Hello Survivors!
There are some hot topics regarding the recent 0.63 update that are currently resonating in the community, and I wanted to touch upon some of those in more detail. These are some of the most common issues that were currently seeing reported, and our answers to them:
Item renaming
Those of you playing on the Stress Test branch have probably noticed that we have renamed a large number of items in-game. All of the changes were done after a meticulous consultation with our legal department, and the sole reason why we did this was to avoid any liability in the future. I know some of you have delved into details of it, and I can't answer every single question or doubt you have about specific item names now, but one thing is certain: we need to stay within the law, and while there certainly is space for more creativity in some item names, we need to push forward the changes because of the game localization. We might look into item names again once post 1.0, but nothing can change now.
Hit registration
This issue has multiple causes and patterns to it and it's not a single problem. A bullet can deal no damage in certain situations while still actually be considered a hit at the same time due to how armor and damage interact. The server may then think that there are no bullets to be shot because the state of the weapon (or even state of a magazine, fire mode and more) has been desynced. Often, when we get feedback reports, we are lacking the detail needed to identify what exactly has caused the hit registration problem. Sometimes, people just miss. Other times, we just don't know the events that lead to the registration problem.
Having said that, we have been able to reproduce a number of these issues, and the Experimental build has those fixes applied. We are still tracking at least two more ways to encounter the issue. One has a cause in networking and is more apparent on community servers with increased player numbers (over 60 players). While we want to support higher player counts, this will require further optimizations. The other hit registration issue we're tracking is related to the shotgun, and only happening with that weapon specifically.
Changing key binds in the settings screen
One of the most important modules in any multiplayer game besides the player controller is the input module of our engine. For the better part of this year, we've worked on delivering a new, reworked input module. We needed something that's easily moddable, scriptable and most importantly, something that opens up more possibilities than the old system. This transition had us cut the UI for key-binds because the new UI wasn't compatible with the old input module, and now, when we actually do use the new input module already, we're waiting for the UI to be fully connected to it.
While regrettable, it was a decision that had to be made, and we simply had to push the changes even without full UI support, as the input module is a necessary component for other changes in the game. That said, our goal is to deliver the UI for key-binds as soon as possible - right now, this is blocked by the work on the server browser, and as soon as we've got that part of UI sorted, we'll move right onto key-binds.
In the meantime, and I'm not saying its something I'm particularly happy about, you can use the configuration file where the key-binds are stored - we'll try to help you explain how to work with that on the forums.
Bloom post process effect tweaking
This is certainly one of the hot topics. While we agree that the game has some lighting issues, these are not caused by bloom, but by the simulation of exposure in the human eye and effects associated with it. In fact, we are using very little bloom and it has been significantly decreased over the course of development. The issue we believe is described by many of you is on our radar, and once we have a good solution we will definitely do something about it.
FPS drops
It has been some time since the new renderer has been implemented. It seems we are encountering some FPS issues again and I just want to reassure you these have always been our top priority. If you are affected by these, I recommend you to reach out to us through the Feedback Tracker with details of your PC build, drivers version, and operating system to make sure things work as intended.