Major changes:
- The Vulkan renderer now requires a minimum of Vulkan 1.1. If your driver does not support Vulkan 1.1, it will try to use other renderers available on your platform.
- Fixed a crash on NVIDIA GPUs when running on recent graphics driver versions. NVIDIA's driver is one of the few to actually implement VK_SWAPCHAIN_CREATE_DEFERRED_MEMORY_ALLOCATION_BIT_EXT, and it interferes with older Vulkan layers (Steam overlay, MangoHUD) that were not designed with that behavior in mind.
- Fixed a crash when handling unexpected keyboard inputs.
- Fixed a very long-standing bug (probably since the original Darwinia release!) around world time handling. In a simplified explanation, the world expects to update at 100Hz, but it was actually updating at 90Hz. This caused numerous graphical glitches and strange behavior such as rubber-banding effects.
- Fixed crash when loading shape files with incorrect triangle counts (e.g. from mods).
- AntHills are now more dangerous. They were incorrectly not updating their objectives, so ants would repeatedly go back and forth between the same locations instead of changing targets to attack or pick up spirits.
- Implemented support for SMAA S2x (MSAA 2x + SMAA).
- Save games for mods are now stored in mod-specific subdirectories. This prevents accidentally loading a save game which does not match the loaded mod. Additionally, it is now possible to have multiple user profiles on a per-mod basis. Unfortunately, existing mod save folders must be moved to the new location by hand. For example, if your mod save game is currently named "users/ModName", you should move it to "modusers/ModName/ModName".
- Numerous performance and memory usage improvements across the board.
Minor changes:
- Game controller detection was not behaving properly, causing the game controller help tips interface to flicker frequently.
- Fixed a minor UI glitch on the Steam Deck in the "Reset Location" dialog.
- Reduced Virii entity memory usage by half.
- Flag icons are now much higher resolution.
- Improved startup time on Windows by disabling some SDL features we didn't need.
- Shape explosions now preserve entity velocity.
- Updated contributing libraries.
Compatibility:
- Improved compatibility of the ANGLE Direct3D 11 renderer with older graphics chipsets that support less than FL11_1.
- Now supports Mesa's GL-on-12 and Dozen (Vulkan on D3D12) renderers, if installed.
- Improved handling of DXVK for ANGLE D3D11.
- Fixed wildly incorrect rendering on the Haswell-based 2014 Intel Mac Mini.
Known issues:
- macOS: On MacBook Pro 14"/16" with 120Hz displays (or in fact any Mac with > 60Hz displays) there is stuttering in full screen mode. This is caused by the "Direct-to-Display" feature in Metal, which cannot be opted out of. We have implemented a partial workaround to this problem, but there is still occasional render stuttering. Players can work around this by running the game in Windowed mode, or by running an application that keeps a hidden always-on-top window running (such as Notchmeister). We have an open bug with Apple about this problem and will continue to look for a better solution.
- Windows: Some applications (e.g. ReShade, Bandicam, Overwolf, RivaTuner Statistics Server, etc) may inject Vulkan layers into the game process, even if those applications are simply installed but not running. Some of these layers are known to cause occasional crashes when using the Vulkan renderer. To work around this, either uninstall those applications or use a different renderer in the Screen preferences (OpenGL or Direct3D 11).
- Older graphics drivers may be less reliable and cause crashes. Please update your drivers from your card/chipset vendor's website.
