Greetings, Guardians!
Jacob from Infuse Studio here, I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer! Over the last few months I have been working diligently on completely overhauling certain aspects of how our content is rendered in Spirit of the North 2. I will go into more depth on this in a press release in the coming weeks but for now, here are the patch notes!
Example of new visual quality on all high settings hitting 60fps at 4k 80% render quality! Previously this was completely unattainable and I could only get about 37fps on the launch version of the game, meaning a 75.8621% fps increase on my PC with a RTX 4090. I will go into other hardware scenario's I have tested in my press release.
On Medium tier hardware can expect around a 30-40% increase over the launch version of the game on medium settings and a 13.33% over the previous version.
Lower end hardware gets huge wins with this update as I have added multiple new quality options that can be set for the game run better than ever before. Low end hardware loves the new GI OFF setting FoxTribe.
Note: these are all approximations based on my own testing with the limited amount of hardware that I have on hand. Results may vary especially depending on what settings you are trying to use.
We are now Steam Deck Verified!
Spirit of the North 2 on Steam Deck was pretty unplayable before, now players can expect a pretty solid 30fps!
Patch Notes
Quality of Life
Minimum Spec Pop up, added a popup that will warn the user if their system specs doesn't meet the minimum requirements on PC.
Improved legibility of button icons at lower resolutions
Changed Post Processing so game looks less "washed out"
Optimizations
Full Opaque Nanite Overhaul
New "Off" option for Global Illumination
New "Very Low" options for Post Processing and Reflections
Added Ocean Quality Levels
Lumen scalability optimizations
Hair/Fur rendering optimizations
Better FPS in game menus from Fox Preview optimizations, this now includes consoles
Disabled Various plugins to save on runtime costs
Volumetric Cloud Fog is no longer active on Medium Sky Quality saving rendering cost
Rain Drop VFX improved
Steam Deck Device Profile added, now sets correct settings when first launching on steam deck targeting 30fps.
Removed Custom Depth Pass and reworked the effects that relied on it to save performance
Changed MaxScreenPercentage on Performance Quality Mode on consoles from 100% to 80%, this helps minimize memory footprint fluctuations
Changed max roughness to trace for lumen reflections to 0.2 to reduce raytracing overhead when materials are wet
Various VFX scalability added
Content Fixes
Hats no longer receive decals
Cleansed Stag VFX no longer use the geode color the player is using
Vsync option no longer visible when not in fullscreen (it doesn't work in windowed or borderless)
Water VFX no longer emissive (for real this time)
Material values overhauled on foliage like roughness and specular
Basic foliage interaction displacement added
Raven Boss (Memory) Level of detail fixes so he no longer looks like an N64 character at View Distance Quality Low
Shaman Materials reworked, not as washed out now
I wanted to give a huge shoutout to our dedicated community member Amber for helping test and verify all the changes that went into this update. I couldn't have done it without your help!
As always thank you from - Infuse Studio & Silver Lining Interactive
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