I bet you didn't expect an Ys IX performance patch!
Some background: while working on the upcoming release of Trails from Zero, and specifically looking to keep it at a solid 60 FPS on all maps on the Nintendo Switch, I implemented an optimization which I thought might also be helpful for Ys IX.
So I ported it over, and depending on the hardware and in-game scenario, some testers saw improvements of 25% in CPU limited scenarios. As such, it seems worth releasing publicly. I've also updated the performance chart from the original release with this new version:
Note that this improvement requires Direct3D feature level 11_1. If you are using some very old hardware or operating system version which does not support this, the game will automatically fall back to the previous rendering path.
We also included a few other minor changes in this update. Here are the full patch notes:
- Improved CPU-bound performance. The degree to which you will notice this depends on the specific in-game scene, settings, and your hardware GPU/CPU balance.
- Adjust the refresh rate selection algorithm to more reliably pick the available refresh-rate closest to the one desired.
- The game executables are now signed. This should hopefully reduce the antivirus false positives that sometimes pop up for some players.
- Fixed the English item description of the Holy Sword's Hilt accessory to correctly reflect its capabilities.
While we do not expect this patch to introduce any regressions, with the great variety of hardware and software configurations available on PC this is not always guaranteed in all circumstances. As such, you can return to previous versions of the game by selecting any of the public “version_*” branches on Steam.
- Peter "Durante" Thoman, CTO, PH3
