Stormgate Patch Notes 0.1.2

Hello, everyone. You have successfully summoned the patch notes! 

The Frost Giant development team is working hard on numerous significant initiatives for Stormgate. This includes improving our campaign content, evolving and refining the game’s art and audio, gathering data for an upcoming balance patch, and kicking off limited closed playtesting for our Team Mayhem game mode. As a result, we are renaming this upcoming release to patch 0.1.2, coming October 29, to better reflect its focus on delivering critical performance improvements for a significant number of our players. It also includes refinements to the Co-op Gear system and even includes a spooky holiday login bonus of free cosmetic rewards. We expect to release a 0.1.3 patch in the near future that will include balance changes for competitive 1v1 play. Our 0.2.0 content update is expected later this year. 

Support:

How to Install Patch 0.1.2 on Steam:

• Open Steam
• Click on Library to see your games list
• Click Downloads at the bottom of the Library window
• If the new build does not download automatically, click the Download Now button to manually download the new update

How to report a bug or provide feedback on the latest build: https://playstormgate.com/feedback

Still having trouble? Visit our Stormgate Help Center.

Help us out by leaving a review over on Steam: bit.ly/stormgate 

Build Spotlight: 

Performance Improvements

Smooth performance makes a huge difference to your experience, and our team has been hard at work triaging the performance issues players have been reporting. We are still actively working on performance improvements as we continue down the road to 1.0, and this patch brings several changes that should improve performance for some of you.

First, we've improved some of the issues with DX12 and have identified and addressed several of the major issues impacting performance with DX12. We've seen increases in FPS by up to 50% on some of our hardware configurations in local testing. We recommend players give this a shot and report any persisting issues. (Note: If you are still experiencing issues, you can revert to DX11 by selecting a different launch mode.)

We've also been focused on performance improvements for late-game and lower spec hardware, which have generally been CPU-bound. These optimizations should also help alleviate input lag in many situations.

Our rollback implementation is now also more dynamic. It will not be active if there isn't enough headroom to support it (rollback improved responsiveness at the expense of an extra tax on the CPU).

We'd love to hear if you feel the difference or if you’re still experiencing performance issues. Jump into the game and let us know how it plays now compared to before--any details about your specific experience will help as we continue to work on this aspect of our game. Your feedback is an incredibly helpful contribution to our ongoing efforts to make Stormgate feel great to play.

Improvements to the Co-op Gear System

Gear, in general, is a system that a lot of player’s don’t realize is available to them, but once discovered, changes the whole Co-op experience. With this patch, we aimed to improve the Hero Gear progression system by making it available at lower levels. First off, players can unlock gear slots for all Heroes at level 6 and 11, making gear viable at early progression stages. To round out the gear choices, we’ve added a 6th unlockable piece of gear for each Hero giving players more options to make their Hero unique. In addition, we’ve changed the progression paths of each of our Heroes to incorporate these changes and help make the experience of leveling them up feel more impactful. This is just the start, and there is a lot more on the way from the Co-op side of things. We are listening and plan to continue improving and evolving this mode to make it as fun (and approachable) as possible.

Free Spooky Login Rewards through December 4, 2024

Trick or treat! Log in to Stormgate between October 29, 2024 and December 4, 2024 to collect two frighteningly FREE cosmetic rewards with our undying gratitude for gently tap, tap, tapping at our chamber door on Steam. (Please note that these creepy cosmetics will only be free for a limited time. Both will be available for purchase in the in-game store after December 4.)

What can you expect to see in your goodie bag?

Souls of the Fallen Fog of War Shader - Honor the spirits of the dead and invite them to witness your prowess on the battlefield with this hauntingly beautiful fog of war shader. Please note that this shader provides no tactical benefit to either player. It simply lets you revel in the number of fallen enemies swarming around you. 

Shudderfly Pet - This spectral moth glides through the night upon wings shimmering with ghostly particles. It’s the perfect eerie companion to help welcome your enemies to a gruesome defeat.

Team Colors

Some new options for team color display are now available. Here’s how they work: 

• Standard colors are assigned based on the player slot. So in versus, Player 1 is always blue, Player 2 is always red. And in a 2v2 team game, you might spawn in as the warm color set, or the cool color set.
• Cool vs warm assigns you the cool set of colors, and your enemies the warm set of colors. So in a versus match, each player will see themselves as blue, and the other as red.
• Friend vs Foe colors are designed to help battle readability by making your enemies appear red, regardless of what player slot they’re in. In co-op and team games, there can be multiple enemy players so this unifies their colors to make it easier to identify the bad guys.

Patch Notes

Performance

• DX12 is now the default launch mode for hardware that supports it.
• Improved stability issues with DX12 and addressed several of the major issues impacting performance with  DX12. 
• Optimizations to late game and lower-spec hardware which should alleviate input lag in many situations. 
• Rollback is now more dynamic and will not be active if there isn’t enough headroom to support it. 

Campaign

• We’ve added a button to the options menu to restart the mission from the beginning (instead of the last save point).

Co-op

• Gear
  • We have reworked Hero Gear progression on all heroes for a more satisfying leveling experience.
  • Gear slots now unlock at level 6 and 11 (was 11 and 13).  
  • All heroes have a new 6th piece of gear available.

General

• Cosmetics
  • Souls of the Fallen Fog of War
  • Shudderfly Pet
• Range Indicators
  • Abilities now feature a range indicator to allow for more precise targeting. This initial rollout of range indicators will continue to be iterated on and improved. 
• Target Validation
  • Abilities now show a cursor change when an ability cannot be successfully targeted on the hovered area or unit.
• Audio
  • Improved some unit and Hero audio to feel more impactful
• Art
  • All 1v1 and Co-op maps have received a polish pass to improve visual fidelity. 
• Camera Angle
  • Game camera was lowered 5 degrees to subtly improve unit legibility and selection.

Bug Fixes

• Returning to the Co-op main screen after completing a game now correctly selects the same hero you last selected.
• Creep camps no longer spawn facing in random directions.
• Fixed various issues that could occur when loading from a campaign checkpoint.
• Opening menus or switching quick macro tabs should no longer cause the next mouse input to be missed.

• Fixed an issue where Shadow Mastiffs were doing more than the intended damage against air units.
• Morph Cores are no longer automatically added to control group 1.
• The Scanner’s Tag will no longer autocast on Critters.
• Fixed an issue where Vectors would not retain their upgraded speed with the Recall Potential upgrade.
• Vectors now correctly share a focus group after Delta Jumping.
• Fixed an issue where Helicarrier could still attack while stunned.
• Fixed an issue where the Kri’s Blaze of Light did not grant +20 damage as advertised.
• Fixed an issue where the Shadowflyer’s armor debuff could not be dispelled.
• Fixed an issue where the Radioactive Blood debuff from Slime creeps could not be dispelled.
• Building an Ascension Matrix with a Morph Core now costs the correct amount of Therium (50 instead of 100).
• Purify can no longer be cast in the fog of war.
• Various other bug fixes and performance improvements.