Heelsum S06. [*] Fixed Driel S06 & S07, Oosterbeek S06 wrong cap ownership. Fixed Heelsum lighting layer not set to always loaded. [*] Fixed some floating boxes in Stonne Geo. [*] Added a picture frame with Van Lieshout Boerderij. [/list] [b]Localization[/b] [list] [*] Added updated Localization for German, French, Spanish, Italian, Brazillian Portuguese, Russian [*] Set GameMode Names as non-localized.[/list] [b]Known Issues[/b] [list] [*] It is currently possible to still turn off shadows under certain circumstances. [*] The text overlay and reset cache button on the main menu doesn't disappear when entering the tutorial page.[/list] Sincerely, [b]Periscope Games[/b] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31533869/d0406d44e053f7a14d6b82372b4635ba3b4f071e.png[/img] [url=https://discord.gg/postscriptum][h2]JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON DISCORD[/h2][/url] [url=https://discord.gg/postscriptum][img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//31533869/56f7cdc6e90bafeb2232475613ab5e4e878d5ea1.png[/img][/url] You can find our Official Community Resource Google Drive with all layer information, ticket costs, spawn commands and more here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Bc0iNcgZP_wYzKQIuLAWTnkv3SwVCbCL?usp=sharing