Patch Notes

## Heat Update - Alpha 10 3/1/19

It's great to see everyone playing Heat this past week. We have been working on a new update that we are releasing to help with many issues that came up from your reports and feedback.
This update contains additional optimization improvements. Between our Steam launch (Alpha 1) and Alpha 10, we have now seen between 15%-50% performance improvement in on our in-house test machines depending on the settings, biome, and system specs.

At 1080p/Gamer + 4 core i7 cpu, we are now getting 60-90 FPS on a 980 GTX, 80-120 FPS on a 1080 GTX, 100-130 FPS with a 2080 TI depending on the biomes. The forests in the game are the heavier areas and the plains and deserts are the highest fps, this is due to the large fillrates of all the tree densities and the variety.

We are taking the servers down and rolling them back up in order to process the update. We are doing a partial wipe on our Official Servers with this update. The world data (everything placed and stored in the world, including player inventories) will be wiped, but it should not wipe the character level, xp, attributes, prestige, and blueprint unlocks. This is the first time testing this with our save system. This update should not require a wipe on community servers.

If you experience a crash or freeze, please follow these steps, especially after an update as it seems Steam sometimes requires a file integrity check after an update to work properly -  https://steamcommunity.com/app/656240/discussions/0/1777136225016630475/

**Here are the changes for Alpha 10:**

- Harvesting forest should no longer result in double-hit animations
- Fix for missing colliders in forest when placing foundations and stations nearby
- Can no longer farm or change splats underneath objects. This to prevent trees growing through bases.
- Forest rendering optimizations for CPU and GPU performance improvements
- Lowered initial loading time a small amount
- Revised icons for unarmed and orifice slot in hotbar
- IK system reworked to avoid touching transforms while making calculations.
- Compass layout adjusted so that compass icons do not overlap compass text
- Implemented GUI and HUD optimizations where UI elements are only updated periodically or when visible changes are expected.
- Compass uses a scrolling, looping texture instead of individual UI elements as labels for directions. This improves performance.

- Mounts given by power positions now have a different loot table.
- Grass & hay have less of a change to drop a geode when harvested.
- Concrete slab stack size increased to 40.
- Stone slab stack size increased to 100.
- Farmed tobacco crops now drop tobacco leaves.
- All farmed crops now have a chance to drop a geode.
- Higher quality farm crops now have a better sell price
- Wood now burns as fuel for 10 seconds.
- Charcoal will only now burn for 20 seconds in fires.
- Charcoal now sells for 10 cents.
- Increased the sell price of higher quality crops.
- Scythe’s now affect the correct amount of grid areas.
- Brought grid back on sprinkler for only those who are placing them
- Resources nodes will now respawn back in the biome they were removed from.
- Hanging Kerosene Lamp now uses correct resources to craft.
- Steel knife is now craftable.
- Doubled the stockpile limit for wood & sticks.
- Lemons have been added for purchase through shipping bin.
- Ranged weapons that are fired shortly before logging out will deal damage next time the player logs in.

- Added “Diatomaceous Earth” resource that can only be optioned by cracking and open a geode. Diatomaceous earth is now a required resource in crafting dynamite. This makes dynamite much more rare.
- Dynamite now does more damage and its radius has been tightened. All walls now take one dynamite to breach. Ramparts take between 3-5 dynamite each to breach depending on their tier.
- Increased HP of ramparts & rampart gates. This makes them a little better than the same amount of walls.
- Can now only deconstruct stick building pieces using a repair hammer. You can no longer deconstruct upgraded buildings using a repair hammer. You cannot downgrade a building beyond clay (cannot downgrade to sticks). Downgrades still cost resources as is normal. This is to prevent "base pocketing" after you conquer someones land and place your own land flag.
- Fixed fancy wooden cabinet collider
- Fix for the white house and plantation doors removing randomly. Server restart should fix this now.
- Security no longer resets for guild members when picked
- Payments will now properly draw money from all slots of a player's inventory, even the orifice.
- Events based on the in-game date like pregnancy and the 50/50 draw will continue to work into game year 2 and beyond. The in-game date will coincidentally reset from these changes, back to the first day.

