The renderer is rebuilt. AREAZ now runs on DirectX 12 with DLSS 4.5, and on modern hardware the difference is not subtle. What you can expect:
RTX 30 series - DLSS upscaling, more stable frame times, noticeably smoother traversal
RTX 40 and 50 series - substantial gains on top of that thanks to frame generation
All nextgen cards - the streaming hitches are gone. You may still see a spike the first time you enter an area, then it settles
One thing to know: DLSS is active, but this update does not expose settings for it yet. I want real performance data from real machines before I start handing out switches that change it. Why this took so long
The longer version deserves saying properly. I moved AREAZ to Unreal Engine 5 as early as it was possible, expecting better tools, better optimisation, better performance. What the early UE5 releases actually delivered was excellent results on large flat surfaces - metal, concrete, the kind of thing you saw in the Matrix demo and the first wave of UE5 titles. AREAZ is not made of concrete. It is jungle, bamboo meadow and mangrove swamp, and dense foliage was exactly what UE5 handled worst. Every release - 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 and on - I updated, converted the project and tested performance properly. Every time I was blocked. On every version before this one, DX12 performed worse than DX11 on the same map. UE 5.7 is the first release that genuinely addressed foliage. That is what finally made this update possible. It was a frustrating stretch. It blocked progress, and it blocked any serious start on new maps. What this unblocks
With DX12 and DLSS working, I have started building the biome setups for the inland map I promised. It is a 4x4 km map, and it is possible not all of it will be reachable at first. The procedural biomes are already prepared, so the work now moves to level design and hand-placing the points of interest worth walking to. New items and crafting recipes for that map are already drafted.
Crafting change: lianas
To prepare for the new map, lianas now work differently. Two lianas craft an improvised rope, and rope replaces every recipe that used lianas directly. The reason is simple: lianas do not grow inland, so every recipe built on them would have stopped working the moment you leave the coast.
To get more news on the new map, provide reports and feedback, please join our Discord: https://discord.gg/XW3jaebbwH And if this update changed how the game runs for you, please consider updating your review. Reviews are how other players decide whether to look, and an old review of an old build helps nobody. Thank you for your patience and for sticking with this. Juraj Bachar
Game Creator