xREL.v3

Update 5:
~~~~~~~~~

- fixed some reported crashes
- improved performance on AMD processors during heartbeat/flashbang effects
- reduced range for soldiers in order to prevent them from shooting outside of the screen


Since we're adding tons of new options in this patch, we've decided to explain what these are. I've allowed myself to quote UE4 documentation on some of those.

Gameplay tab:
Crosshair scale - added 3rd option that modifies the crosshair so you have more ways to play with it to make it more visible. Changing the icon, color and scale will most certainly help you fit it to your needs.

Advanced Graphics tab:
Detail Mode - On lower settings cuts out certain objects and effects that are more expensive.

Lens Flares - Controls the quality. When set to LOW the effect is not used and turned off. "The Lens Flare effect is an image-based technique that simulates the scattering of light when viewing bright objects due to imperfections in camera lenses."

Decals - On lower settings decals exist in the world shorter. Decals are mainly blood effects on floors and walls, gunshot holes and explosions on ground.

Destruction system - On LOW you can destroy only few physics meshes that affect the gameplay. On high it uses all the physics we allow. Helps mainly when you destroy half the city and it starts going slower and slower.

Frame rate cap - we've received many requests about several features, this is one of them. Caps the frame rate to the value specified. Keep in mind that if you have VSync enabled and your refresh rate is lower than the cap requested, VSync will dominate the setting.

Screen percentage - a technique that can be used both to improve performance or increase the visual quality. Default is 100. The number specifies at what % should the scene be actually rendered within the engine. Afterwards it is scaled to the actual resolution that you set. Choosing 50% with resolution 1920x1080 means that the scene will be rendered at 960x540 and then upscaled. Will look worse, might work better for your configuration, worth checking. If set to 200 in my example, it means that the actual render resolution will be 3840x2160 and then scaled down resulting in much better looks. 400 (maximum) requires very very high end GPU to run at any decent frame. We've decided to add it as a possible optimization, but since the very same variable can improve quality, you can play with it as well. Will work great for very high quality screens

V-Sync - there were issues with this settings, we've fixed those we could find, let us know if it still causes problems. If so, attach dxdiag so we can dig deeper.

Ambient Occlusion - "effect that approximates the attenuation of light due to occlusion." We're noticed that this is one of the effects that causes massive ATI cards performance drops, so here it is for you to try.

Global Illumination - real-time, dynamic indirect lighting technique. This simulates the sun light actually bouncing off surfaces and coming through the opened doors, through windows and so on. In some places the change when disabling this effect will be barely noticeable (outdoors), but huge part of our scene lighting depends on that effect (since you can destroy all the map, the light has to update accordingly). We're allowing you to disable it to improve performance. It is heavy on all configurations, but to a higher degree on ATI/AMD setups.

Film grain - allows you to disable the movie film grain effect on the camera. You requested it, so here you got it.

Chromatic aberration - "effect that simulates the color shifts in real-world camera lenses. The effect is mostly noticeable near the edges of the image." There were several requests to get rid of it, so now you can simply turn it off.


We do realize that solution 'turn off option X if using ATI card' is far from ideal to say the least, but that is what we can do in such a short amount of time. You may switch 1 option off and get FPS boost big enough to play it with no issues. Your choice. We'll keep digging, but can't make any promises whether we find something or not.

Update 4:
~~~~~~~~~

- Fixed some of the reported crashes.
- Previously disabled sound mixers in patch 3 are now enabled.

We are still investigating what is the problem with the game when the player gets hit by flashbang, has low health or talks after execution
Updating drivers didn't solve the problem. From the data gathered so far, I can tell that it is somehow related to AMD processors:

AMD A10-5757M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics (4 CPUs), ~2.5GHz
AMD Athlon(tm) X4 750K Quad Core Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
AMD FX(tm)-4100 Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.6GHz
AMD FX-8320E Eight-Core Processor (8 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor (8 CPUs), ~4.0GHz
AMD FX(tm)-8120 Eight-Core Processor (8 CPUs), ~3.1GHz


And as a temporary workaround We've prepared another command-line switches:
- DISABLESOUNDMIXERS
- DISABLEREVERBEFFECT


If You want to use them:
1) Find Hatred in your the Steam game library
2) Click RMB and open properties
3) In the General tab, click on "SET LAUNCH OPTIONS..."
4) Paste there: -DISABLESOUNDMIXERS -DISABLEREVERBEFFECT

Let us know if this fixes game stuttering during described situations.


- Adjusted scaling in very high resolutions (21:9) or very low resolutions(640x480) for in game messages (pick-up notification, respawn point notification etc)
- Crouch exploit should be fixed

Update 3:
~~~~~~~~~

- completely disabled sound mixers, flashbang, talking after execution or low health should not affect performance anymore, this will be enabled in the future when We will gather enough data to fix it properly.

- improved performance on if Destruction Details is set to low.
- fixed some crashes.
- fixed UI aspect ratio issues for menu screens with the exception of in game HUD and respawn point acquired message, vehicle tutorials, item pickup message.
We will fix rest of problems with UI scaling in the near future.

- fixed the issue where side quest "Blow up the statue" on level 6 - Army Base could not be. completed with destruction settings set to low.
- fixed some problems with reverting at game start shadow settings if they were settings to low.
- Time Trial achievement should be fixed.
- fixed some minor lockits typos(GE,IT).


Note:

If the game is constantly crashing without displaying DC logo movie or at the end of the DC logo, try delete:
"YOUR STEAM INSTALLATION DIRECTORY\steamapps\common\Hatred\Hatred\Content\Movies\Default_Startup.mp4"

Update 1 & 2:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- changelog lost on the forum