- Add new security option to doors so you can prevent NPCs from using them
- Human NPCs now have a slot limit of 20, down from 300. Existing NPCs will not change, and Players keep their 300 slot limit.
- NPCs will now drop any Heavy Goods they're carrying when going to sleep (they sleep when removed from party, or on player log out). NPC's were never meant to be static containers for heavy goods.

- Fall damage added. By default, falls under 20 m are survivable. On land you own, falls under 40 m are survivable. On land owned by another guild, falls under 12 m are survivable. NPCs only take fall damage on land that belongs to a rival guild.
- Melee damage against humans targets is 3x stronger, and 6x stronger if it is a headshot. This brings melee back into play, as it was very weak beforehand.

- Added a /wipe command for admins. It wipes the server except for levels, prestige, xp, blueprints, and attributes (health, hunger, thirst, and weight)

Thanks for everyone's continued feedback and support.

- Code}{atch
## Heat Update - Alpha 9 2/21/19

Were happy to release another update. This update contains many improvements, bugs fixes, and some design changes based on community feedback.
This update has fixes for a large amount of base raid balance issues. We'll continue to monitor raid balance and appreciate everyone's feedback.

There are farming life improvements. As wells now produce normal water. And farm tools allow multiple grid size selections.

We also updated the Presidents power position. He now can set an additional tax on the shipping bin of up to 20%. This is to give the President more income earning ability, as the property tax did not produce very much on its own. We also removed the cannon spawn and artillery shell spawn from the President as we received and understand the feedback was that it was too overpowered and he should research and craft it.

We are taking the servers down and rolling them back up in order to process the update. This update should not require a wipe.

If you experience a crash or freeze, please follow these steps, especially after an update as it seems Steam sometimes requires a file integrity check after an update to work properly - https://steamcommunity.com/app/656240/discussions/0/1777136225016630475/

**Here are the changes for Alpha 9:**

- Damage resistances have been properly added to all building materials & building sets as they were not properly working before. This fixes numerous issues that occurred with melee weapons and ranged weapons. Concrete is now properly only damageable by explosives and decay.
- Added "Bore" damage type for melee weapons that used to have pierce damage. This helps us balance melee and ranged weapons that both used to be pierce.
- Added damage types to melee weapons that were missing them.
- Clay & stone building materials/sets have had their bash resistances updated.
- Upon dynamite being used, land now says sieged.

- The president can now tax sales in the shipping bin by up to 20%, receiving part of these profits.
- Removed cannons and artillery shells from presidential box

- Reduced initial startup load times
- Make the follow camera not figh/t with orbit camera/
- Specific small animals won't disappear when removed from a player's party.

- Resource nodes are now re-balanced per a biome.
- Hoe’s & rakes upgrades can now affect multiple grid areas.
- All watering pots/can’s now use the same amount of water per use.
- Sprinklers no longer disable the farm grid view
- Shoveling will properly get the biome when a position is repeatedly shoveled
- Offset farm models to be above tesselation

- Sturdy Wood Stool blueprint unlock cost have been correctly updated.
- Steel Sledgehammer blueprint unlock cost have been correctly updated.
- Increased the stamina of horses to 40, up from 30.
- Wells produce normal water, making them much more useful for crafting.
- Stake blueprint unlock cost has been correctly updated.

- Tightened up collider on bonfire
- Fix desync with president pool
- Same guild lockpicking properly shows container contents
- Fix possible issue with duplicates being added to pages
- Land Security now properly uses bounds
- Fixed the air placement to prevent placing of floating objects
- Alter the highlighting to be less in your face
- Inverted triangle and stairs can be placed together
- Building stairs snap together
- Fix weirdness with furniture and security
- Furniture uses proper colliders
- Can no longer lock chairs
- Outhouses use security properly

- Made it so disconnection popups are even more reliable then before.
- Many fixes for server exceptions that made very large obnoxious log files.
- Updated the server console to provide some more stability when restarting and monitoring the process if it freezes.

