Squad Release: Alpha Version 8

[Asid]

Release: Alpha Version 8

The hype train has arrived! A monthly recap and Version 8 in one go!



Alpha Version 8 is now released.

After hitting one of Squads biggest milestones with the introduction of vehicles in Alpha Version 7, we could finally focus on doing an optimization pass on the core systems now that all the underlying wires are connected. This was a team wide effort, with a lot of micro-optimizations quickly building up to a level of performance that the team is proud to present to the players.

That is not the whole story though! We added a few treats to add more spice to the current gameplay and quite a few quality of life improvements alongside the main focus which was optimization.As more content and features are added, we're able to better pace the game to where we eventually want to go.

These changes have to be implemented over time so the player base has a chance to adjust and adapt. This has been the trend for for the entire life cycle of Squad, and this patch is no different. We are steadily slowing things down so there is more time to breathe and those engagements feel more significant.

Version 8 is now available via Steam and below is a full changelog.


Major Changes

Optimization Pass

We've done a major optimization pass over almost every single system in Squad. We've improved collision and physics performance, graphical and GPU performance, multithreaded major pieces of the game such as animations and vehicle updates, and many more performance improvements.

Additionally, Effects have had a wholesale overhaul after some detailed profiling on both Intel and AMD machines. Optimization of shader implementations and a detailed pass over configs and best practices gave us a 10x improvement in performance of effects. This should greatly improve reliability of frame rate in large firefights. There is still a bit of work to do but the results we've seen are already worth the effort.

As always, we will continue to improve the performance and optimize the game with every patch.

New Vehicle Variants and Assets




Full changelog Click here