Patch Notes: A faster way into the world, smooth trading, no shader or snow stutter, and the Overworld to the horizon
Overworld
- The Overworld now shows the land out to the horizon. The haze over sunny and cloudy skies used to close a few kilometres out, leaving one pale wash. It now thins out to where the land meets the sky, and you can tilt the camera up to look along it (down to 15 degrees, from 30).
- Rain, snow, fog and sandstorms still close in around you, as before.
- Clouds' shadows now carry on out to the far hills, with no straight edge where they used to stop.
- You can click on land you can see in the distance to travel there. Before, distant land answered "That lies beyond what you can see from here."
- While nearby land is still loading, distant hills fill the gap instead of open sky.
Performance
- Loading into the world does less work. The longest freeze while the world is built is about half as long, and the first moments in the world freeze less often: the map of Tamriel is fitted in a fraction of the time, and the roads' travellers are planned faster, thanks to joaomdb3's TRIP-PICKS (#854), carried here.
- Trading with a large inventory is smooth. A shop or a trade with another player now opens with its item pictures in place, instead of rebuilding the window once per picture for up to minutes. A click on an item answers in about 50 ms where it took up to 0.8 s, and buying or selling a piece takes about 0.1 s where it took up to 3 s. Long lists keep their place while you scroll, whatever the height of each row.
- No more freezes while shaders compile. Oblivion Gates (the gate's fire, its veil, the court's telegraphs, blows, crystals and portal), the Elite Gates' fight, the glint on gathering nodes, the sea's effects, spell impacts and the snow on the ground now compile in the background. Before, the game froze for each one, for seconds on some graphics cards. Each effect appears a moment later instead. On most graphics cards, the gate and node effects now start compiling while you load in.
- The weather's snow no longer eats your frame rate. While the snow on the ground was catching up with the weather (after arriving somewhere, or travelling on), it cost about 18 ms a frame and spiked past 60 ms. It now keeps to its 3 ms, and the snowline settles in over a few seconds instead.
- Nothing else you see changes: every town, coast, traveller, trade row, price and snowline stands exactly where it did.
What's Changed
- Perf pass in the real game: #854 TRIP-PICKS, BOOT-FREEZE, TRADE-VIRT, SHADER-STALL, SNOW-BUDGET, OW-HORIZON by @Lattymoy in #1078
- TRIP-PICKS: a traveller's road choices, the same answer for less (~3.4 s of the freeze after entering the world) by @joaomdb3 in #854
Full Changelog: app-v0.1.10393...app-v0.1.10418