Thanks for everyone's continued feedback and support.

 - Code}{atch

## Heat Update - Alpha 8 2/15/19

We worked on a number of performance improvements over this past week and we wanted to do an update focused on client side performance. This one is primarily focused on CPU performance. Each update previous to this one also included some performance improvements. This is a continued work in progress, so we plan to keep making improvements in the future.
We are taking the servers down and rolling them back up in order to process the update. This update should not require a wipe.

If you experience a crash or freeze, please follow these steps, especially after an update as it seems Steam sometimes requires a file integrity check after an update to work properly - https://steamcommunity.com/app/656240/discussions/0/1777136225016630475/

**Here are the changes for Alpha 8:**

- Further Improved client side performance for Cameras
- Further Improved client side performance for Physics
- Improved client side performance for Hair Shader
- Improved client side performance for Terrain

Thanks for everyone's continued feedback and support.

 - Code}{atch

## Heat Update - Alpha 7 2/13/19

It's been great to see so many people having fun in Heat, we really enjoy hearing your stories, and look forward to making the game better. Please continue to share your feedback.
Taking into account the community feedback, we are releasing a new update that helps address some issues, and also contains some new improvements. We are taking the servers down and rolling them back up in order to process the update. This update should not require a wipe.

**Here are the changes for Alpha 7:**

- Improved client performance for cameras
- Improved client performance for physics
- Improved client performance for water detection

- Smoke Signal Bonfire now craft-able. This large Bonfire is great for having a party.
- Fixed lights disabling forever after they disabled once. (Campfire fix)
- Orbit cam will not reset if another player activates a station
- Tobacco no longer has a red poppy sprite

- Siege projectiles instantiate their explosion 10 cm away from the hit point, towards the emission point of the siege weapon, as to prevent the explosion from occurring within the collider. As it used to be that items about 10 meters behind a wall would receive damage from cannon fire. This fix makes it so you will only receive damage on objects pressed up directly against the wall (< 1 meter). But the interior of your base will be safe under cannon fire.
- The later tiers of buildings have extra damage resistance against cannon fire. The concrete tier cannot be damaged at all by cannon fire, gunfire, or melee. Only explosion damage can penetrate it (2-3 Dynamite).

- Fixed where animals sometimes won't appear to heal when the server and client disagree on their maximum health value.
- Fixed a case where Power Position NPCs could get into a strange "stuck" state.
- Fixed resource node spawning as there was a random chance that after a server restart they would quit spawning.
- Made it so animals that wake up during the tame process can continue to be tamed once dazed again

- The Tannery can now be turned on / off. This allows you to turn it back on after upgrading it.
- Stations will retain their upgrade progress when they load back in, instead of resetting to 0.
- Crafted items will now complete properly if nobody is around at the time it finishes. (Currently seen as the "Workspace Not Found" error.)
- Fix culling on open doors
- Fix for an occurrence where the presidents chair can be unusable
- The Presidents pool pit now spawns poop (visit the grate/sewer to access it as it builds up down there). If you are trapped, you can eat the poop to die and respawn.
- Adjusted the collider in the Presidents Pool
- Footstep and blood particles should no longer cause shadow flicker

- Made it so the server log filtering resets for logs that have not logged for over 1 minute.
- Changed the timing code in server logging to use a more reliable time for keeping maintenance of logs.
- Made it so other player's feedback messages do not show in the dedi console.
- Made sure the version file is only every accessed with READ permissions.
- Made it so you can actually disable backups in server settings.
- Fixed a bug in the steam server code where if it failed to login to steam it would never allow anyone to authenticate. It now will retry to login until successful.
- Set the default ping limit graph length to 6 minutes.
- The ping limiter will now start tracking after the loading screen to enter a server. This makes its reading more stable.
- You now receive a message if you are kicked from a server for exceeding the maximum ping
- Fixed a bug where the auto restart messages did not actually have the time in the message.
- Fixed a bug that prevented a popup from showing if you are ever kicked as a result of failing steam authentication.

