Version 0.158 is a pure speed update. We measured where the game loses time and removed the biggest culprits.
What you’ll notice
In a hard fight a frame at laptop speed now takes 20 instead of 33 milliseconds in Orbit, 11 instead of 18 in Sector, and 37 instead of 58 at phone speed. Measured with a throttled processor, around 45 enemies and up to 1,400 effects.
- Long flights stay smooth. A bug in the graphics library kept creating new bookkeeping data, and the game got sluggish with every minute. Since 0.157.1 it is caught.
- Explosions cost much less. Sparks, embers, smoke and fire are drawn in one go instead of one by one.
- “Glow: Off” works. Until now the setting didn’t switch the glow off and saved nothing. Now it is completely gone at “Off”.
- Less load on the graphics card. Glow and comet blur are computed at half resolution, saving a third of the screen area. That helps phones and laptops without a dedicated graphics card most.
What looks minimally different
Smoke now always sits below sparks, and glow and comet tail are a touch softer. In a pixel comparison they differ by 0.1 of 255 brightness levels on average.
All details are in the patch notes.