Patch #29: Optimizations, Optimizations, & More FPS!

Patch #29

Whiskerwood is getting faster!

Now several weeks now since the big nautical update: we've fixed a ton of nautical bugs and balances. So instead players have grown their colonies and hit our eternal enemy: performance!

You might remember a number of patches back we had a series of optimization centric patches..... Well, good news is here! We're calling this patch the king of optimization patches!

The exact performance impact varies depending on save size, but for the largest save files: FPS IS DOUBLED!

We tested both a reasonable 100 Whiskerwood save file and the current largest reported save file of 3,400 Whiskers. The smallest save files achieved a respectivableextra 16% FPS, but those often already were 60+ fps. Instead the biggest improvements are on the larger save files!

The big take away: Now you can grow your colony 2x as big before hitting the same FPS! If in the past you slowed down growth to stay at playable FPS, now is the time to step on the gas! Please grow your colony larger!

Daniel

PS: One super critical point about mods. We upgraded from UE5.6 to UE5.8, this means all mods need to be updated. If you have any unupdated mods installed your game might not start or it might crash. They need the new compatibility version noted in their .uplugin. If you have a mod there are two choices to update, one is use the newly upgraded Modkit for ue5.8. The other is to use a newly developed "automatic upgrader", the link for that should be on the modder discord channel.

Changelog

v0.7.208 Patch #29

Features

• Upgrade Unreal Engine to version 5.8 pulling in various crash fixes and improved performance on large save files
• Add whole colony instancing of meshes across buildings for improved render speed and rapid slice switching
• Ships now avoid known pirate islands in their pathing, unless they are tasked with attacking ships or towers, or their goal is within range of a pirate island.
• All pipes and valves can now be built underwater

Optimization

• Optimize lightning strikes. Now they no longer cast a shadow, avoiding the jitter when the primitives were united twice per frame each flash
• Optimize large building count save files by eliding a physics internal cache structure and instead calculating unchached
• Optimize generation of nautical islands, reducing load time by 1.5 seconds on all map sizes
• Optimize nautical ship plan by delaying spline rebuild until required
• Optimize pollution computation on heavily polluted maps by marking stable cells and skipping follow on computation
• Optimize away spiky frame times caused by long distance food requests. Rate limit such requests to one per frame to avoid pile ups and bad frames.
• Optimize warehouse lighting, fix recalculation by subtle motion which compounded by warehouse count
• Optimize pollution blockage computation
• Optimize crop mesh updates to reduce bounds rewalks
• Optimize scaffold by stopping to from triggering a full bounds rebuild
• Optimize belt item movement by 25% by front loading memory safety checks
• Optimize pollution computation by caching the neighborhood of simulated cells
• Optimize pollution visualization by batching 3D texture updates
• Parallelize pollution propagation logic
• Optimize pollution computation by improving how simulated cells are queued and merged

Gameplay

• Make Armed Barque construction recipe require 14 cannons by 12 to now match the simulated ship's count
• Supply ships again show their resources on deck during travel instead of only while docked.(Includes player Merchant Barge)
• Ships scuttled at a storage dock will recover contents of ship cargo hold
• Building support scaffolds can be hidden in settings
• Warehouse stockpile visuals can be hidden in settings

UI

• Make shift/ctrl/alt tax ship modifiers manipulate larger increments
• Problem indicators over Whiskers no longer linger on dock once boarding a ship.

Bugs

• Fix completing Act II not clearing on-offer pirate and claw radiant quests
• Fix bombard action preview leaking pirate island information
• Fix ships claiming it to be starving when they are fleeing home due to food stocks
• Fix belt sorters being able to stack endless amounts of resources if output is backed up.
• Fix distorted Whisker models in certain paused situations
• Fix Storage dock reporting erroneous storage values on UI.
• Fix approval cost not being charged when sending ship out to sea.
• Fix some cases of minecarts getting stuck or having inconsistent acceleration.
• Fix Schools not letting hungry whiskers out during the day.
• Fix Heating Stove not casting a shadow
• Fix save files not saving progress of sailor and officer training

Crash Fixes

• Fix a crash on load if various hotkeys were held during the load process
• Fix dlss causing crash on non-nvidia GPUs

Mod API

• Ensure LaunchURL is locked down to prevent mod bugs
• Make mod loader check uplugin engine version to avoid loading outdated mods which would cause crashes

Acknowledgements

• Buckminsterfullerene for maintaining and updating the modkit to ue5.8
• Pierrekin for developing the automatic mod updater

Steam Reviews

We'd really appreciate it if you could take a moment to share your thoughts about Whiskerwood in a Steam review. Each review helps us understand what you enjoy, what you'd like to see changed, and what you'd like to see added next. It's a powerful way for you to not only share feedback with us directly but also influence what comes next in a patch. We're carefully reading through all feedback, and your opinion matters!

Official Wiki and Beginner's Guide

We have some fantastic resources to help get you started on your colony building in Whiskerwood. Check out our beginner's guide and our official community wiki page to help get you the answers you need.

We also have a compilation of tips and tricks sourced from the community to help you out right here:

Join the Whiskerwood Community

Become part of the Whiskerwood community. Join us on Discord to chat with other players, share your villages, and see what others are creating. You can also follow updates and discussions on Reddit, stay informed through BlueSky and Twitter.