- Reset the weight of natural resources, bricks, slabs, cement mix, and non-precious ingots to pre-Alpha 6 levels. Then re-balanced it by reducing it 50% (instead of the 75% as was done in Alpha 6). As we found with the increased ability to level up your weight carry stats, and from community feedback, the original reduction was a bit too far reaching.
- Reset the weight of stone to pre-Alpha 6 levels. Then re-balanced it by reducing it 60% (instead of the 80% as was done in Alpha 6). As we found with the increased ability to level up your weight carry stats, and from community feedback, the original reduction was a bit too far reaching.

- Base craft times (level 1 items) have been generally reduced by 50%, max craft times (level 60 items) are now normalized across the board to be 4x times base craft times. Crafted items experience also reflects this change.
- Made War Longbow Re-searchable
- Removed references to armor in the United outfitters tree (padding) as armor is not part of the game.
- Tooltips for backpack research (reduced item weight) now display the proper upgrade percentages.
- Log shutters & timber trapdoor can now be purchased though the shipping bin.
- Iron & steel hatchets, axes & pickaxes now sell for an increased price though the shipping bin.
- Ores have had their stack size increased to 100.
- Reduced the unlock cost of United Outfitters items along with the resources needed.
- Wood construction hammer now upgrades 10% per hit.
- Destroying a stone doorway now yields the correct resources.

- Reduced the group tax multiplier for additional land claim flags to 5%, down from 20%

**Some More Info About Land:**

When you buy more land in the game, the cost of your property tax goes up by a percentage multiplier. The reason for this, is that we did not want players buying up all the land without incurring any extra cost to do so.

However, with this update we changed the land tax multiplier down to 5% for each extra owned land plot (used to be at 20%). This will help you buy more land around your current land without incurring as steep of a penalty on cost, while still making it difficult for a player to buy an extreme amount of land on the server.

We noticed many players did not know that you can buy more land, and even move the land flag from your newly purchased land into an existing land plot you already own to help protect it.

Land ownership has many unique qualities. You can set up a nice buffer where other players cannot build. It prevents decay. It prevents siege weapons from being installed on your land (however, dynamite will still work).

We look forward to everyone's feedback on the update. And thank you for your support as we actively work on the next update.

 - Code}{atch

## Heat Update - Alpha 6 2/8/19

Were happy to release another update. This one has some improvements we were looking to get out to help with performance and some design changes based on community feedback.
We are taking the servers down and rolling them back up in order to process the update. This update should not require a wipe.

**Here are the changes for Alpha 6:**

- Improvements to client performance by offloading processing onto other threads.
- Resolution Scaling: Added Destroy call to properly get rid of orphaned render textures
- Light manager client performance fixes
- Flag animation client performance fixes
- Improved performance from splat changes to terrain (rakes, hoes, foundations, stations, etc.). Should notice less hitches while doing these activities.
- Corrected more issues with sounds retaining incorrect settings.

- Increased each player's Shipping Bin limit to 3, up from 1.
- Shipping fees reduced to 30%, down from 50%.
- The Stash and Shipping Bin limit is properly received from the server on login, even when they are far away. This allows the remote-destroy to work without finding the Stash or Shipping Bin.
- Reduced the weight of natural resources, bricks, slabs, and non-precious ingots by 75%.
- Reduced the weight of Stone by 80%.
- Reduced the weight of Cement Mix by 93.75%.
- Farm crops now grow 50% faster.
- Seeds and Plant Materials no longer apply dazing or poison when consumed unless actually laced or poisoned. This applies to both players and mounts.
- Doubled the number of resource nodes that will spawn at one time.

Thanks for everyone's continued feedback and support.

