3.20.17.0 Update Notes

This update aims to address the feedback following the patches to the HUD update last week.

One of the major points was text legibility. In large part because the softer shadows could make it appear blurry. The shadowing has been revised, and much of the UI has been adjusted to only use them where necessary, for example on colored text and against colorful backdrops where the contrast is needed. Otherwise menus have been reworked to contrast with the text without shadows, and colored text usage has been reduced in favor of other indicators like disabling buttons.

Performance was another big concern, so there have been a lot of optimizations to the UIs that were causing hitches. As an example opening a storage locker with hundreds of items in IMGUI could spawn all of the UIs in a single frame because there was no overhead, whereas with uGUI there is a lot of setup required - to mitigate this there are a certain number of item UIs created per frame now, and all of the components needed (e.g. images, text, buttons) are recycled between usage (pooled) to reduce the setup time - this extends to all the UIs in the game.





Throughout the winter holidays each level is sporting some seasonal decorations. In particular PEI is temporarily covered in snow. Gifts containing high-tier weaponry can be found under christmas trees on official maps, and the NPCs have donned their santa hats.


Added:

• Per-storage horizontal inventory scrollbar.
  
• Light theme only color preference for rarity backdrops.
  
• Option for custom text shadow color.
  
• Accepted a few new skins from the curated workshop.

Changed:

• Revised text coloring and contrast throughout UI.
  
• Improved scaling of inventory grid sprites.
  
• Optimized creating and destroying basic UI elements by pooling them.
  
• Optimized initialization of UI components before reparenting them.
  
• Improved performance opening large storage by time-slicing the item UI creation.
  
• Improved nearby inventory performance by time-slicing the refresh.
  
• Text chat entry field uses color preference rather than admin/gold colors.
  
• Loading screen bar uses foreground color preference rather than difficulty color.

Fixed:

• Hide menus off-screen for a single frame when they are enabled to hide uGUI activation artifacts.
  
• Second line of Chinese text in chat being truncated.
  
• Right-clicking outside item popup box now closes the popup.
  
• Several straggling hotkeys triggering while typing in text fields.
  
• Plugin UIs visible while finishing loading.
  
• Pooled UI list using cached viewport height causing a hitch after big data change.
  
• Exception in UI when picking up destroyed items.
  
• Hitch after death caused by skills menu refresh.
  
• Exception updating item icon after item was destroyed.
  
• Potential negative explosion damage multiplier.
  
• Right-click highlight for buttons.
  
• Removing entries from spawn tables editor.
  
• Vertical offset of drowning status icon.
  
• Buildable attachment to train carriages.
  
• Pressing escape to cancel pending chat message.
  
• Swapping items of different slot types within grid.