Hey peeps, 

It’s time for another update! This time around we’ve decided to take a crack at the one aspect of the game on which we’ve received the most feedback: Project Shoreline’s performance.

As we mentioned in our first devlog, Project Shoreline was put together in the relatively short time span of 6 weeks and we therefore didn’t really have the time nor resources to ensure that Project Shoreline ran as smoothly on lower-end hardware as we wanted.

We’ve made various changes that we hope make it possible for more people to play the game, just look at this FPS increase! 😁

FPS in Project Shoreline's start area before and after optimization, respectively.
Running on an Nvidia GTX 970.

Our main method of optimization has been via occlusion culling. In previous builds, Unity would render anything within the camera frame regardless of whether it was being visually blocked or not. Making sure that hidden objects don't get rendered heavily increased the performance in most areas of the game while compromising minimally on its visual fidelity.  We've also changed some rendering and shadow settings that were disproportionally expensive. 

There are still things to tweak such as swapping out assets that are ill-optimized for draw calls and exposing graphics settings to the player that we hope to get out at some point, but for now, we present Project Shoreline's third update changelog below.

Hope you enjoy!
- Valli

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Patch Notes

• Implemented occlusion culling 
  • Unity’s built-in occlusion culling has worked out somewhat inconsistently for us, so make sure to report any weird/incorrect occlusion artefacts!
• Shadows
  • A lot of shadow casters were removed, which had a minimal effect on the graphical fidelity of Project Shoreline.
• Added ability to control water pistol firing mode in settings
  • Option between Toggle, Hold, or Dynamic (long press to hold, quick press to toggle).
  • Thanks to Itch user Ginpu, who posted that idea in our comments!
• Fixed saving inconsistencies
  • Previously, clicking New Game after having left the main game in the Main Menu would not reset the save.
  • The game should now always save when exiting the game (to the Main Menu or to the Desktop).
• Fixed controller camera input movement being dependent on the game’s framerate
  • Can’t believe we never caught that.
• Twitchy legs 
  • Muri no longer has restless legs!