 - Code}{atch

## Heat Update - Alpha 5 2/7/19

It's been great to see everyone playing Heat this past week! Were really grateful for all the community feedback we've received. It's been super helpful.
This update is a large one, and has many changes and design changes. Many changes requested by the community are part of it. We also targeted performance, main menu load screen times, design flaws, and much more.

If you are experiencing a crash, please visit this thread for troubleshooting -
https://steamcommunity.com/app/656240/discussions/0/1777136225016630475/

We are taking the servers down in order to process the update. We will be wiping the Official Servers with this update due to the exploit fix and also due to the resource node fix. We also merged some of the Official Servers to encourage players on the same servers.

Community servers do not have to wipe, but if they wish to get the resource node fix, it will sadly require a wipe.

Edit: For Community Servers that do not wipe: We now realize there was an issue with us changing the nutrition and hydration stats to balance eating/thirst for NPCs. A side effect of this is that if players put more than 10 points into either of these stats, they will get either 0 nutrition or 0 hydration. Please use a "Elixir of Recondition" in order to reset your attribute point stats if you receive this issue, or ask your community server for a wipe. Sorry about the inconvenience.

**Here are the changes for Alpha 5:**

- Improved ambient occlusion performance
- Improved anti-aliasing performance
- Improved depth of field performance
- Additional client performance improvements.
- Decreased the initial launch time of the game by about 40% for players on a standard HDD

- Tobacco pipe now sells for its intended price.
- Experience granted for crafting Shotgun Ammo reduced from 19.6 to 0.01.
- Added colliders under the white house
- Increase collider size on basement door in white house

- Newborns, Toddlers, and Children will now grow up one stage per a real time hour. (half an in-game day)
- Characters will no longer give birth while sleeping.
- Pregnant characters who miss their due date while sleeping will give birth shortly after waking up.
- Pregnancy due dates will reset when waking up if they are scheduled to begin in the future or a negative amount of time.
- Added missing first hand poses for the baby bottle.

- Fixed issues with taming/tamed NPC's disappearing
- All creatures have had their hydration & nourishment values updated.
- Water now hydrates properly when consumed.
- Giblets now provide more hydration & nourishment to pets.
- Certain animals won't rush to the defense of townsfolk and trees.
- Pets and family members can and will automatically consume liquids in containers to feed/water themselves.
- Upgrading hydration & nourishment will now reduce the amount need to fill the bar(s) fully by 5%. Hydration & nourishment bars still deplete at the same percent as before. Only a maximum of 10 points can be placed into these stats.
- Corrected issue with some voice sounds inheriting incorrect audio settings. This caused animals to sometimes sound 2D.
- Laced food used during taming will properly daze the animal.
- Laced and poisoned food more consistent in general.

- Power Position staff drop the loot in their inventories when they die.
- Capture properly allows looting captives.
- Loot sacks expire in 20 minutes, up from 5 minutes.

- The Claim Flag can now be placed 4.2m from terrain height, up from 1.2m. This will make it easier to place these into your structure when building on a hillside.
- The Claim Flag's no-build zone has been reduced to 2x2 width, and its total height reduced low enough to fit within one floor.

- The Stash is now free from its concrete base, place it somewhere safe.
- The Enhanced Stockpile now has 50% increased capacity.
- Stockpile (Enhanced) update, now use stone slabs to craft.
- Container capacity update, container now have increased capacity.
- The iron chest & safe’s now take less impact damage & no piercing damage.
- Shipping Bins are now properly limited to one per player.
- Stations are properly assigned their original owner when upgraded, preventing upgraded Shipping Bins from transferring to a different owner (then being destroyed for exceeding 1).

- Resource nodes will respawn correctly after dying after a server restart. This change requires a wipe to work.
- Resource nodes drop the correct amount of loot when killed.
- Firepits and Cauldrons can now process geodes.

- Taxes paid to the president are increased by 400% after their removal from Claim Flags.
- Becoming Sheriff won't kill the President's Intern.

