The Dynamic Update: Jack Conte music and Dynamic Resolution Rendering
Audioshield Patch Notes — December 6, 2017
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
This update brings dynamic resolution, performance optimizations, and new music!
Dynamic Resolution
Audioshield now automatically scales its resolution up or down to keep quality as high as possible while maintaining framerate. For most of you, this means the game will now automatically render in a higher resolution and text will be much easier to read.
It also means that Audioshield can now scale down to lower GPUs. The lowest I've tested so far was a 1050ti and that ran great. Even lower should be possible (especially if you set the in-game quality setting to "Low").
Thanks to Valve for publicly releasing The Lab renderer. Their dynamic resolution code was the basis for this.
New Music
Two new songs from Jack Conte, "Gulf" and "Push", have been added to the built-in Recommended list. These are two favorites of mine and it's awesome to have them in the game - Enjoy!
Enhanced Graphics and Optimization
Graphics have been updated with a new effect on the sidewalls in the Neon Stadium skin. The Horizon skin got new orbs that are much easier to see, no matter what video is playing in the background. The Stage Dive skin was optimized and now loads faster. The amount of collision sparks was increased everywhere.
Audioshield's rendering performance has undergone overall optimization as well. Running with the new higher resolution and the new effects now takes about the same amount of GPU time as the previous build of the game without those features.
Launch Options
By the way, there's several launch options you can feed to Audioshield. Look for "SET LAUNCH OPTIONS" in the game's steam properties to use these. They're mostly for making the game easier to use as a group or arcade experience:
+samplesongsonly (Only offer the Recommended songs in the song browser.)
+localscorepriority (Ask for the player's local scoreboard name at startup and only show local scores on leaderboards.)
+songchoiceonly (Skip past selecting shield and skin.)
+gameviewspectator (Show a smooth-cam view on the desktop during gameplay. This does cost some performance.)
+skippostridescoreboard (Don't show your score summary when the song ends, just return right to the song browser.)
+disablemodsecuritysandbox (Give Lua mod scripts the power to do pretty much whatever they want on your computer.)
+adaptivequalitydebug (Show the current dynamic resolution being used)
-show-screen-selector (Choose graphics quality level before launching the game.)
-logFile somefilename.txt (Output a log file to the game's install folder.)
+disableadaptivequality (turn off dynamic resolution scaling)
+disabledamageeffect (disable the color effect shown for each miss)
+disableposteffects (turn off the bloom/blur effect on color objects)
Have fun everyone!
Edit: 12.8.2017 --> post-update update
- Further optimized performance. It now renders above default resolution on a 1050ti
- Now drops sidewall effects on the stadium skin to keep resolution up (if needed).
- Made the miss effect more subtle.
- Added two new launch options (see above).
Edit: 12.13.2017
- Possible fix for crash on Windows 7
- Added "+disableposteffects" launch option
Edit: 12.19.2017
- Updated to latest Unity engine (2017.3)
- Disabled adaptive quality on Windows 7