Task Force Patch Notes — April 29, 2024
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
This update changes the default renderer from DirectX 12 to DirectX 11. We're making this change because after extensive testing we've determined that the game runs smoother this way without really losing too many new UE5 features that we don't necessarily need right now. That's because we value performance much more than graphics, even though we want to make a game that still has good graphics. So until we update from UE5.2 to UE5.4 later this year for some extensive performance updates to DirectX 12 in UE5, we plan to keep everything defaulted to DirectX 11 until then.
If you would like to test the game on DirectX 12 then you can use a special command line parameter via a desktop shortcut in order to launch the game in this graphics mode:
There are still some significant benefits to DirectX 12 along with many optimizations that save developers time so they don't have to optimize their assets as much. So by falling back to DirectX 11 you do lose some of these newer benefits, and it's worth trying out which mode works best for your current system. But again based on all of our tester feedback it appears that DirectX 11 was the preferred renderer a majority of the time, with players noticing very little change in how good the graphics actually looked.
This update also overhauls the entire audio system with some very significant optimizations and reorganizations. We've setup audio priorities for every single audio sample in the game so the engine can know which sounds are most important in order to prioritize them over others to ensure they always play. This is because audio engines are limited by a certain number of channels that they can mix together before the engine has to start choosing which sounds to play and which sounds to drop.
The weapon optimizations are very significant as we're no long spamming the game world with audio and particle components to simulate weapon fire. Instead we now have a much more robust system that properly cycles through preallocated audio and particle effects that repeat in order to simulate the effect of constant firing. This should make the shooting feel a bit snappier as the entire system is now using a lot less resources. We've also added new "dry fire" sounds to the weapons which should trigger when you try to fire the weapon when it's out of ammo.
We've included accelerated paint support for DirectX 12 now as well. This means the DirectX 12 user interface will be just as snappy and quick as the DirectX 11 user interface after our previous update last week. This means accelerated paint mode is being officially rolled out across both rendering platforms and ensures that your web-based user interface (a web browser floating on top of the game engine) works at full 4K 60FPS. That's because the underlying system is now sharing a live texture from the web browser with the game engine, which allows for instant graphics copying rather than the extremely slow process that previously had to go through the CPU. Now that everything stays on the GPU the entire user interface system is extremely quick and snappy compared to before, and will work just as fluidly at 4K resolutions.
This also means we've removed the temporary 90 FPS cap in the game, which was in place to prevent the game engine from overloading the web browser and causing the entire user interface to lock up. Now with accelerated paint we no longer have to worry about the game engine and the web browser fighting for CPU power, and you can run your entire game now with a completely uncapped FPS if you'd like.
We fixed a critical issue with workshop blueprints breaking between map changes. This caused doors and other workshop components to glitch out and have multiple copies on the map, because the "fake" ones that are used in-editor to place around were accidentally showing up in-game when they shouldn't. This also made it difficult to pick up the bomb at times as it would appear that there were two different bombs on the ground. The grenade arc has been fixed up as well and should now no longer appear overly dark or create any kind of "glowing" effect in the game world. We've also disabled all post processes on workshop maps which should prevent custom maps from using undesired features such as motion blur, film grain, vignettes, auto exposure, and more.
This update makes some very significant performance optimizations for Steam Deck. We've completely reconfigured the entire graphics system in UE5 for Steam Deck with automatic detection of the platform and implementing default settings that provide a smooth gameplay experience on Steam Deck. There's even special graphics modes that we're using to provide the best performance possible which would normally not be necessary on PC, so hopefully these updates really help to provide the best experience possible on Steam Deck.
A small issue in the training map was corrected where you'd keep your weapon from the previous round. This should no longer be the case in the training map anymore. Another bug was also addressed regarding the HUD completely freezing. This was not because of any user interface issues, but because of a certain data connection breaking between the server and your game client. However there's still some extensive testing required for us to confirm this issue is indeed fixed, as there might be more to it depending on how testing goes.
The "map" command has been fixed so that it will now look for existing maps in the maplist prior to loading the requested map. This allows the command to maintain the existing round timer and total rounds from the maplist rather than using the default 3 rounds as was previously happening. It's also very smart in that if a map appears on the maplist multiple times but with different game modes, it will actually pick the proper settings from the maplist that match the desired game mode rather than picking the first match in the maplist.
Finally this update overhauls the entire collision and physics of the third-person camera. We've added an entire "smooth gliding" system that prevents the camera from stuttering or glitching out for quick instants, which especially happens when running through doors or underneath other objects. Now the camera will pop forward but slowly slide outwards to create a very subtle effect that allows the player to focus more on their aiming and less on their camera collision.