- Campfires now properly emit light even if the "Physically Based Fire" option is disabled.

- Majority of doors, gates & shutters are now unpickable.
- Timber door, timber double door, timber shutters & timber trapdoor can now be researched at level 5, build times & stats have been updated to reflect change.
-Doors, gates, shutters & windows now take less to no damage from certain damage types.
- Building Tiers now have additional resistance to the different damage types
- Building Tiers now unlock every 5 levels
- Building Materials are now 40% cheaper
- Added Log Trapdoor for purchase to the shipping bin.
- Log Trap Door & Log Shutters can now be researched at level 1, build times & stats have been updated to reflect change.
- Iron jail door can now be researched at level 10, build times & stats have been updated to reflect these changes.
- Practice stick now unlocked by default.
- Enhanced steel safe is now unpickable
- Steel safe is now lock level 3.
- Iron chest is now lock level 2.

- Reduced the amount of experience need to level by 30%.
- Increased the amount of points that can be placed into health to 20.
- Increased the amount of points that can be placed into weight to 30.
- Encumbrance has been enabled again with fixes and fallbacks. As a safety measure in-case you experience bad rubberbanding desync, character weight will now zero-out when all items are removed from them (Inventory, Hotbar, Armor, etc...).
- The heaviest weight percentage between a mount and rider is now applied to the mount.
- The status HUD (eg. Health) will no longer stall on its current icons if one appears while mounted.

- Moved the auto restart settings to the ServerSettings.cfg file. Two new variables were created 'restartInterval' and 'restartHour'. If restartHour is set, restartInterval is ignored. The default auto restart time is set to 8 hours. The auto restart settings have been removed from ConsoleSettings.
- Changed the way the server console behaves when running the server as a service. Previously if you installed and started the service and then run Server.exe manually to get access to the console, it would attach like normal but still try to manage the process. So the second console would also check for updates and if you typed restart into the command line it would try to start two instances of the game.

Were actively working on the next update. Thanks for your patience and support.

 - Code}{atch

## Heat Update - Alpha 4 2/4/19

We are taking the servers down in order to process the update. This update should not require a wipe.
Note - We've been hearing about many crash reports while loading the game, and they seem to have a common denominator - Verify the files through steam ( library right click on heat > properties > local files > verify integrity of cache). Also, check that you have not disabled your windows page file (we recommend setting it to automatic). Please try these steps to see if it works for you. We are looking into why this is an issue.

This update is a smaller one, but deals with some core server stabiility problems we've been seeing. We appreciate everyone's patience and understanding with these issues as we work through them.

- Paging stability, should help with the loading dynamic page queue problems
- Server stability fixes
- Resource gather radius increased by x2 (this was part of Alpha 3, but we forgot to list it)

Were actively working on the next update.

 - Code}{atch

## Heat Update - Alpha 3 2/2/19

We are taking the servers down in order to process the update, and also rolling out some internal server stability updates. This update should not require a wipe.
**Note -**We've been hearing about many crash reports while loading the game, and they seem to have a common denominator - Verify the files through steam ( library right click on heat > properties > local files > verify integrity of cache). Please try this step to see if it works for you. We are looking into why this is an issue.

- Initial main menu load time reduced

- Improved optimization for melee performance

- Threading rework for server stability

- The President can change taxes and payroll after a server restart. (Was unable to change taxes until the president switched between players.)

- Baby Baskets won't spawn extra babies when they unload and reload.

- Enhanced Stockpiles only return 5 Concrete Slabs on dismantle.

- The Governor Antiques, Lost and Found, and Law & Order containers will now remove all items before placing new stock inside.

- The Wood Bow deals 25 damage, down from 35.

- The Bone Bow deals 32 damage, down from 34.

- Arrows now craft in batches of 10, down from 25.

- Stick structures are now 50% resistant to piercing damage.

- Upgraded structures are now immune to piercing damage and 50% resistant to impact damage. (The path of least resistance was not meant to be bows shot from the woods, get yourself some sledgehammers and dynamite.)

