Together with the release of Onward on the Quest we’ve pushed out a massive patch (v1.8) for PCVR platforms such as Steam and the Oculus Rift.
Version 1.8 upgrades Onward to fully utilize Unity 2019 and the Universal Rendering Pipeline that is included with it, which has allowed us to optimize the game’s performance and prepares us to expand upon the game in the future. Because the game now uses Unity addressables it only loads assets that are being used, drastically reducing memory usage and game load times. Adding to the performance improvements is the fact that Onward now directly compiles to native code.
These changes are great, but do mean that we’ve had to temporarily remove a number of maps: Turbine, Abandoned, Snowpeak and Jungle will return in a patch that should come soon. It also means that custom maps made for older versions of Onward will no longer launch, and so we’ve temporarily removed access to the Workshop until we can work with map authors to upgrade their maps for this new update, and the Unity rendering pipeline. They too will return in an upcoming patch.
On the graphics front we’ve added a couple of new options for players who wish to push the graphical fidelity further: you can now enable bloom and simulated depth of field. Furthermore, we’ve improved the lighting in various areas of the game, and implemented dynamic lighting effects. Many more improvements can be found in the full patch notes below.
We’ve also upgraded the audio assets in the game: each weapon has new audio associated with it, and features different sound depending on whether it’s used indoors or outdoors, whether it’s close or distant, and whether or not it’s silenced.
Gameplay wise we’ve made a number of noticeable changes. To name a few of the more important changes: the default length of a match round in Onward’s core game modes has been reduced by a minute to increase the overall pace of matches, sprinting with the shield out has been disabled, and the shotguns have been buffed and their pellet spread slightly reduced.
The AI has seen some major changes as well: we’ve given bots more consistent loadouts, and we’ve increased the performance of the AI to allow for up to 128 bots to spawn in a Hunt. Make sure you spend your ammo wisely..!
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