- Doors and Shutters (not Windows) are now immune to piercing damage and 50% resistant to impact damage.

- Ramparts and Gates are now immune to piercing damage, 75% resistant to impact damage, and 50% resistant to other basic damage types. Stick Ramparts do not have full resistances, much like the stick walls.

- Concrete structures are now properly immune to all basic damage types.

- Physics fire now disabled by default. Can be toggled in settings screen. As has performance cost.

Were actively working on the next update. Thanks for your patience and support.

 - Code}{atch

## Heat Update - Alpha 2 2/1/19

We are taking the servers down and rolling them back up over the next hour in order to process the update, and also rolling out some internal server stability updates. This update should not require a wipe.
**Update Notes - Alpha 2:**

- Players do not become encumbered by the items they carry (temporarily disabled due to a desync issue that could cause the player to no longer move beyond 10 meters. Were looking into this further.).

- Players, NPCs, and creatures will no longer heal 3 HP / sec for being in water.

- An item with 0 craft time will no longer call itself "already done" and never try to craft.

- The Sawmill now has a crafting time greater than 0.

- Stashes and Shipping Bins are no longer removed on load when they belong to a non-leader member of a communal guild.

- Stashes and Shipping bins will die (instead of the current removal) when you own more than one, allowing them to drop their loot in a temporary sack.

- Wooden chests now have the correct container settings applied to them. They will not be able to hold heavy goods. (This change is destructive, the chest contents will go missing.).

- Barrels and Kerosene Tanks aren't locked.

- Players that disconnect quickly after connecting to a server will no longer create a pair of broken characters on login.

- The "Enable Gamepad Cursor" option is now disabled by default. (For some controllers, this option makes the mouse cursor run off-screen.)

- Decision wheels will no longer accept joystick input while the "Enable Gamepad Cursor" option is disabled.

- Corrected spatial blend on tree impacts so they're properly 3D

- Population limits doesn't allow duplicate characters in parties and won't load them, either. This was preventing servers from restarting properly.

- Dead animals don't keep eating food while dead
- Sheriff's deputy spawns

- Substantially reduced likelihood of shadow flickering

- Improved performance in areas with many chopped trees and bushes

- Improved performance of forest particles

Also - We've uploaded an image of the controls:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1640997952

Were actively working on the next update. Thanks for your patience and support.

 - Code}{atch

## Thanks for Your Support - Working on Launch Issues 1/30/19

Thank you to everyone for your support during the launch of Heat.
We appreciate everyone's patience and understanding with the issues we've encountered at launch. We want to let everyone know that we are aware and looking into and working on the various launch issues. Were prioritizing stability and optimization.

Please continue to post on the bug forums as it helps us track down problems faster:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/656240/discussions/5/

We've seen the reports of long initial load times into the main menu. We are looking into this further. In the meantime, please launch the game via your SSD, as this is strongly recommended. If you do not have an SSD, then it may take a fair bit of time to load into the main menu.

Were also looking into server side issues. We have some fixes in the works for rubberbanding caused by a desync of the players due to the weight limit on the server and the players actual weight limit (encumbrance) being mismatched. We've also been looking into issues where the server is crashing on load.

Were also looking into a light flickering issue. You may notice this when running in the world that there is a shadow type of flicker from time to time.

There are some instances where players have 2 characters stuck together on character creation, we are working on getting a solid repro for this.

We have some fixes in the works for rubberbanding caused by a desync of players weight limit on the server and the player's actual weight limit. (Encumbrance) This would cause it so you get stuck and rubber band over and over again to a an area, moving very slowly.

Aside from these, we are also looking into client side performance issues to try and find the sore spots now that we are under heavy load testing.

We'll keep everyone posted on when we can get some fixes out.

Thanks,
The Code}{atch Team

**Update:** Were working on doing final tests on a new patch. ETA is Feb 1st at 12AM EST.